PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - They kept the books, had the training and fixed the computers. They were the educated few of Haiti, an up-and-coming generation of nurses, technicians, office managers and college students.
Now they're gone — just when their struggling country needs them most.
The Jan. 12 earthquake struck just before 5 p.m., destroying office buildings and disproportionately killing the young professionals who were going the extra mile to make Haiti work. Many were crushed at their desks.
"It is a generation that decided not to leave the country. They chose to work for the country," said Dieusibon Pierre-Merite, a Haitian sociologist with a United Nations anti-gang program that lost several staffers in the quake. "They are the ones who died."
Compounding the loss is a quickening brain drain, as people with the ability and means to leave abandon a ravaged country where more than 1.2 million people have lost their homes.
Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told The Associated Press he has watched with dismay as educated youths board planes to the United States and elsewhere. They leave because Haiti, always a difficult place to live, became impossible after the quake.
"I was looking at their faces: They were escaping a country and they had no intention to go back," Bellerive said. "I feel love for the people that have lost family ... but I believe it's even harder for the country to see living people that could do so much to rebuild Haiti, leaving Haiti."
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