Two news stories caught my eye in the British press today and both were about events in Haiti. In The Independent one we are told "Beer and Biscuits Saved Man Trapped in Rubble for 11 Days" while in the Daily Mail we learn "Aid Piling Up at UN's 'Cold Beer' Compound". The role of beer in the morality play of each tale is a little hard to bring into alignment as in the first case the story is a miracle while the second tells this tale of waste:
There are some signs that the aid is starting to get to those who need it. Next to the airport, at the UN compound – from where I sat writing this, with internet access, near the light from a shower block and with an ice-cold beer from the on-base bar (complete with potted plants) – supplies are starting to go out.
As far as I can tell the Daily Mail's Caroline Graham encountered this beer in a pre-existing bar at "the heavily fortified US-controlled Port-au-Prince airport and neighbouring United Nations compound." While it makes the headline, the ice-cold beer is simply there - not accused of being the root of evil yet somehow the mark of some sort of beast. The inequality in the world? The shame of luxury provided to those who are there to help the abject poor.
In the other story, the beer saves the man's life along with the mentioned cookies and Coke. The miracle man "had been working as a cashier at a grocery store on the ground floor" of the Napoli Inn Hotel in Port-au-Prince. The excellently named Wismond Exantus had dived under a desk when the earthquake struck and reached what he could from his small protected pocket in the rubble. The BBC's version of the story does not mention the beer. The New York Daily News only mentions the Coca-Cola. Did he really mention beer at all? Why do only UK papers seem to mention the point. And if he did, it's hard to figure out who shopped at his grocery store on a normal day. Just the hotel guests or the whole neighbourhood? Was ice-cold beer actually the right of the privileged few UN officials as The Independent would imply or was it the everyman drink in Haiti that it is in most places? The Associated Press whose reporter actually interviewed Wismond Exantus in his cot at a French hospital gives the story another more personal focus, mentioning the beer but also saying that he prayed and reciting psalms while buried and also that he was eager to get to a church to give thanks.
