Description

UNICEF photographer Roger LeMoyne talks about covering the emergency response to Haiti's recent earthquake.

Transcript

Photographer Roger Lemoyne in Haiti Narrator: Communication with people on the ground in Haiti remains difficult. Award-winning freelance photographer Roger Lemoyne spoke to us via satellite phone. Roger Lemoyne: My name is Roger Lemoyne. I've been a photographer for over 20 years now. And at the moment, I'm at the UNICEF camp which is at the end of airstrip of the Port-Au-Prince Airport. There's a constant coming and going of planes, trucks, people on motorbikes, every form of human activity related to aid work is going on right around here. I came to Haiti the first time in 2004 just doing journalistic work when Aristide was driven out, and I've been to Haiti, I think this is the eighth trip I've made to Haiti since then. I have quite a strong connection with Haiti on a number of levels. Honestly, everything here has impacted me and has impacted everybody I think who has come. There's every kind of damage and suffering, both to peoples' bodies. I've seen many people who've had their limbs amputated in the hospitals here. All the hospitals have moved people outdoors, so women were giving birth outside. People with serious injuries were lying around on the hospital grounds outside the hospital. I've been in hospitals that were full of people moaning, people bleeding and moaning and in the first few days, that's kind of calmed down. But also it's very hard to look at the presidential palace collapsed and see like thousands of people camped in front of the presidential palace or to see the great cathedral at the center of the city, both the palace and the cathedral were symbols of some kind of civility, of some kind of center to their society and both of those great symbols have collapsed. So, it's like everything has been pulled out from under them physically and psychologically. And the future is so uncertain for anybody here. And those things are to me equally painful as the human suffering, because the injuries will heal but the fact that the society both physical and psychological has collapsed means for the long term it's going to be a difficult road ahead. Some towns in the former Yugoslavia reached this level of damage. The level of damage and destruction here matches most places. I guess Kabul was more destroyed by the conflict. But in a way, Haiti has a greater problem ahead of it with the level of infrastructure damage. You know, even before the earthquake Haiti had a massive problem trying to modernize itself and to improve its infrastructure. Now, the only thing they've got going for them is the huge interest from the international community which maybe wasn't quite there before. So they've taken three steps back, but at least there are a couple steps forward there. Narrator: And that was photographer Roger Lemoyne in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. You’ve been watching UNICEF television. Unite for Children.