http://magazine.concordia.ca/2004/september/endpiece/Armstrong.shtml
BY MIKE ARMSTRONG
Mike Armstrong, BA 93, GrDip (journ.) 95, is the Quebec correspondent for Global National with Kevin Newman. This is a longer version of the article that appeared in the Concordia University Magazine
Mike Armstrong and colleague Wilf Dinnick reporting from war-torn Haiti on Global National with Kevin Newman.
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You start to question yourself when you’re sitting on a plane that should have about 200 people on board, and instead there are fewer than 10.
As it turned out, my American Airlines flight into Port-au-Prince, Haiti, was the last flight in by any airline, for more than a week . . . with good reason. After just a few hours of preparation, I touched down in the capital of a country in chaos.
This was the start of a seven-day life-lesson. It’s like having a child. Even as you’re living it, you know it’s important. You know, for the rest of your life, you’ll remember it . . . just about every detail.
The funny thing is — you don’t know the lessons you’re learning until it’s over.
In my no-longer-quite-so-brief career, I’ve covered just about everything: from fires and floods, to terrorism and heroism. Until February though, my reporting was limited to Canada and the U.S. Now that I’m back from Haiti, I think I’m going to limit myself to Canada and the U.S. again . . . at least for a while.
I wasn’t alone in Haiti. Another Global National reporter, Wilf Dinnick, arrived in Port-au-Prince just a couple of hours before me. We hooked up at the airport, hitched a ride in a FOX-TV convoy, and made our way to a hotel.
Another Canwest Crew was already in Haiti. Reporter Sue Montgomery and photographer Marcos Townsend work for the Montreal Gazette. In Haiti, they were feeding stories to the entire Canwest chain of papers.
The Hotel Montana, where Sue and Marcos were staying, was full. But they pulled some strings, broke some rules, and managed to scam a room for Wilf and me to share.
The Montana is probably the nicest hotel in the entire country. Nestled on the top of a small mountain, it’s in Port-au-Prince’s most well off neighbourhood, Petionville. The view is incredible, and yet pitiful at the same time.
From our comfortable perch, there was poverty and violence in every direction.
Fires burned day and night, all over town. The white smoke was from people burning garbage in alleys and vacant lots. The black smoke was from tires being burned at roadblocks. In the morning there was more of the white smoke. As the day went on, there was more of the black smoke.
As the day went on, there were also more gunshots. You could hear them from every direction. Sometimes there was just one, sometimes two or three at a time. Other times there were full-out gunfights. From the hotel, you could hear the shots and see the area they were coming from, but you were too far to make out what was going on.
On my first night, looking down from a balcony at the fires and listening to the gunshots, I struck up a conversation with another reporter. He was a cameraman from Denmark, but he’d been visiting Haiti for most of his life. One of the first things he said to me was “a reporter’s going to die.” He was right.
The Montana was full of reporters. CNN, FOX, AP, the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail . . . There were Canadians, Americans, Italians, Danes, Brits, Australians, and French — a United Nations of journalists. This was the best part of the trip, and a major part of the “life-lesson” I mentioned earlier.
More reporters were staying at two other hotels. Neither was as comfortable, nor as safe as the Montana.
The morning of our first full day, we hooked up with a convoy for a trip into town. None of us were taking chances. There were three vehicles, each driven by a local fixer. Looking back, I probably should have gotten out as soon as we left the hotel gates and our fixer started praying.
We did well at first. Since it was early in the day, most of the checkpoints were unmanned. We slowed down and drove around the cinderblocks, rocks and tires put in the road. We never stopped.
Our first manned checkpoint was tense. This was our first face-to-face with Chimeres, the roving Pro-Aristide gangs terrorizing the city. They were armed, holding pistols and yelling at us to stop. Our driver got out and made it clear he supported Aristide, and as far as he was concerned, the Chimeres were heroes. In other words — he lied.
We were surrounded by the mob. They looked in for a couple of minutes and we moved on. I was feeling great. My first dangerous situation passed like a piece of cake.
I remember thinking, “Don’t be the last car in the convoy.” Well, after about a half hour of driving, that’s right where we ended up.
There was barely any traffic on the streets. Most in the city were in a self-imposed state of lock-down, hoping to stay out of trouble by staying home.
We sped through the city. Down the mountain, along to the airport, past Aristide’s home. We were doing great, until we stopped.
It seemed like a good spot to hop out and do a quick stand-up. Wilf was doing the story that day, so I was shooting. We set up and Sue went to the other vehicles to tell them we’d only be a couple of minutes. That’s when the gunfire started.
