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Bill Nathan, who appeared at Mountainfilm 2008, narrowly escaped death in Haiti this past week. Bill was part of the modern day slavery program at the Opera House, speaking about his experiences along with anti-slavery activist and author Ben Skinner. Bill played bongos to close out the show, which was awfully cathartic and life-affirming.

Bill Nathan at the MF08 Awards Ceremony

Ben went down to Haiti on Friday to “extract” Bill and has made it safely back to the U.S. with him. From Ben:

“In case you haven’t heard, Miles Wright and I were able to safely extract Bill Nathan, who is now at Broward Cty hospital from Haiti. The Israeli trauma surgeon at Broward said that he had seen some lucky folks since he began as a war medic in 1965, but Bill, who jumped off of the roof of his 7-story collapsing building and landed on concrete on his back, ranks up there. He is in a tremendous amount of pain, and the initial, hasty assessment is broken ribs,  abrasion of liver, torn vertebrae muscles, contusions all over. He was unconscious throughout the flight. More rigorous assessment forthcoming. He’s banged up, but he will walk, and should make a full recovery.

Bill drumming in Telluride Town Park in 2008

“As many of you know, Bill is the remarkable antislavery activist, and a survivor of child slavery himself, who runs Maison St. Joseph’s, a shelter for homeless children on Delmas 91. The shelter is completely destroyed, save for the first three floors, which will have to be demolished, where I slept on Fri night with Bill and Kez Furst, the young American nurse who kept Bill alive to this point. Kez is my new hero: she’s 22, just graduated Northeastern, and since then as volunteered as a solo nurse in Haiti treating desperately injured homeless in ravines and gutters. She treated Bill alone for three days before I showed up, along with everyone else in a 5 block radius–all with less medical supplies than the average public school nurse. I played nurses aide to her as she treated wounds at the nearest encampment. She has wisdom and talent well beyond her years.

“When I heard that Bill had been gravely injured, I contacted Miles Wright, and with Tom Shadyac’s typically selfless support, we hired a charter, loaded it with 2 Haitian surgeons, a ton of medical supplies, five sat phones, baby formula, survival gear, and flew down to extract Bill to safety. As many of you know, and as I describe in A Crime So Monstrous, Bill kept me alive by caring for me and finding me chloroquin when I was laid low by malaria in Oct 2005. So for me, this was payback; for Miles, the burly, laconic Texan and treasurer of Bill’s umbrella org Hearts With Haiti, it was simply a matter of “‘Round where I’m from, when your family’s in trouble, you show up.”

“Dan Harris of ABC News, who played a critical role getting us through the marine guard,  interviewed me at the airport, I got a chance to talk about slavery as well as Bill (who was nearly unconscious then). Dan says it should air tonight on World News Sunday.”

Hearts With Haiti seriously damaged

To connect directly to organizations working to abolish slavery in Haiti, please click on the following links. Both organizations have been seriously affected.

Hearts With Haiti

Limye Lavi

This is another update from our board member Ruth Bender who was in Haiti when the earthquake occurred:

1/14/2010
I awake to another blue sky, and two UN vehicles in our drive. Is there news? No, nothing. No updates on aid coming in, or anyone going out. Pistare Pistare is a phrase that keeps going through my mind . If you have trekked in Nepal will know what I am talking about. Slowly Slowly. Everything happens slowly here, and it will continue to move that way. It is both a cultural norm and the current physical reality. Life works differently here. And infrastructure, or lack thereof, predicates the slow pace of building, rebuilding, responding.

I have taken to keeping a bottle of water nearby. But not for drinking. Every time I think the ground is shaking, my eyes jump to the bottle to see if the water is sloshing. Each time, it seems, it is in my imagination. There have been some ongoing aftershocks. A few big ones during the night, but I slept through them. A couple during the day as well, but not nearly as many as there are in my imagination.

We get more and more news. None of it good. An American who got safely out of their hotel, only to run back in after a computer, and not return. A family member of one of our crew, buried in rubble in PaP. They are trying to dig her out, using cars and ropes to pull the concrete blocks off of her. Without the proper rescue equipment they are now risking their own lives. A couple arrives from PaP. Their building collapsed around them as they stood in their fourth floor flat. The husband had just come home from work. His niece and son were both buried. He was able to dig them both out. They ran with what they had on their backs. Able to find a truck to get them out of the city, they got as far as the were able, then hired a motorbike to get them over the mountain to Jacmel. A long and very treacherous ride on a motorbike, with rock slide debris covering the road. At times they had to get off the motorbike and walk single file. They kept their eyes on the road ahead, rather than looking down the steep ravine where one false step could send them. The rock slide debris made it all the more treacherous, and an aftershock at the wrong moment could send more rocks down the hillside towards them. But they got here in one piece. They paid $50 for a gallon of gas. They brought us more horror stories from PaP. About the piles of bodies in the street, which everybody has by now seen on the news. They tell of people fighting over a pot of rice, seemingly oblivious to the bodies around them. What can they do about the bodies? Nothing. But they can do something about preserving a few morsels of food for themselves and their families. There seems to be a mass exodus, via foot, from PaP. People don’t know what to do with the bodies. They have no home, no food, no water. The aid is arriving, but each step of their work takes time; and it will take time to reach all of the people of PaP.

