ARTICLE - LIVING FEAR THE DEAD

LIVING FEAR THE DEAD IN CHOLERA-SCARRED HAITI
(Miami Herald) - By Jacqueline Charles

With stigma on the rise over cholera, body collectors are finding that burying the dead is a chaotic effort.

CARREFOUR, Haiti -- Stacked with body bags full of corpses of cholera victims, a converted flatbed truck and a colorful tap-tap taxi swerved into the yard of the mayor's office and their drivers asked where to bury the dead.

``Get out of here. Get out of here before they start throwing stones,'' a city hall employee screamed, her voice panicky, her hands flaring.

A crowd started circling. Three poorly armed police officers showed up and announced more were on the way. Then the city hall employee jumped into a car and motioned the corpse vehicles to follow. The angry crowd shouted and began throwing rocks.

Frightened by a disease never before known in this nation, Haitians are running scared.

Residents are stoning the dead and their handlers, local mayors are refusing their burial, and families are abandoning bodies on the streets.

Others have taken to the streets in protests against U.N. peacekeepers because they believe the outbreak may have originated in a U.N. camp. Officials suspect the protests may be politically motivated to prevent the Nov. 28 elections.

``It's a very alarming situation for Haitians,'' said Emilie Clotaire, an administrator at the Adventist Hospital in Carrefour.

Earlier this week, the hospital had its first cholera-related death, and after frustrating attempts to get someone from the Ministry of Health to fetch the 31-year-old's body, it ended up hiring someone to do the job, executive director Yolande Simeon said.

``They were stoned when they arrived at the cemetery,'' she said. The dead man's ``family and friends abandoned him.''

The disease carries a stigma. ``Everyone is afraid of cholera,'' Clotaire said.

And that creates big problems for those charged with collecting and laying to rest victims.

``Once we collect the bodies, we have no way to dispose of them,'' said Rochefort Saint-Louis, 30, after three days on the job. He is supervisor of two body collection teams the Haitian Ministry of Health recently formed in the wake of the outbreak.

The young men on these teams will come face-to-face with an epidemic that has Haitians and the world counting: 1,186 dead from cholera, 19,646 hospitalized, and at least two confirmed cases outside of Haiti -- one in the neighboring Dominican Republic and the other in South Florida.

A JOB
The group of 10 scrappy young men said they signed up for the job because it offered employment in a country where jobs are scarce. For Saint-Louis, it was his first job -- ever.

Their day began at 6 a.m. Tuesday with meetings at the Ministry of Health. After gassing up their vehicles, it was 11 a.m. when they arrived at traffic-clogged Harry Truman Boulevard, across from the prime minister's office. The air was suffocating with a three-day stench of death, and the bloated body of a naked man, a rope tied around his ankle, was lying in the middle of the road.

Nearby residents paid someone to drag him from the water's edge into the street, witnesses said. He died of cholera after going to a local clinic but leaving before he was well.

The body collectors -- each clad in a yellow raincoat, gloves, goggles, a face mask and carrying a canister of disinfecting chlorine on their backs -- slammed on the brakes, stepped out and sprayed the body with chlorine before placing it in a body bag.

At a stop at the Doctors Without Borders treatment clinic, there were 12 bodies awaiting pickup. They had been piling up for two weeks, an employee said, and had been kept in the morgue -- an air-conditioned container set at maximum temperature.

As the team brought the bodies out on gurneys, one of the men stopped working. He said he couldn't go on. Another said he couldn't work without a face mask.

But the team had no masks, no bottled water to drink and the men hadn't eaten all day.

``People are afraid because of how quickly this illness kills. The people aren't used to that,'' said Jerome Jean-Felix, 32, who is uncertain how long he can keep going on the body collection detail. ``Even we are experiencing the stigmatization. When people hear you are working in cholera, they are afraid.''

As the final body was loaded in the truck at the Doctors Without Borders office, Roberson Cine and his brothers flagged down the team and demanded their father's body be returned.

``They said he died of cholera; he didn't have cholera,'' the man cried.

The government has asked that anyone who dies of cholera be signed over to the state for burial.

Just before the vehicles pulled away, Saint-Fort's cellphone rang.

``Where?'' he asked. ``Rue Joseph Janvier, near the General Hospital? How many?''

Two bodies -- in the middle of the street, the caller told him.

But there would be no collection on Rue Joseph Janvier that day.

Eight hours after their first pickup and with a different police escort each time they entered a new jurisdiction, the team members finally arrived at a mountainside in the middle of nowhere with 14 corpses. Joseph Wills Thomas, the mayor of Cabaret, threatened to arrest them if they disposed of the bodies there.

Thomas said he is fed up with everyone sending their dead to him. Sometime, during the night, someone dumped cholera victims in a freshly dug grave, he said, looking at the group accusingly.

MASS GRAVE
The deserted hillside is also the site of a mass grave holding many victims of the January earthquake, which left 300,000 people dead.

Thomas told the team they needed to wait for the government's National Center of Equipments to come dig the grave -- but he said he would refuse bodies from other jurisdictions.

The body collection team dumped the bodies on the ground.

When CNE supervisor Serge Baptiste arrived, he told the body collectors, between sips of rum, that the graves weren't ready and they would need to take their cargo away.

Saint-Fort's patience was wearing out. The day before, President René Préval had to personally call the mayor of Cité Soleil, he told Baptiste and Thomas, after the mayor refused two bodies that were to be buried in a cemetery there.

``I am my own president,'' Thomas retorted.

A loader finally arrived but ran out of gas midway up the hill.