Mauricio Jiménez Photography: Haiti, one year earthquake anniversary

"Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work."- Mother Teresa

Sure time flies, and I was lucky enough to be in Port-au-Prince the day all Haitians were remembering their one year anniversary of the catastrophic earthquake that rattled their beloved country leaving a quarter of a million people dead. The mood? sad for the most part, although it was a sunny beautiful day weather-wise. I was traveling around the city since the early hours of the morning with my four member crew; Andrea (the official driver) and founder of the humanitarian relief organization www.silentgracefoundation.org, Rafael, the guy holding the audio and video equipment and Makenton Jean Baptiste, our constant companion during the whole week we stayed in Haiti, he's also the main representative of the humanitarian group in Haiti.
I expected a big conglomerate of newscasters that day but was surprised to see only a handful; seems like there were more important news during that day...
We walked around the mile corridor in front of the (destroyed) government palace quite a few times, here you were able to see every human condition and behavior you could imagine; the extreme poor, the deranged, the drunk, the well dressed, the religious and so on. Looking at the extreme west end of the boulevard I couldn't help but notice what I perceived as a "huge eyesore"; I quickly asked: what is that? -"oh, nothing really it's just an incomplete Aristide monument", Makenton quickly answered. For the most part people looked at us and many other foreign looking folks with much intrigued of why we were there in the first place? -Ezquize mwen! is the first thing this young, well dressed man says while he's tapping on my shoulder; "You speak English?" he asks:
-well sure, yes! I respond.
-Why are you here? he asks
-To help, I respond
Then he proceeds to ask the same question again but adds: "What made you come all the way to my country to help us?"
I guess I looked quite puzzled at that very moment, and to be honest I didn't expect such a profound inquiry at that juncture in time, so my knee-jerk reaction was one that I even felt absolutely surprised coming from a person not widely known as a "juggernaut" for displays of emotion and affection, and yet I did clutched my right fist and held it close to my heart, with words that effortlessly slipped through my lips that slurred: "because we love you guys".