Even in death, there is no dignity for the abandoned people of Haiti. The Grand Cimeti
A few feet further in, we come across a hand-wagon. It is old and rustic, like something out of an Antonioni movie. Inside about six bodies are stacked in jumbled postures. The wagon sits there, with its cargo, under the crosses of the tombs, making some twisted comment about God’s will be done. One of the bodies has its hand outstretched and when a car passes by, bringing into the cemetery yet another corpse, it hits the arm and makes it swing like a creaking door.
Every five minutes a new body is brought in, most in simple coffins, fashioned out of rough bits of salvaged wood; one has been made out of old cupboard doors. Suddenly, six men rush by, carrying on their shoulders a fancy lacquered coffin, heading for one of the tombs of a wealthy family.
Poor Haitian families don’t enjoy such luxury of mourning. A tomb on the right side of the walkway has been opened to allow the body of a 14-year-old girl, swaddled in white cloth and laid out in a pick-up truck, to be added beside the remains of her parents. Above the opening, the word “r
