Col­in Croft (For­mer West In­dies crick­et icon)

While this col­umn is not spe­cif­ic to sport, it in­volves some­thing more im­por­tant–Haiti's mas­sive plight. Some­times, there are many more im­por­tant sit­u­a­tions than just sports. This is re­al life, and death, too! David Michael Rud­der is renowned for per­form­ing the West In­dies crick­et team's bat­tle hymn–"Ral­ly Round the West In­dies." That tune is ac­cept­ed and in­cor­rect­ly used as the an­them of the Caribbean, sung every­where to com­mem­o­rate West In­dies crick­et. Rud­der per­formed an­oth­er song which is so very apt now, a song that had iden­ti­fied the sor­row that is Haiti. That song is: "Haiti, I'm sor­ry!" When I played for the West In­dies, I was known as a very hard man. Yes, I gave no quar­ter. In­deed, I am still re­gard­ed in many places as be­ing the same, not least, by some of the un­de­serv­ing crick­et­ing non-achiev­ers who rep­re­sent us.

If you read a syn­op­sis of my ca­reer, it is sug­gest­ed I would have bowled a bounc­er to my grand-moth­er, if she was the bats­man. That is true too! This last week saw this "very hard man" shed­ding sev­er­al tears for our beloved Haiti. I am very sure I was not alone. We should all be very sor­ry for, and about, Haiti. What is it about this place that al­lows it to be so dec­i­mat­ed, year in, year out, by such bad luck? There is no coun­try any­where that has gone through as much ad­ver­si­ty! This is the same coun­try which pro­duced one of the great­est Free­dom Fight­ers and com­man­ders of all time, Fran­cois Do­minique Tou­s­saint L'Ou­ver­ture, a for­mer house slave who taught him­self to read and write. Had he been a sports­man, L'Ou­ver­ture would have been cap­tain of any world team, such a great leader was he.

Even the late Rev­erend Dr Mar­tin Luther King, whose hol­i­day was cel­e­brat­ed in the US re­cent­ly, could not hold a can­dle to the ef­forts and achieve­ments of L'Ou­ver­ture, for it was he who led a great rev­o­lu­tion in the late 1790s, against the French, to free the slaves, and to cre­ate the first re­pub­lic any­where to be gov­erned by peo­ple of African de­scent; the Re­pub­lic of Haiti. There is no coun­try in the West­ern Hemi­sphere which has had more mon­ey for de­vel­op­ment thrown at it than Haiti has had dur­ing the last 100 years. The French, and es­pe­cial­ly the Amer­i­cans, from 1915, have put zil­lions in­to the coun­try's cof­fers, yet it re­mains the poor­est coun­try any­where, per capi­ta, and one of the most cor­rupt and worst run. How ex­act­ly did Fran­cois "Pa­pa Doc" Du­val­li­er and his son, Jean-Claude "Ba­by Doc" Du­val­li­er, be­come mul­ti-mil­lion­aires in such a poor coun­try? Even the coun­tries of Cari­com have ne­glect­ed to help man­age Haiti prop­er­ly. We should all be re­al­ly sor­ry!

I have had cause to be di­rect­ly in­volved with Haitians, in two dis­tinct­ly dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions that have al­lowed me to re­spect them and love them. While liv­ing in Flori­da from 1981 to 1993, I taught Eng­lish as a sec­ond lan­guage, evening class­es at the Adult Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tre, in West Palm Beach. These class­es were for re­cent US im­mi­grants, most­ly Haitians and Cen­tral Amer­i­cans, who were try­ing to get enough Eng­lish Lan­guage skills to achieve a US High School Diplo­ma. Re­gard­less of how tired they were or how stressed they were with fi­nan­cial or fam­i­ly con­cerns, the Haitians who con­sti­tut­ed the ma­jor­i­ty of my class­es, were al­ways, re­li­gious­ly, present. No one could un­der­stand my pride when, years af­ter­wards, I would meet some of my for­mer stu­dents who had be­come me­chan­ics at some of the bet­ter car deal­er­ships, or worked for US gov­ern­ment agen­cies, or owned their own taxi ser­vices, or even be­came teach­ers them­selves. They nev­er for­got me ei­ther, and al­ways thanked me. It is I who should have been thank­ing them!

