18878: Laleau: Re: 18783: Allen: Aristide's mea culpa

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: NLaleau@aol.com

I know bone by bone how hard it is to travel even in a UN
vehicle on
a good day. If rivers rise, car or road breaks, tires are burning, a tree
falls
on the road, and you don't have radios or phones that work in the hilly
terrain???. Even with UN infrastructure we couldn't always get help when
we
needed it. Near Gonaives (Oge, outside Marchand Dessalines) I and 3 others
(UN/OAS) saw and photographed 65+ smoldering buildings & slaughtered
animals. A
villager told us "we think 12 bodies are in the cornfield." On breaking-up
radios, my boss heard only "12 bodies..." not "we are told that..." and
the
Nepalese soldiers who came didn't speak French or Creole or even much
English.
Imagine how we communicated! Plus add fear... --ncl