2 phones in hand, Provo man agonizes over kin in Haiti

PROVO — Daniel Cameau remembers bottle-feeding and changing the diapers of his younger cousin, Marcus Idelphonse, when their families lived in the rural outskirts of Haiti's capital city, Port-Au-Prince.

Siblings and cousins pulled together to nurture and sustain each other. Parents, grandparents and older caregivers slowly left the families — some dying, some moving to the job-rich United States to better provide for the families, and at least one was murdered after being an eyewitness to a crime.

After spending his first 20 years in Haiti, it was Cameau's turn in the family's rotation for relocation. He moved away — first joining other family members in Brooklyn, N.Y.; then on an LDS Church mission to the West Indies;and since to Utah, where he and his wife, Eva, are raising a young family.

But he never ceased caring for Marcus, with long-distance nurturing and an occasional money order.

That caring included encouraging Marcus to pursue an education and to learn English. It included sending the Mormon missionaries to Marcus and helping him embrace a new religion. It included cheering Marcus on as he first married and then welcomed his firstborn.

And it included the tear-jerking relief felt by the Cameaus when in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike, cousin Marcus finally called after several days of no communication.

"I'm just grateful I'm still alive," Idelphonse said in his first post-Ike call as he bailed stagnant water out of his small Port-Au-Prince home.

After Tuesday's devastating earthquake in Haiti, and after no contact Wednesday or Thursday, Daniel Cameau longs to hear a similar expression from his cousin Marcus: "I'm still alive."

But he paces around his southwest Provo home, cradling both a landline phone and cell phone, checking TV reports and surfing the Internet to absorb the latest tidbits of information. He sees videos and photographs of Port-Au-Prince landmarks and the accompanying devastation — and he immediately knows the neighborhood of his youth was among the hardest-hit.

"It's like something you would see in a nightmare," he said, taking a break from phones, TVs and computers.

"You cannot help but feel helpless when you're here," he continued. "It has become real and surreal at the same time."