I don’t even remember hearing shots, but I was recording and you can hear them on the tape. I heard people yelling to get back in the jeep. I turned and jumped into the back and swung the big door closed. (I was in the very back. Sue and Jean-Guy were in the front. Wilf and a Quebec freelance photographer were in the middle. I was by myself on a sideways bench in the “back-back.”)
They had come barrelling down the road, firing in the air, when they saw we had stopped. There were about eight packed into a pickup. Our driver started his smooth talking, but from the way they were manhandling him, it was obvious it wasn’t working.
Much of the next few minutes are a blur, but parts are so crystal clear I wish I could forget them. I remember realizing we were on our own. The other two vehicles had seen the gang coming and sped off.
I remember them yelling, “give us your guns.” One kept yelling, “give us your gold.” I remember seeing the driver roughed up. He was looking around at the growing crowd of Chimeres, his eyes darting from one person to another desperately trying to find someone he could reason with.
I remember Sue not being able to get her door closed, and seeing a Chimere pull his mask up and try to kiss her.
I remember the freelance photographer trying to keep the cameras he had around his neck. He was literally being pulled out of the jeep by the straps.
I remember Wilf begging the photographer to give up the cameras. I was the only one who got their door closed, but the growing mob outside wanted it open. They were pounding on the windows all around me.
Then came the guns. They were pointed at me through the windows. Others were being held to my head through the back seat. I remember thinking the other vehicles in the convoy were going to have to come back to get pictures of our bullet-ridden bodies.
By now the crowd had grown to more than 40 — they were everywhere. But as the crowd grew, so did the number of sane people. Three or four of them convinced the others to let us go. In the end, all they took was a little local money and a first aid kit. They gave everything else back. We were there for almost 15 minutes. People always say, “it felt like an hour,” well, not for me. It felt like 30 seconds. The trip back, on the other hand, took about 20 minutes and felt like two days. Every corner could have been another Chimere gang.
That’s my story. That’s what I call “the incident in Haiti.”
It has nothing to do with what I learned.
The story was “my in.” In a hotel full of war correspondents, I was suddenly “one of the Canadians left behind.” I couldn’t quite trade stories, but at least I had one, and could feel more comfortable at the table.
I spent the next five nights soaking up stories about Kosovo, Somalia, Rwanda, Afghanistan, Iraq . . . If it had been a big story, the reporters at my hotel were there.
What I learned was how important the work of a journalist can be. Make no mistake, there were saints doing incredible work in the worst parts of the city. All the journalists were doing was emptying wine bottles around a table. But on another level, what we were doing during the day was important.
One Scottish reporter told a story about almost being executed in Kosovo, but the gun jammed. He went on to discover mass graves. A Danish TV reporter told stories about being bombed in Iraq. He was imbedded with Americans and bombed — by Americans.
I asked an Italian freelance journalist if she gets calls when there’s trouble somewhere in the world. She answered, “If there’s trouble, they know I’m already there.”
What I learned is for every dangerous story from the hotspot of the week, there are journalists telling the story. There are local newsrooms busting their asses to tell their communities what’s going on. And there are international journalists traveling into the storm to tell the story to the world. If journalists weren’t there, word would still get out. There are phones. There’s mail. Heck, there’s even e-mail now. But would it mean the same?
Within days of the crisis in Haiti breaking out, France, the U.S. and Canada agreed to send troops. Why? There was pressure. The journalists around the tables in the hotel restaurant told the people in their home countries how bad things were. There were stories about hospitals being shut down, morgues filling up, orphanages being ransacked . . . governments had to act.
A few days after “the incident,” I ended up on a main street in downtown Port-au-Prince. With Aristide having fled the country, people were feeling confident and free. As a crowd approached, Wilf and I jumped on the roof of the Jeep to get some shots. We ended up spending almost an hour in the middle of a 10,000-person parade. The crowd stretched as far up and down the road as I could see, and every person wanted to “hi-five.” It’s a beautiful memory.
I got a flight out a couple of days later on a Canadian military plane, but before I left I said goodbye to as many people as I could.
When I put my hand out to an Italian cameraman from Associated Press, he grabbed me and gave me a hug. He said “I’ll see you at the next one of these.” I told him he probably wouldn’t. I was going to wait for my kids to get a little older before doing something quite so dangerous again.
There are a lot of good people putting their lives on the line to bring the world stories. Some of them are cowboys, but most of them are incredibly dedicated to something they feel is important . . . news.
I feel better after my trip to Haiti. Not because I went, but because of the people I met. I’ve come home inspired by the people with whom I share my profession.
Two things have happened since I got home.
First, a Spanish reporter was killed just a few days after I left. Ricardo Ortega and I had been staying at the same hotel. Second, my wife gave birth to our second son. She was six months pregnant when I was in Haiti. The first pediatrician who came to check on him was from Haiti.
There was something right about that.
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