1/15/2010

I hear a plane overhead just now. We have heard that they cleared the airstrip and moved the people to a nearby park. Gerard was out until after midnight digging a latrine at the new site, to try to keep the health risks down. He is one of the many international aide workers who has been part of our lives these last few days. Part of the core crew, and now when he is not here, we wait for his return. We have our regulars who come and go. Last night, a group from UNICEF came and ate with us and stayed the night. We were treated to fresh salad and Camembert by a French woman who lives here and runs the Aliance Francaise. I’m not sure a cucumber has ever tasted so good. The building of the AF is still standing but is not inhabitable. It will need to be razed and rebuilt. I have spent the morning speaking with Danielle, discussing her organization Femmes en Democratie and their work here, empowering women, working with them to run their own businesses, be self sufficient and to be a part of the political process. Their work will continue. As well as the work of Kompay, which does sustainable agricultural programs.

Rumors of who is coming in and who is going out abound. My family thinks that they have found a plane or a helicopter to come in to get me. But then we learn that the airspace is closed to private transportation. They are working on a boat. They are pulling out every contact they can find. I have never felt so loved in my life. The tireless work of my sister and so many friends is incredible to follow on FaceBook. And thank goodness for FaceBook! It is amazing that I am still in touch with people. Just watching the ideas and connections flying is unbelievable! The people who don’t even know me – friends of friends of friends – who are giving their all, making phone calls, sending emails, making introductions. I don’t know how I will ever thank them all for their efforts.

We still feel (and are) very safe here. There is no sign of unrest. Yesterday we went to town and there was a traffic jam at the gas station. People were still calm, however. Just crowding around the tanks, hoping for gas. We went into town because we are both restless, and feeling useless. How can we sit here at Hotel Cyvadier while people in town have no homes, limited food and water, and are trying to dig out their family members and friends by hand. We stick out our thumb for a ride, and a truck stops immediately. The driver, a Haitian, has a Brooklyn accent. It is Joe, who runs Kompay. He used to live in New York. He had actually been emailing with Karen, a filmmaker from New York who is also at Cyvadier, and who is accompanying me into town. Karen has a deep affection for Haiti and the people here, and has made several films. She was here to do some research, as well as do a film screening at Cine Institute in Jacmel. CI’s building seems to be standing still, but may not be structurally sound. They do not know how their equipment inside has fared. They would like to get their students into the building so that they can get their equipment and start filming the impact of the earthquake on their community. The lovely buildings, reminiscent of New Orleans seem, on first glance, fine. Then we drive further and see that many are just facades standing. If that. Some buildings have completely crumbled. Roads are blocked by rubble. People are standing outside their homes. They are still surveying the scene before them and them and wondering how they will rebuild. Again. We drive by the road where the Hotel Florita stood just the day before. Where I had slept just two nights before. Luck, and the input of friends of friends, is what took me from Florita and up to Cyvadier. I had enjoyed a couple of days down in the town, and moved to Cyvadier both because I was going to have to move out of my lovely breezy room at Florita (for an incoming group of Americans), and because friends told me Cyvadier was a delightful place to stay. Is it luck? Fate? I can’t say. But sitting here at Camp Cyvadier, I am feeling incredibly lucky, and that I now have a very different view of Haiti than I would otherwise have had.

My trip to Haiti was part of a bigger trip to Virgin Gorda for the wedding of some dear friends. The original plan to spend a week on a Catamaran with friends, docking at the Bitter End Yacht Club for the days of the wedding festivities, fell through. Logistics. Well, I know a lot about logistics now! Since I was heading all the way to the BVI’s, I figured I ought to spend a few days somewhere on my way to the wedding. I had options. All those islands with lovely beaches and swaying palm trees. But that is not my normal vacation style. I like to explore new countries and cultures. To go places where there are not hoardes of tourists. So I chose Haiti. The country has a rich history that has been overshadowed by political turmoil as well as natural disasters. I wanted to learn more. Not that my four days here would make me an expert, but they would give me a taste; a teaser to entice me back for more exploration. And I will be back (family and friends permitting, of course!), because there is still much to explore, and after this experience I will want to see how the country bounces back. The Haitians are resilient people. They have faced so many challenges, and they are still welcoming and open. I am hoping to get to the wedding. Really, I am. I want to be there to celebrate with my friends. We’ll see what news comes our way today.