Be­fore I re­turned to the Caribbean, I had al­so re­turned to avi­a­tion, which I had paused while play­ing crick­et for the West In­dies. As a com­mer­cial pi­lot, I had, again, this time in more des­per­ate cir­cum­stances, to be in­volved with the Haitians. In 1994, when Hur­ri­cane Gor­don hit and again in 1998, when Hur­ri­cane Georges hit, both with much loss of life, I was in­volved in air­lifts to bring sup­plies to Haiti's strick­en in­hab­i­tants af­ter al­most every­thing ed­i­ble had been de­stroyed. What is it that al­lows this coun­try to have such bad-luck? On­ly God knows! As many as 250,000 could have died in that 7.0 in­ten­si­ty earth­quake on the Richter Scale. Even the East­ern Asian Tsuna­mi, in 2004, with 9.0 (Richter Scale), may not have killed more peo­ple. No one, any­where, de­serves this. Yes, Haiti, we are all so very, very sor­ry in­deed!

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Jef­frey Mas­ters, Di­rec­tor of Me­te­o­rol­o­gy at Weath­er Un­der­ground Inc, the 2008 hur­ri­cane sea­son was the cru­elest hur­ri­cane year ever ex­pe­ri­enced by Haiti. Four Hur­ri­canes–Fay, Gus­tav, Han­na and Ike–dumped mega-tons of wa­ter on Haiti that year, flood­ing away any­thing that the great winds had some­how man­aged to miss. Hav­ing lived through the third worst hur­ri­cane to hit Flori­da ever, Hur­ri­cane An­drew, in 1992, I know what hur­ri­canes can do. Hur­ri­cane An­drew caused US$50 bil­lion in dam­age. Flori­da is still clean­ing up. Even Hur­ri­cane Ka­t­ri­na, in 2005, was not as pow­er­ful, on­ly more dead­ly, most­ly from en­gi­neer­ing in­com­pe­tence. I can­not imag­ine a coun­try that could with­stand such con­tin­u­ous bom­bard­ment as Haiti has. Pick any re­cent decade; Haiti had been hurt bad­ly by moth­er na­ture's ef­forts. In 1954, Hur­ri­cane Hazel de­stroyed the coun­try. Thou­sands died.

In 1963, Hur­ri­cane Flo­ra killed near­ly 10,000 in Haiti. In 2004, Hur­ri­cane Jeanne de­stroyed most crops and peo­ple too. Yet, even the con­tin­u­ous hur­ri­canes were not the end of it, as earth­quakes are much worse than hur­ri­canes. Hur­ri­canes can be pre­dict­ed, can be pre­pared for, and will even­tu­al­ly pass. No-one, even the great­est seis­mol­o­gists alive, can pre­dict when earth­quakes, and their af­ter-shocks, will oc­cur. Haiti has al­so fea­tured ter­ri­bly in this too.

In 1770, an­oth­er great earth­quake hit Port-au-Prince. The death toll was mild; "on­ly" 500 hun­dred died im­me­di­ate­ly. How­ev­er, the re­sults of the up­ris­ings of the freed pris­on­ers, and food poi­son­ing af­ter­wards, from eat­ing An­thrax-taint­ed meat, killed near­ly 50,000 more.

In 1946, neigh­bour­ing Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic felt the brunt of an 8.1 mag­ni­tude earth­quake, but the re­sult­ing tsuna­mi al­so still killed over 2,000 peo­ple in Haiti. How ex­act­ly does this coun­try sur­vive? Last week, a very close friend co­or­di­nat­ed an in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion's ef­forts for the earth­quake in Haiti. She sent me the fol­low­ing text: "Crofty, you may have seen hunger in Asia and Africa; you may have ex­pe­ri­enced death and de­struc­tion in hur­ri­canes. I can tell you that you have nev­er seen any­thing like this. The news does not be­gin to tell of the suf­fer­ing and the de­spair here. I know that I will nev­er be the same again." Af­ter read­ing that, I can on­ly con­firm, sad­ly: "Haiti, I am so very sor­ry!"