“Padon pa geri maleng” (“Sorry doesn't heal the scars”)

The Tropical Bookshelf " Padon pa geri maleng " (" Sorry doesn't heal the scars ") Disasters, discord, poverty. What hardened heart doesn't ache for Haiti? Fifty years after Columbus's arrival, Hispaniola's natives were decimated by disease; by the mid-1700s, French overlords were exploiting Haiti's African slaves. Then came revolution, independence, and more upheaval. Finally, in 2004, after its first democratically elected president was ousted by a coup, the United Nations sent an international force to Haiti. Six years later came the double whammy from hell. In January 2010, an earthquake killed or injured half a million Haitians; in October 2010, a massive fecal spill sowed Vibrio cholerae in the Artibonite River. Today, no one denies that Haiti's modern epidemic stemmed from that tragic leak of sewage from a UN peacekeepers' camp. But it was not until August 2016 that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon admitted the fact. epidemiologist Ralph Frerichs was ready. Having recently published Deadly River—Cholera and Cover-up in Post-Earthquake Haiti, Frerichs wrote in the Boston Globe: " It is not enough that the United Nations is finally beginning to acknowledge its involvement in the lethal cholera epidemic in Haiti. Now it must urgently do everything in its power to eliminate cholera in Haiti before thousands more die. " (The comments were sadly prescient. In the wake of Hurricane Matthew, cholera's grisly toll of withered, gray corpses can only continue to rise.) In Deadly River, Frerichs largely channels Renaud Piarroux, a French infectious diseases doctor who previously battled cholera in Comoros and the former Zaire. Days after cholera's Caribbean touchdown, Piarroux flew from Marseille to Port-au-Prince at the request of the Haitian government. And here the story begins. In addition to Piarroux's personal investigations and uncensored thoughts, what distinguishes Deadly River is its deep dissection of cholera and the bond of its two main spokesmen. With equal parts of compassion, analysis, and sometimes strident outrage, Frerichs and Piarroux present timelines, maps, and reports illuminating the truth. Yes, it really was " a large septic plume " emanating from the Nepalese camp near Mirebalais, they show us time and again, that first sullied the Artibonite and later, due to Haiti's woeful lack of sanitation, engulfed the entire country— " not, " as others at the time proposed, an influx of free-living Vibrios from brackish waters near the port of Saint Marc. By the end of the book, we are …