The following note was sent by the organization Free the Slaves, the recipient of our inaugural Moving Mountains Prize in 2007.

Dear Friends,

The catastrophic earthquake that struck Haiti this week will further devastate one of the world’s poorest nations. The disaster leaves thousands of families more vulnerable to slavery.

Support from people like you has allowed Free the Slaves to work closely with two grassroots groups that fight the entrenched system of child slavery on the ground in Haiti. One group, Limye Lavi, is based near the earthquake epicenter in Jacmel. The second group, KOFAVIV, is based in Port-au-Prince. Many of its members live in the impoverished neighborhoods that now lay in ruins.

I know that all of us are thinking about the people of Haiti as the nation recovers. Beyond the immediate humanitarian efforts now underway, Haitians will require sustained support to ensure that the progress they have made in combating slavery is not lost.

Your previous support has helped to free children and reunite families. To ensure that these anti-slavery efforts can continue at this critical time, please contribute to the Free the Slaves Haiti Fund.

Choose “Haiti Fund” in the online donation form designation window, and your funds will be dedicated to Haiti’s anti-slavery efforts.

Thank you,

Jolene Smith
Free the Slaves CEO

NPR has also been collecting a list of places you can go to support disaster relief in Haiti. Here it is, with numerous updates.

Here is another update from one of our Mountainfilm board members, Ruth Bender, who was in Haiti when the earthquake hit:

Mid-way through our third bottle of wine, I pull out my camera and we look through the photos I took of downtown Jacmel. I have an obsession with photographing architecture; doors in particular. My friends know about this, and often skim my photos when I post them. This time, they may take note. These may be the last photos taken of many of these buildings. Between early yesterday when I took those photos, and today as I write this, Haiti experienced the largest earthquake they have recorded here in 200 years. The town of Jacmel has been decimated. Lovely, historic structures are piles of rubble. The paper-mache creatues the men had spent days and weeks carefully building and painting for the upcoming Carnevale are crushed. But more devastating is the loss of life, and livelihood, and the lack of emergency services available to the region. While Port au Prince has been decimated, they are also receiving all of the news coverage and are able to receive international aid. Jacmel has up to 10,000 people without homes. Telephones are not working and there is no electricity. The road from Port au Prince to Jacmel is not passable. The airport in Jacmel is being used as a refugee camp for the townspeople, rendering the landing strip useless. No supplies, no aid has come to Jacmel. They townspeople are dependent on the limited supplies at the UN station here. Schools have fallen. The hospital is badly damaged and of limited use.

We, meanwhile, sit at Hotel Cyvadier, feeling useless, and incredibly blessed. Our host, the owner Christophe, has taken a horrific situation, a disaster in his country following just one short year on the heels of the last disaster, the hurricanes that ripped the country apart, and made it bearable for all of us. We have supplies of bottled water, food, a generator for power day and night (as needed) and internet access (the only thing which has kept my family sane these last 24 hours). We are very lucky to be in Christophe’s capable hands and that our hotel sustained limited damage – though enough to potentially ruin his business – as one entire builiding, the new one housing a conference room, crumbled. Incredibly, nobody was inside the collapsed building. Being mid-week, there were few hotel guests and only a few staff on duty. I was lying on my bed, just digging into my next book (Motorcycle Diaries), when I felt a shake. Why I didn’t react more quickly, I don’t know. After 13+ years in San Francisco, you would think at the first sign of a building shaking I would be out the door. It took me a minute before realizing it was likely an earthquake I was experiencing. I went to stand in my doorway. Then saw the open lawn just steps in front of me and went there. The few of us on the property gathered there. All shaken. And shaking. While we watched the building behind us crumble, Christophe watched his business crumble. Then came the aftershock. OK, make that aftershocks. We ran out to the parking lot, three guests and the staff. And the aftershocks followed us there. Once things seemed to settle down, we moved back to the lawn. Christophe locked the gate down to the beach, and made his neighbors leave the boat on the beach and get to safety. Their lives were more important. A boat could be rebuilt. Then, as we were sipping some Caribbean Rum to calm our frazzled nerves, the thought of a tsunami came to mind. Back to the parking lot we went, and that is where we have stayed: Camp Cyvadier.

After the staff went home, we went about trying to make a plan Everybody was accounted for. We were all unharmed. And we were all shaking. As darkness set in, the generator kicked to life. Amazing. We had light. People in town had nothing but chaos, terror, uncertainty and death. And we had lights. And internet. And bottled water. We disasgreed on whether this would make the news. I said YES. Others said NO. Why would the news cover an earthquake in Haiti, they asked? But I knew my mom would be in a panic. We logged on, and there in our faces was the number – 7.0. You’d better believe my mom knew about it by then. And was, as any mother would be, panicking. I emailed immediately to say that we were safe, and had food and water and would connect when we could.

