22799: Slavin: NYT on Bloomberg Visit (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JPS390@aol.com

Complements to Ms. Steinhauer: Some good reporting and writing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/28/nyregion/28bloomberg.html

July 28, 2004

For Bloomberg, Glimpses of a Devastated Haiti

By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, July 27 - At 8:38 a.m. on Tuesday, the wealthiest mayor in the United States touched down in one of the poorest nations in the Americas and proceeded to take a whirlwind tour through misery, illness and political unrest.

Over the course of roughly six hours, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg saw decades-old metal cribs where babies rested, still from dehydration, in this city's largest public hospital. He walked through the notorious slum where supporters of the recently ousted president simmer with rage, a neighborhood kept in check by Brazilian police forces armed with submachine guns who stand through the streets and on rooftops. He met with local dignitaries and donated a used ambulance to the deeply needy public hospital, equipped with more lifesaving devices than are available at that center's emergency room.

Mayor Bloomberg had planned to visit Haiti in January to celebrate the island's bicentennial, but that trip was scotched because of the political unrest that ended in the ousting of the former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February after a three-week uprising. Mr. Bloomberg said at the time that he would reschedule the trip, and on Tuesday he arrived on his private plane with Deputy Mayor Dennis M. Walcott; the Rev. Dr. Philius H. Nicholas, a pastor of a Haitian church in Flatbush, Brooklyn; Joseph F. Bruno, the head of the city's Office of Emergency Management; and other aides.

In the face of significant security risks, the mayor spent more than 20 minutes in the slum and seemed somewhat shaken by the poverty he witnessed. He asked numerous questions about the conditions and stopped at one point to count out dollars, possibly to buy some of the woven items.

"I had read and I had been told of the problems that many people in Haiti have," Mr. Bloomberg said during a news conference at the end of his visit. "But no matter how much you prepare yourself, you can't understand their pain and suffering until you see it yourself in their face."

Mr. Bloomberg, who is not fond of traveling overnight, left New York at 6 a.m. and was greeted in Port-au-Prince by two vice mayors of the city as well as James B. Foley, the United States ambassador to Haiti. Mr. Bloomberg's motorcade swept through Cité Soleil, a nearby slum where a United States marine was recently shot in gang violence.

As Mr. Bloomberg chatted with officials from the project about topsoil, flooding and political instability, a small crowd began to gather around his motorcade. Children covered in dust, many of them without shoes, stared at the sneakers of the gaggle of reporters, mayoral aides and United States representatives. A rock cracked the window of one car in the motorcade. Women walked by with baskets of vegetables and other foods perched on their heads. Chickens sauntered through the garbage-strewn streets, more dirt pathways than anything else. A mud-crusted pig wandered about, dazed, between makeshift homes crafted from tin. A cinderblock church was identical to a cinderblock morgue.

>From there, Mr. Bloomberg visited a center for women who do embroidery work and leave their children in the attached day care center. Small children lay on mattresses while their mothers sat next to old Singer sewing machines preparing aprons or in a little sewing circle on folding chairs in the next room.

After that, he placed a wreath at Champs de Mars, where a statue of one of the founding fathers of Haiti sits in the center of town. While photographers snapped away, Haitian students, workers, women selling shelled nuts and soccer fans wandered around the plaza below, taking in some of the action with muted curiosity. Many seem to have relatives in New York. Few knew who the mayor was. Some were impressed with the visit.

Haiti's misery seems to deepen each year. At least 6 percent of the population has AIDS and 80 percent lived in what the United States government characterizes as abject poverty. The average life expectancy is roughly 52 years and the entire country's gross domestic product is only three times Mr. Bloomberg's personal wealth. (He has $4 billion. The G.D.P. is $12 billion.)

The interim government, led by Prime Minister Gérard Latortue, is struggling to stabilize some of the more volatile regions of the country and upgrade basic services to avoid mass unrest.

Perhaps the most striking symbol of the nation's poverty is the central hospital here, where visitors are immediately hit with flies and the smell of human waste. Babies lay in old cribs, adults in metal beds. Equipment, manpower and medicine are in short supply. A soundlessness pervades - there are no beeping machines, no televisions, and nurses stand quietly over their charges. There is little to do for many of the patients, who are simply ill from hunger or dehydration.

A visibly moved Mr. Bloomberg made his way to each bed as his aides distributed New York Police Department hats to many patients. One baby lay still with a Bible perched open next to his arm.

"It is good that he is here," said Mona Rigaud, a doctor at New York University Medical Center who works with Haitian Physicians Abroad, a group of Haitian doctors who live outside the country and come for one- or two-week rotations at the center. "I think this puts us on the map and tells people what is going on here."

It was there that Mr. Bloomberg donated a 1996 New York City ambulance that once belonged to Metropolitan Hospital Center in East Harlem. The mayor also said that New York City would also lend technical assistance, perhaps through its health and environmental offices.

After the hospital, he headed to the Palais National, where he exchanged a baby-blue Tiffany box with President Boniface Alexander, who in turn gave the mayor a photograph book. Mr. Bloomberg then met for lunch with Prime Minister Latortue and other officials at small round tables covered with Champagne-colored damask tablecloths.

The wheels of Mr. Bloomberg's New York-bound plane lifted above Port-au-Prince at 2:30 p.m.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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J.P. Slavin
New York
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