Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Strug­gling artists from the im­pov­er­ished coun­try of Haiti are call­ing on T&T to help their floun­der­ing econ­o­my by pur­chas­ing more than 100 hand-made acrylic art paint­ings.The art work is cur­rent­ly on dis­play at the Cre­ative Arts Cen­tre, Cir­cu­lar Road, San Fer­nan­do and is be­ing sold from $200 to $3,500. The paint­ings fea­ture many tourist spots in Haiti and were cre­at­ed by 25 artists, some of whom still live in tents.

Lan­guage arts teacher Moi­se Jonas, of Petion-ville Haiti, who is mar­ket­ing the paint­ings, said more than 300 Haitians would ben­e­fit if all of the paint­ings were sold. He added that some of the artists worked in makeshift stu­dios. A few had to dry their paint­ings on rooftops af­ter the dev­as­tat­ing earth­quake killed 220,000 peo­ple and in­jured a fur­ther 300,000 peo­ple on Jan­u­ary 12, 2010.Jonas said one artist Chavet Kave­naght, 65, suf­fered vi­sion loss af­ter the earth­quake but was still con­tin­u­ing to paint de­spite the odds."He is one of the best artists in Haiti and he is old. His eyes went bad af­ter the earth­quake. Now he can­not see to do what he once did," Jonas said.

He added that the artists could not af­ford to work with oil paint so many chose to do ab­stract com­po­si­tions, land­scape, por­traits and still life paint­ings us­ing acrylic paints."Get­ting the ma­te­ri­als is dif­fi­cult but we have a friend in Cana­da who helps us. Since the earth­quake peo­ple lost many of their pos­ses­sions," Jona­said. He ex­plained that the pover­ty and de­pres­sion in Haiti was fu­elling an ex­plo­sion of cre­ativ­i­ty.

"Peo­ple feel at peace when they paint. They get in­to art be­cause their moth­er and fa­ther are artists. Many peo­ple have this tal­ent. Haiti has a lot of cre­ative peo­ple," Jonas said. He said there were mis­con­cep­tions about the beau­ty of Haiti but some of the artists in­clud­ing Rufi­no Fabio, and Pe­titzil Michelet had cap­tured the land­scape beau­ty of ar­eas such as Del­mas, Ken­skoff and down­town Port-au-Prince.Jonas said he would be in T&T un­til Tues­day. Any­one want­i­ng to make pur­chas­es can con­tact Jonas at 704-2471.

HAITI BE­FORE THE EARTH­QUAKE

(http://www.dec.org.uk/haiti-earth­quake-facts-and-fig­ures)

�2 Haiti was 145th of 169 coun­tries in the UN Hu­man De­vel­op­ment In­dex, which is the low­est in the West­ern Hemi­sphere.

�2 More than 70 per cent of peo­ple in Haiti were liv­ing on less than $US2 per day.

�2 86 per cent of peo­ple in Port-au-Prince were liv­ing in slum con­di­tions–most­ly tight­ly-packed, poor­ly-built, con­crete build­ings.

�2 80 per cent of ed­u­ca­tion in Haiti was pro­vid­ed in of­ten poor-qual­i­ty pri­vate schools, the state sys­tem gen­er­al­ly pro­vid­ed bet­ter ed­u­ca­tion but pro­vid­ed far too few places.

�2 Half of peo­ple in Port-au-Prince had no ac­cess to la­trines and on­ly one-third has ac­cess to tap wa­ter.

IM­PACT OF THE 12 JAN­U­ARY EARTH­QUAKE

I�2 7.0 Mag­ni­tude quake struck near Port au Prince

�2 3,500,000 peo­ple were af­fect­ed by the quake

�2 220,000 peo­ple es­ti­mat­ed to have died

�2 300,000+ peo­ple were in­jured

�2 Over 188,383 hous­es were bad­ly dam­aged and 105,000 were de­stroyed by the earth­quake (293,383 in to­tal), 1.5 mil­lion peo­ple be­came home­less

�2 Af­ter the quake there were 19 mil­lion cu­bic me­tres of rub­ble and de­bris in Port au Prince–enough to fill a line of ship­ping con­tain­ers stretch­ing end to end from Lon­don to Beirut.

�2 4,000 schools were dam­aged or de­stroyed

�2 25 per cent of civ­il ser­vants in Port au Prince died

�2 60 per cent of Gov­ern­ment and ad­min­is­tra­tive build­ings, 80 per cent of schools in Port-au-Prince and 60 per cent of schools in the South and West De­part­ments were de­stroyed or dam­aged

�2 Over 600,000 peo­ple left their home area in Port-au-Prince and most­ly stayed with host fam­i­lies

�2 At its peak, one and a half mil­lion peo­ple were liv­ing in camps in­clud­ing over 100,000 at crit­i­cal risk from storms and flood­ing

�2 Un­re­lat­ed to the earth­quake but caus­ing aid re­sponse chal­lenges was the out­break of cholera in Oc­to­ber 2010. By Ju­ly 2011 5,899 had died as a re­sult of the out­break, and 216,000 were in­fect­ed.