The distress of a loved one's body gone missing sits at the very center of Haitian folklore.
For many of Haiti's residents, mentions of the village Titanyen guide to mind the mass graves that, even now, collectively frustrate burial rites meant to aid and/or honor souls as they cut across into the next world. On Jan. 12, 2010, the Haitian capital city of Port-au-Prince was hit by a 7.0 magnitude quake that, all told, killed nearly 300,000 people. It struck in the afternoon while the sun was still propped up quite high in the sky. There were children playing in Port'Prince alleys. In Guantánamo, in Kingston, in Caracas, in Santo Domingo, seismographs registered the quake in mathematical figures while residents of each city felt the ground convulsing for themselves. For days after the quake, the earth near Titanyen was sifted and split for burial pits. Public health officials saw the mass burials as expedient, and necessary, modes of moving the bodies of the dead from Port-au-Prince before decay set in. Many of the deceased were moved before they could be identified by, or have their bodies retrieved by, their families.
