JIMANÍ. – Dusk´s warm sunlight vanishes stealthily behind the mountain, yielding to a shadowy darkness of rugged and steep landscape around this border crossing, the closest to the Haitian capital´s devastation, where the concrete rubble still hides thousands of rotting human bodies.

Some of the dusty border-town villagers haven’t been able to sleep and yesterday´s 6.1 magnitude tremor heightened their anxiety, while the heart wrenching weeping of women is heard all morning long as scared half dressed men and children scurried outside.

Port-au-Prince´s thousands of dead still haunt Natali Matos ´memory, who doesn’t hide her fear: “I still have a knot in my stomach. I have a closed stomach. I haven’t eaten, I cannot be calm. I’m scared, I fear than it can happen. I cannot sleep calmly thinking about my Haitian friends who died in the earthquake and of others who if they are alive, wounded or buried is still unknown.”

 The young worker still can´t get over the trauma of the tragic night of May 24, 2004, when the Soleil river overflowed its banks and devastated her community, taking houses and farm fields ready for planting with it. Hundreds of people died and their bodies recovered, while others disappeared beneath mud.

Reliving the horror

Somehow survivors and eyewitnesses associate the 2004 tragedy with the Port-au-Prince quake and some, like Yoeli Adames, as the loss of most of her very close relatives torment her memories.

The Haiti tragedy reopened the still unhealed wound. “So many dead from the earthquake remind me of the flood. I cannot avoid it. Many people have died here and those ambulances with their sirens, those wounded who arrive at all hours, those helicopters which fly over the town, all that aid, all the movement here in Jimaní reminds me of the sadness of the tragedy almost six years ago.”

Some villagers say they here in the night, from the vast and solitary space separating the two countries, the desperate cry of people buried alive and the screams of the hungry and injured crying out for medical attention, water and food. The accounts sound like imaginary fables of fear told by the many people close to the catastrophe.

Activities in Jimaní

Despite the tragic events commerce and the daily routine continues as people go to work, banks open, students go to class and betting parlors await their habitual clients. Few businesses sell alcohol and the music is hear at a low volume, out of respect for the memory of the dead.

The Hotel Jimaní, with only 10 rooms, is the most comfortable here and lodges dozens of visitors who in these days of calamity and pressure sleep on chairs, tables, furniture, rockers, next to the swimming pool, in the dining room, the terrace, on the floor or any space available.

 “This has been crazy. Ever since the earthquake in Haiti occurred so many people from all parts of the world have come here that we the employees work up to 15 hours or more. We end up dead tired,” said hotel employee Saira Trinidad.

The unusual in this town is the constant movement of vehicles with humanitarian aid which crisscross the border loaded with food, water, all types of supplies, power plants and support personnel.

The Armed Forces coordinates the operations to provide aid to the Haitian victims with other institutions such as the Emergency Operations Center Public Health, Civil Defense, the Dominican Red Cross, Santo Domingo State University UASD, the Fire departments and several civil society organizations.

At night people take precautions in their homes, fearing assaults by some of the thugs who escaped from Haitian jails when for 44 seconds the violent quake flattened even Port-au-Prince´s most sturdy structures.

The close presence of death is felt in the air, in the warm atmosphere.

Somehow the community of Jimaní will be a sad episode in the historical January 12, 2010, earthquake that destroyed the capital of the Western Hemisphere´s poorest country and now probably the world´s.

SOURCE hoy.com.do