by Michelle Faul

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP)—Yes, the earth-shattering quake was powerful enough to bring many countries to their knees.

But Haiti’s horrendous death toll and cataclysmic damage must also be blamed on a history of bad policies pursued by its own weak leadership and the foreign powers—governments and aid institutions—that have long held sway here.

This latest in a history of Haitian calamities may offer an unmatched opportunity to turn the tide in a country where decades of food aid still have left desperate mothers feeding their children chalk to stop hungry stomachs from rumbling.

by A. de Montesquiou

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP)—Thousands of Haiti’s quake victims are struggling to board buses to flee hunger and violence in the shattered capital, hoping that food will be easier to find in the countryside.

But both gasoline and food are scarce in Port-au-Prince, and bus drivers have hiked fares, forcing some to pay more than three days’ wages for a seat.

EXODUS—People cram into a truck leaving the capital of Port-au-Prince, Jan. 18. On the streets, people are still dying, pregnant women are giving birth and the injured are showing up in wheelbarrows and on people’s backs at hurriedly erected field hospitals.

“Thousands and thousands are leaving, I’ve never seen such a rush, even at Christmas,” said driver Garette Saint-Julien, who was trying to manage the crowd Monday in front of his bus at the Portail Leogane, a suburb where buses gather for trips to Haiti’s southern peninsula.

Upwards of one million people may flee the Port-au-Prince area for the countryside, straining Haiti’s already precarious farms, said Laurent Thomas, director of the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization’s emergency operations.

by Kristin Gray

(NNPA)—As many Haitians live in peril amid indescribable destruction and death, their American relatives are vexed by the media’s depiction of their native country as an uninhabitable, poverty-stricken no man’s land.

While Haiti’s history of widespread human suffering is irrefutable—something most Haitians recognize—some believe the Caribbean nation has been particularly demonized by international media following a 7.0-magnitude earthquake which pulverized its capital, Port-au-Prince.

by Jonathan M. Katz

EDITOR’S NOTE—Jonathan M. Katz is The Associated Press’ correspondent in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He filed this first-person account of the moments after last Tuesday’s earthquake, which has redefined tragedy for a nation that knows it all too well.

RESCUING THE SURVIVORS—Men remove the battered body of a young woman from the rubble, Jan. 13, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

PETIONVILLE, Haiti (AP)—I was sitting on my bed surfing the Internet when I noticed silence, followed by a weird groaning sound. I figured it was a passing water truck. But funny, I thought— sounds more like an earthquake.

The house started shaking. Then it really started shaking. I walked out of my room and kneeled slowly to the undulating floor, laptop in hand, as windows, two years’ worth of Haitian art and a picture of my grandfather smashed around me.