Nigel Barker turns lens on Haiti, AIDS

Question: How did you find out about the Edeyo Foundation and how did you become involved in the documentary?

Barker: I met Unik [Ernest] quite a while ago. I’ve known him for about, I would say some 12 years. Over the course of that time, he had talked to me and discussed at length Haiti and the situation in Haiti. Obviously, being someone who travels, see the world, what have you, it's hard to believe that things are as bad as they are in Haiti. Then, a couple years ago he started the Edeyo Foundation.

At the time, I was just like, “What are you going to do? How can you help? What possibly could you do?” It seems like such an extraordinary problem. His idea was to start the school with his mother. I kind of watched him. I’m already involved in many different charities and organizations, most of which are very big charities, like the Humane Society of the United States or the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation.

It was amazing to see what Unik was doing personally. I said to him after he’d been going for about a year, “Look, what I could do that would probably be most useful is use what I do. As a photographer and filmmaker, go down to Haiti with you and film for people to see what’s happening.”

We originally set out to go down to Haiti with him and at the time Anne Vincent from Vogue was coming. There was couple of different groups who were coming with us on this trip. Right before we went, the food riots [April of 2008] broke out around the world, specifically in Haiti they were very, very bad. They overthrew the government, there was widespread looting. The U.S. Embassy actually closed and the Canadian Embassy also closed, having been bombed. We were warned by the U.S. government not to go. That if we were to go, we would have no protection and that it would be foolhardy. At that point, obviously Vogue pulled out. Actually everyone pulled out. And we pretty much pulled out too. We said to Unik, “Look this is not the time. It’s too dangerous. I just don’t think its possible.”

He was obviously very upset, but understood. At the same time for me, it was really irritating. I thought to myself, we had already spent the various amounts of money to go and we also knew this was an important time to go down there. I spoke to various people who were in Haiti and I contacted other groups. I remember I finally spoke to a nun, who was about 70 years old, and she had just come back, right after the riots. She said to me, “Nigel, you know it’s a desperate situation down there, but there’s never been a time that they need you more than now. Yes, it’s difficult and it’s dangerous. But if you’re careful and smart. You’ll be fine. You just have to be street....”

Nigel Barker LLC Nigel Barker photographing some of The Edeyo Foundation's schoolchildren

So we thought, “Listen, OK we’ve got our tickets. We’re motivated. I’ve got my team, I’ve got my camera man.” I called Unik. I said “Unik, we’re going.” He went, “Really?” “We are going. So make it happen.” So a day later we got on the planes, went down there, and shot the film "Haiti: Hunger and Hope."

We were down there for five days and six nights. It was a very intense experience. We had guns pulled on us while we were there, which actually doesn’t appear in the film because we had to pull our cameras down in order to get the guns out of our faces. That was in the cemetery, ironically. I think someone was upset about the burial.

The soul and the crux of this film is that Haiti is in a very desperate situation yet there are the disenfranchised youth that are there, and of course they make up 50 percent of the population. Without education, half of them have no chance, but with education, through schools like Edeyo and not just people giving food but actually through the education that helps them build their own lives. It is possible to have a future.

Q: Is there one moment or image that stands out in your mind from your trip to Haiti?

Barker: It’s not the horror, it’s not the shock. Believe me, there are times when I wanted people to think, “Goodness, it looks stunning, but you can’t imagine how bad it smells right now. If this was a scratch-and sniff-TV you’d turn off for sure.” But those moments aren’t the moments.

The moments that really stand out are how welcoming and how loving and how decent so many people were, in such diabolical situations. We had people smiling at us and welcoming us. At the school, Unik’s mother, who is, to be honest with you, like an angel. She really is one of the most extraordinary people. She’s taken in 11 orphans herself and she’s a 75-year-old woman. Her heart is just massive. To me, that’s the part that really makes it. I’ve traveled all over the world and it’s rarely the place that makes it for me. It’s almost always the people.

Q: What did you learn from your trip to Haiti that you didn’t know before you left?

Barker: I’m always looking. I’m a filmmaker, I’m a visual person. So you’re always sort of trying to work out what’s happening. I don’t know if there is a specific thing, other than the fact I didn’t really know that hell on earth really, truly existed. I’ve been to some horrible places, as well as some extraordinarily beautiful ones. I think what makes it so shocking is when you get this sort of … pearl essentially. These gorgeous waters and that is just destroyed.

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I mean, the island of Hispaniola, which shares the Dominican Republic. The fact that one side is really heaven and the other side is hell. It's not obviously the whole of Haiti because much of Haiti is stunning. It’s the cities and Port au Prince. I just was shocked. Cite Soleil the slum there. It was diabolical. It was like a nuclear bomb had gone off. There wasn’t a building standing above a story tall. There was bullet holes and shrapnel in everything. It was something out of like a movie. It didn’t seem real. It was almost like an exaggeration.

If Hollywood had done it you wouldn’t have believe them. You’d say, “OK, they’ve taken it to an extreme here. Just to get an effect.” That’s how it felt. For me, that was a huge opener. Every single member of my team, all of us, when we got back, not one person didn’t cry. And several were traumatized for weeks, from what they’d seen.

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