14 Jan 2010
Just before dawn (maybe 5am), there was a loud rapping at the gate to our refugee courtyard. For some reason, in my half-asleep-but-not-rested mind, I thought this was the police, but it may just have been someone looking for a relative among our motley group. I never really found out b/c I went back to pseudo-sleep soon after this, awaking two hours later when Stephane shook me and said it was time to go.
I didn't really know what this meant (where were we going and how?), but I bolted upright and said I was going to get the cats. With eyes still swollen by interrupted sleep, I stumbled across the street to our house, where I quickly extracted the cats, shoved them in their carrier bag (it fits under the seat in coach class to give you an idea of how cozy that was for them!), and stumbled back out. Only then did I think to ask where we were going or how that was happening. Part of the question was answered when I saw our truck (an extended cab Toyota pickup) and Stephane's friend Didie, as well as his nine year-old daughter. Somehow Stephane and Didie had gotten in touch w/each other and hatched a plan to get us out of town and into the large compound of a charitable group called Mission of Hope.
To get everyone out of town was going to involve two trips, as there was not enough space in the truck. Stephane, Didie, Anne-Lys, Sarah, and I got in the cab of the truck while Alex, Junior, Mita, and Marc Eli sat in the bed on top of the luggage, leaving Babeth, Mommy Lu, Steve, and Leitzia to await the second shift. We then made a mad dash through the city to pick up Didie's mother, sister, and brother, who lived in Delmas, which had been pretty hard hit. (Miraculously, not only had they all survived, their house remained standing, unlike most of their neighbors.) We stopped along the way at Didie's ex-wife's house, where he frantically tried to find his daughter's passport; her mother had been in the DR when the quake struck and he was hoping to send Anne-Lys there for safety. While he ransacked the house, we waited outside in the truck on a middle-class street normally pretty busy with foot traffic, lined with reasonably nice houses. That morning, 60% of the houses were laying in heaps of rubble and things were strangely quiet, the silence finally broken by the wails of a woman up the street whose child had just been found dead.
Unable to find the passport, Didie returned and we set off once again for Delmas, passing whole blocks that were downed. Bidonvilles once full of uneven rows of one- and two-room cinderblock shacks had fallen down, forming a concrete shell covering the hillsides. After we picked up Didie's family, we headed down Route Freres, towards National Road 1 (one of Haiti's two 'highways'). We drove by Caribbean Market, an upscale supermarket that once stood five stories high; it, too, had collapsed and even the wreckage was not tall enough to be seen over the surrounding walls. As we went further down Route Freres, the destruction seemed to decrease somewhat, but the numerous funeral processions we passed indicated that many here had not been spared. When we got to the US Embassy, it looked much the same as before, but then again, it was built to withstand everything from hurricanes to terror attacks.
We encountered some severe traffic blockages and had to re-route more than once after finding that the roads we normally used were impassable due to debris or damage. It took nearly an hour to get through the tiny borough of Clercine, as traffic came literally to a dead halt, partly because their gas station seemed to be one of the few in the city to still have fuel and cars were lined up for more than a mile waiting to refuel, blocking the already narrow two-lane road. At one point we were stopped directly next to a black SUV whose back hatch door was left open to accommodate two pairs of feet that belonged to two corpses laid out in the back of the car. The drivers wore masks in an attempt to mitigate the growing smell of decay emanating from their passengers. There were several other vehicles carrying coffins or shrouded corpses. Buses, tap-taps, and private cars were jam-packed with passengers and luggage; everyone who had the means was clearly trying to get out of town.
About two hours after leaving our house, we were finally on Route 1, just slightly out of Port-au-Prince, coming into vistas of teal waters and pebble beaches. Thirty minutes later we arrived at the gate of Mission of Hope, a religious charity that has been operating in Haiti for almost 30 years, though they have had their current compound for only about 10. They operate a school, a clinic, and (I think) an orphanage; they definitely had kids living there full-time. Their compound has many acres backing up into the mountains, most of it open space, as this part of Haiti is almost desert-like in climate, yielding mostly short, scrubby bushes, and spindly, water-efficient trees. The staff was rather surprised to see us, as we had not been able to contact them ahead of time, but they welcomed us nonetheless and offered the use of three of their schoolrooms, which they were not using due to the earthquake. The structure in which the rooms were located did not appear to be damaged (in fact, they had only one building on their whole compound that had sustained serious damage), but they had cancelled classes for the rest of the week to allow the children time to process and cope a bit with the trauma of the earthquake. The children were setting up tents in the large courtyard when we arrived, where they were planning to sleep for the foreseeable future, fearing aftershocks or another quake.
After we had unloaded our numerous bags and people, Didie and Alex got in the car to return to PAP to retrieve the rest of our family and members of his ex-wife's family. I stuck the cats in a corner of one room, letting them out of their bag, but tying them to a school desk, so they were limited to a two-foot radius. I fashioned a litter box out of a cardboard box and dirt dug up from the yard (which the cats actually used, somewhat to my surprise). Then I helped Marc Eli w/sweeping out the very dirty rooms to make them a somewhat nicer place to sleep than the places we had been the nights before.
