Jacmel is a quaint port town on the south coast, below Port-au-Prince on the map, a destination of tourists, known for it's French Colonial Caribbean architecture, and Bassin-Bleu, a series of waterfalls in a beautiful natural setting.
But now it is lit only by burning tires when night falls, and the once proud Eunasmoh (vocational) Institute where students learned auto-repair now serves as the tomb for at least 100 of them.
There is no food; no water for bathing or cooking; no plumbing, only buckets to catch human waste; no shelter as building after building is nothing but crumbled rubble. All the Jacmmeliennes have is degaje, the Haitian quality of jury-rigged make-do.
A spirit of resilience can only carry a Haitian earthquake victim so far. It is asking too much of a people to cobble together a school for children on a site where dozens of corpses remain smashed beneath tons of destruction when aftershocks are still being felt.
It is asking too much of a people to patch up one anothers' injuries when there are no bandages, no casts, no anti-biotics, no salves, no pain-relievers, no medical supplies of any kind, and no professional medical assistance.
It is asking too much of a people to keep a minimum standard of personal hygiene when there is only enough water for menstruating women and girls to bathe in, when that water is already filthy and contaminated, when fresh water for any purpose is as rare as good paying jobs have been in this man-forsaken country.
It is asking too much of a people to carry on providing for themselves and one another when there is no fuel for generators, for cooking, for transportation, or for light.
Once there lived 34,000 souls in Jacmel. Today no one knows how many are left alive. And none dare predict how many will survive to face this season's hurricanes, mudslides, construction collapses, or additional earthquakes and -- oh,yes -- the preying urges of man.
Until relief workers arrive, besting the blocked road that leads into the town, the dead of Jacmel will have to await them under the collapsed hospital and vocational institute, and the living will have to remain among their dead fellow citizens, breathing the scent of decomposition and inhaling the black smoke from burning tires that hangs in a pall above Jacmal as if it were a charnel house. And wait. And wait. And wait.