In Haiti, close relation between the living and the dead

By MARK STEVENSON and EVENS SANON
Associated Press

LES CAYES, Haiti (AP) — Haiti’s unusually close relationship between the living and the dead has helped hide, in part, the huge toll of Saturday’s earthquake: people in Haiti want to be close to their deceased relatives, to the point of sometimes burying themselves in their front yards. The quake has brought them even closer: in the countryside outside the city of Les Cayes, some of those front-yard crypts were broken open by the force of the quake, exposing coffins inside. And some came closer to death than anyone should: civil defense workers found two people trapped in rubble after they made cell phone calls.