2010.12.12
Finding the unexpected in Haiti
Today we published “Life and death in the time of cholera,” an in-depth narrative by reporter Beth Macy about her recent reporting trip to Haiti.
As the story details, Macy and the medical team she accompanied witnessed much more than they expected at the outset of the Roanoke-based mission trip.
They had expected to see the effects of the earthquake in Haiti nearly a year later. Instead, they were caught up in the ongoing cholera outbreak and political instability sweeping the country.
So far, more than 2,000 have died from cholera. Since the team left, the violence and rioting in the streets has only increased amid challenges to a recent presidential election.
Prativa Basnet, a third-year medical resident, had perhaps the most plaintive quote in Macy’s story: “People are dying for no other reason than they live in Haiti.”
The story was the result of an unusual collaboration between The Roanoke Times and two organizations that co-funded Macy’s travel — the Dart Society, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting journalists who cover violence and trauma, and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, of which Macy was a 2010 fellow.
I’d like to thank those groups for their support of this reporting, which allowed us to give our readers an intensely local insight into the work of NGOs a year later in Haiti.
My thanks, too, go to Macy’s husband, Tom Landon, a filmmaker who edited Macy’s footage from the trip and produced the video that accompanied the story.
As always, we are interested in hearing your thoughts on this story.