Our ranks have swelled as others from the area stop by to check on Christophe; to give and receive news on family and friends. There is joy as Christophe’s mother arrives, having left her car and walked a long way to get here. And there are the unaccounted friends and family members, phone lines too busy to get through to anybody. We have spent the last two days on the plastic chairs we moved to the parking lot (my legs were shaking, I needed to sit!). A State Department employee with a home down here stopped in, then came back later with cots for us. We set up one of the hammocks. We made a cozy group bedroom in a parking lot. And we tried to sleep. But we were all on edge. Dogs bark and we jump. The earth moves and we jump. We all doze off at some point. Daylight will hopefully bring answers.

Daylight brings more aftershocks. And some answers. But still more questions. Friends and relatives have still not been heard from. We are all online constantly, trying to let our families know we are safe, and how/when we might get out of here. We try to get news of the conditions away from where we are. Mostly we get the same news that everybody else is reading. But then some folks go down into town. And they return with long faces. The town is a mess. Hundreds, maybe thousands, are homeless. Structures are destroyed or uninhabitable. And there is nothing we can do for them. And so we pass the day. We take a drive away from the downtown and see the calm beaches to the east, fishing boats pulled from the water, hearing stories of local fisherman as they watched the ocean pull out further than they had ever seen it do before. There is some damage, but mostly, life is as normal. The market is happening in Caye-Jacmel. The streetside vendors are selling their wares. The only business I notice is not open for business today are the little lottery shacks. Perhaps they think that nobody will buy a lottery try, as this is clearly not a lucky day for any of the people of Haiti.

Another one of our board members, Liz Manne, compiled the following information about what you can do to help out in Haiti, either immediately or long-term.

On January 12, 2010, at 4:53pm local time, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti, approximately 10 miles from Port-au-Prince. Thousands of people are feared dead and the capital city has been devastated.

IMMEDIATE SUPPORT:  Established disaster recovery organizations and national governments have been mobilized.

These organizations are also raising funds for relief efforts:

Oxfam

Doctors Without Borders

LONG-TERM SUPPORT: Crucial recovery and rebuilding efforts are always underfunded in comparison to immediate relief efforts. We saw this in the wake of Katrina as well as the Tsunami.  Following are some organizations and projects working on long-term recovery efforts that have a long-standing, grassroots presence in Haiti. Here are three that have distributed staff in the country now and are well positioned to aid in the long-term recovery effort.

Partners in Health

Fonkoze

The Lambi Fund of Haiti

These organizations have been vetted by my dear friends at Air Traffic Control, a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting musicians and their managers on activism, philanthropy, and political activities.

QUICK WAYS THE CREATIVE COMMUNITY CAN HELP:

1. Donate and let your colleagues, fans, and audiences know how they can donate: Spread the word via personal and professional websites/email/text/twitter/social networks etc. Feel free to rewrite the below suggested text or post as is.

2. Suggested Twitter text: Please RT: Support the Earthquake Relief Efforts in Haiti by making a donation to Oxfam’s Response Fund

3. Suggested text for your professional and fan sites + social network pages: On January 12, 2010, at 4:53pm local time, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti, approximately 10 miles from Port-au-Prince. Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people are feared dead, as the capital city has been devastated. You can help. Make a donation to one of these incredible and long-standing organizations in Haiti. They have distributed staff in country now, but most importantly, they are well positioned to aid in the long-term recovery effort.
Partners in Health
Fonkoze
The Lambi Fund of Haiti

4. If you are speaking or performing at public events, you can use text-donation systems:
Ask people to text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to the Red Cross

Here are a few more organizations collecting donations for Haiti disaster relief:

1) The World Food Program (WFP)

2) Concern Worldwide

3) The UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), the UN “pooled fund” for humanitarian disasters

4) UNICEF

Mountainfilm Board Member Ruth Bender happened to be in Haiti when the earthquake struck. She is stuck in Jacmel, which is 24 miles southwest of Port au Prince. She is at a hotel with food, water and even intermittent Internet, which she uses to update us on Facebook:

Jacmel has been hit quite hard, 10-30% of the buildings demolished or uninhabitable. Continuing aftershocks (just had one while typing). I am trying to send pics that we took, but the internet has been tough this afternoon since we went down to Jacmel to take photos. True devastation. It’s not just in Port au Prince as the news seems to be indicating. Spread the word . Really!! They need aid, supplies, etc. down in Jacmel. They are using the airstrip for a refugee camp – and it is right across from the UN station.

R