Stephane, exhausted, blew up the super-deluxe air mattress I had brought from the US this past summer. It was originally purchased to be used by guests at our old house, which had only one bedroom, but was now quite handy and amazingly comfortable. Stephane lay down to take a nap, and I was just going to sit nearby and enjoy this moment of quiet inactivity -- the first since the earthquake, really -- but instead Stephane and I ended up talking about everything and nothing, also for the first time since the quake. It was nice to be able to chat as we usually do, to reconnect a bit, to help each other decompress a little. This was also the first time we had an opportunity to have a serious talk about what we were going to do in the near and long-term future. It had begun to be clear the night before that Stephane's family was pretty much looking to him to figure everything out for them, no small task. The addition of Didie's family increased the number of mouths to be fed and watered using our limited stock. We had no liveable home and no clear idea yet of where we would be able to go, but Stephane would definitely need to spend some time in PAP locating his staff and, if possible, retrieving his agency's medical supplies and food kits to start providing some relief services in the city. And Stephane was spending a disproportionate amount of time worrying about me when he had so many other things to manage.
As we were talking, we both came to the difficult realization that my being there was, for the next few weeks anyhow, rather more of a burden than a benefit, although Stephane did say that I was his biggest comfort at this time. We agreed that I should try to evacuate with the State Department as soon as possible. However, we also agreed that a) we did not want to be apart indefinitely, and b) I could be of use in the longer-term relief efforts, helping people with grief and trauma issues. So we decided that I will be in the US for six weeks, at which point we will re-evaluate the situation (e.g., whether or not Stephane's family was safely situated somewhere, whether or not we had a house, whether or not his agency had a long-term plan worked out, etc.). If things are still not ready at that point, I will wait another four weeks, but that's it. I will be going back to Haiti, probably in March.
Stephane also agreed not to do anything that *I* would consider foolish while I was away, so hopefully that will make those family members reading this feel a bit more reassured. (haha)
We were happy to be interrupted around this time by Didie's brother bringing us each a plate of pasta, prepared by Didie's mom. This was the first real meal we had had since lunch on Tuesday; that one plate contained more food than we had eaten in the last two days combined. Probably the best freaking pasta I have ever eaten. As we were eating, a young girl walked over to us and identified herself as the daughter of two Canadians who were currently manning the mission. She explained that her parents had brought her and her two younger siblings to live at the mission for a year, even hiring a teacher to come with them and teach the two younger kids (this young lady was 16 and was doing her work via correspondence courses). She shared that she had spent the night in the clinic holding the hands of patients who had been injured during the quake and saying prayers with them. At her request, we gave her a list of the people who were with us, but told her that were not yet complete.
A bit later, Stephane and I went to the main office in search of Internet and we were met by some of the Canadian staff working there, one of whom is a medical professional working in the clinic. They said that they had had several staff members who lived in PAP who had been injured or killed, and Stephane mentioned that I was a mental health specialist and that I work with trauma victims. The doctor immediately perked up, saying that one of their staff members was exhibiting some signs of mental distress. The young man had been attending evening class in the city and his whole school collapsed, killing almost everyone inside. This person escaped with his life because someone else fell on top of him just before the building collapsed; the person who fell on top of him died, but his body prevented the young man from being crushed by the falling concrete. After several hours, the young man was able to wriggle free and escape, and somehow managed to get all the way back to Mission of Hope, where initially he seemed more or less okay, but earlier in the day started exhibiting some severe psycho-somatic symptoms. The doctor indicated that I could 'be busy all day tomorrow with him.'
This was the moment where I started to realize that I am not okay. Most of my professional experience has involved working with people who have had terrible things happen to them -- children who have been sexually assaulted, Darfurian refugees, kids living in extreme deprivation and violence -- and I have never before had a problem with this. While it makes me sad to hear these people's stories, I am always able to go home at the end of the day and separate my work from the rest of my life. This time, hearing this kid's story made my whole body start shaking and I thought I was going to throw up the pasta I had eaten earlier. I had to fight the urge to put my hands over my ears while the doctor was speaking; I just couldn't handle hearing yet another story of death and implosion. This time, I had no idea how I could sit in front of this person who had experienced this unimaginably terrible thing and *not* break down myself. Basically, I was incapable of helping this person. I really, *really* wanted to help him -- this is my job, and I usually like my job -- but I just could not. I couldn't.
I didn't say anything at that moment besides a vague murmur of acknowledgement, but later when Stephane and I were in the office using the computer, he noticed that I was not quite myself and when I tried to explain what had just happened, I started to cry. I was overcome by grief, exhaustion, and guilt, and I just couldn't stop myself from crying a few tears. I made myself stop pretty quickly b/c I didn't want Stephane to worry, but I knew at that moment that something had happened to me that may never totally heal.
