Anderson: Why I'm Back, Why I Left

February 8, 2010

Why I'm back in Haiti

Posted: 06:28 PM ET

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Anderson Cooper
AC360° Anchor

I was asked to write a blog about why I wanted to come back to Haiti. I'm not really sure how to answer that question. No one I've seen today in Port-au-Prince has asked me that. If anything, people here ask why I left, and why so many other reporters have left as well. I don't really know what to tell them.

I was here for more than two weeks immediately following the quake and, the truth is, I left because I needed a break. That's not the kind of thing you can really tell someone who is living on the streets of Port-au-Prince. They know a lot more about exhaustion than I ever will.

I spent last week in New York, but, the truth is, it felt very strange. When you know something monumental is happening so close to our shores, and yet you don't see it on a daily basis – it's an odd disconnect, and it doesn't feel right.

Later this week is the one month anniversary of the earthquake. To say things are getting better here is probably technically correct, but it's still miserable for hundreds of thousands of people.

The homeless are everywhere, the hungry are as well. They are still finding bodies all the time. Twenty-five people were shoved into old crypts in a city cemetery today. We watched the remains of a mother and her son being sealed into a crypt.

It's not the kind of misery that makes for headlines perhaps, and clearly it's not the kind of sorrow that demands a place on the nightly news, but it should.

There is more happening here than 10 American missionaries in jail. I guess I came to remind myself of that. No one deserves to die in silence, and no one's struggle to live should go unnoticed as well.

Tonight, Dr. Sanjay Gupta and I report on the situation here, along with CNN's Karl Penhaul. We'll also investigate the history of corruption in Haiti and try to find out where all the money that's been poured in here for decades has gone.