Throughout the day residents of a small tent encampment on the city square are moved to spontaneous dancing. Children and adults break out of their languid step to shimmy across its shadeless expanse, bare feet racing to catch up with the beat emanating from a weathered tent on the edge of the square.
In between songs, the speakers give out banal chatter – instructions on how to say “hello” in different languages, evangelical messages, information on weather warnings and hospitals.
The voices behind the messages are a rotating group of young radio disc jockeys – a dream job in Jacmel, where the lack of print media and television has made radio a necessity – turned round-the-clock volunteers.
Founded nearly 30 years ago, their station, RTDJ 101.5, is the oldest of the dozen or so operating in Jacmel. It was also the hardest hit by the earthquake. It wrecked the station’s downtown headquarters, bringing the top two floors of the four-storey building crashing down on the broadcast studio and crushing most of the equipment.
While many of the city’s journalists took to the streets in an effort to cover the most important story of their lives, the RTDJ crew spent the early days after the earthquake desperately scavenging through the ruins for equipment. With the help of the station’s owner, Haitian-Canadian Frenel François, they managed to recover two microphones, portions of the CD collection, speakers, a receiver and some satellite dishes. Then they got their hands on a tent, which they set up in the corner of the city square next to the condemned office of the mayor. They put up a cardboard sign painted with the station’s logo, and returned to the airwaves less than two weeks after the earthquake. They’ve been broadcasting as far as Jacmel’s city limits – without pay – ever since.
Frenel Francois, owner of radio station RTDJ 101.5 in Jacmel, Haiti, visits the rubble of the four-storey building that used to house his home and his radio station.— The Globe and Mail
“The community made a demand to keep the radio station,” said Mr. François, who lives in a tent next to the temporary station in a part of the square that was once dominated by the station’s offices. “This is a time of great need.”
The evidence of that is everywhere in Jacmel, where people spend their days perched on their stoops listening to the radio, the main way that the government and non-governmental organizations disseminate warnings and information.
Since the earthquake, many journalists have been working for free to keep the public informed even though their lives and those of their colleagues are in tatters. Haitian journalists’ associations estimate that more than two dozen members of the media died in the earthquake; an unknown number lost family members, friends and homes.
In Port-au-Prince, office buildings that housed several media organizations were damaged or destroyed, along with equipment that is difficult to replace at the best of times in Haiti: computers, broadcasting equipment, cameras and other communications gear. Corporate advertisers were not exempt – their losses have forced them to lay off staff and cancel advertising.
Frenel Francois, left, owner of radio station RTDJ, broadcasts live from their tent in Jacmel's town square on Tuesday with DJ Donel Hyppolite, right.— The Globe and Mail
In Jacmel, where one evangelical journalist died after the earthquake, Mr. François said his advertising revenue is non-existent. From his broadcast tent, he has an unobstructed view of the collapsed building that until two months ago was his home and the source of his livelihood.
Wearing purple-tinted glasses with bifocals, he explained that he spent all the savings he accumulated from years working in Montreal on the building that housed his station. Now, like most people in Jacmel, he has no idea how he’ll rebuild his personal life, let alone his career.
Although radio reigns in this seaside city – there are no local print publications – he’s not sure how long his staff will be able to keep up the pace, although he’ll press on.
“As long as God gives me the breath to live, I’ll continue radio,” Mr. François said.
It’s clear that for many Haitian journalists, work has become a salve.
Pierre Etzer, a reporter for Vision 2000, a nationwide radio station with a bureau in Jacmel, has been living in a tent since the earthquake and feeling depressed and disoriented. Telling stories – particularly forward-looking hopeful pieces – has become a means of coping, one that was endorsed by a psychologist who met with journalists for a therapy session at a medical clinic run by the Canadian military.
“They told me to keep documenting the conditions, interview the victims, talk about it,” he said.
Rosier Rood, a DJ who mans the microphone in RTDJ’s tent most afternoons, said he’s been volunteering his time because Haiti needs radio if it is to progress and grow.
“Jacmel needs radio for a lot of reasons,” he said after broadcasting a piece on how to greet people in various languages. “It’s a tourism village. The town is young. And people here are very interested in education.
“If you educate the people today, you can count on them tomorrow to reconstruct a better place to live.”