After we left the office, it was quite dark, and had been for some time. We had been a bit worried that Didie and Co. weren't back when we walked over to the office, and we were *very* worried when we got back to our area and saw that they still had not arrived. The next hour was spent watching the gate and trying not to think too extensively about the many things that could have happened along the road that would result in death or dismemberment. At length, however, the gate opened and Didie drove in with his in-laws in the truck (three elderly, rather unfriendly ladies), followed by Steve, Leitzia, Babeth, and Mommy Lu in Steve's car. The truck was nearly out of gas, but Steve had been able to refill at one of the UN offices (he is in charge of logistics for one of the large UN units).
Everyone was now in relative safety, out of the city and its threat of collapse, disease, and violence, and into the countryside where the aftershocks could still be felt, but at least there was a lot of open space in which one could avoid being crushed by falling debris. The overall mood was almost upbeat, everyone being high on relief, but the removal to safety also removed the focus on physical survival that had kept everyone emotionally contained over the last few days. With that urgency removed, people began to break down. Mita cried for about 30 minutes, knees tucked to her chest, arms wrapped tight around the knees. Leitzia, after getting cleaned up following the long drive from Port-au-Prince, joined the group with a quivering lip and shining eyes. I got up and went to her, wrapped my arms around her, and felt her large body go weak, clinging to me and sobbing. We sat down and I held her hand, Stephane on the other side hugging her. Those who did not cry appeared to be making a visible effort not to do so. We were all realizing that we were not okay.
Most people were having a few beers that Junior had found at the outdoor market a few miles away, or having some of the whisky that Didie had brought from his house, but I just couldn't do it. My stomach felt as leaden as my head, and I opted to retire early, curling up in the front passenger seat of our truck, drifting into an uncomfortable, miserable sleep amidst the sounds of everyone trying to cheer up or, failing that, forget for a few moments what we had been through.
On Thursday, the Miami Herald is running as an op-ed my essay about evacuating PAP, but I don't know if it will be in their print or online edition. I am also working on a policy brief to submit to my former school in the Netherlands; they have offered to distribute it among their network, which would be amazing. I am trying to focus on all of these things, doing everything I can do to help while I am here instead of feeling as if I failed to help the people I love.
I didn't really know what this meant (where were we going and how?), but I bolted upright and said I was going to get the cats. With eyes still swollen by interrupted sleep, I stumbled across the street to our house, where I quickly extracted the cats, shoved them in their carrier bag (it fits under the seat in coach class to give you an idea of how cozy that was for them!), and stumbled back out. Only then did I think to ask where we were going or how that was happening. Part of the question was answered when I saw our truck (an extended cab Toyota pickup) and Stephane's friend Didie, as well as his nine year-old daughter. Somehow Stephane and Didie had gotten in touch w/each other and hatched a plan to get us out of town and into the large compound of a charitable group called Mission of Hope.
To get everyone out of town was going to involve two trips, as there was not enough space in the truck. Stephane, Didie, Anne-Lys, Sarah, and I got in the cab of the truck while Alex, Junior, Mita, and Marc Eli sat in the bed on top of the luggage, leaving Babeth, Mommy Lu, Steve, and Leitzia to await the second shift. We then made a mad dash through the city to pick up Didie's mother, sister, and brother, who lived in Delmas, which had been pretty hard hit. (Miraculously, not only had they all survived, their house remained standing, unlike most of their neighbors.) We stopped along the way at Didie's ex-wife's house, where he frantically tried to find his daughter's passport; her mother had been in the DR when the quake struck and he was hoping to send Anne-Lys there for safety. While he ransacked the house, we waited outside in the truck on a middle-class street normally pretty busy with foot traffic, lined with reasonably nice houses. That morning, 60% of the houses were laying in heaps of rubble and things were strangely quiet, the silence finally broken by the wails of a woman up the street whose child had just been found dead.
Unable to find the passport, Didie returned and we set off once again for Delmas, passing whole blocks that were downed. Bidonvilles once full of uneven rows of one- and two-room cinderblock shacks had fallen down, forming a concrete shell covering the hillsides. After we picked up Didie's family, we headed down Route Freres, towards National Road 1 (one of Haiti's two 'highways'). We drove by Caribbean Market, an upscale supermarket that once stood five stories high; it, too, had collapsed and even the wreckage was not tall enough to be seen over the surrounding walls. As we went further down Route Freres, the destruction seemed to decrease somewhat, but the numerous funeral processions we passed indicated that many here had not been spared. When we got to the US Embassy, it looked much the same as before, but then again, it was built to withstand everything from hurricanes to terror attacks.
We encountered some severe traffic blockages and had to re-route more than once after finding that the roads we normally used were impassable due to debris or damage. It took nearly an hour to get through the tiny borough of Clercine, as traffic came literally to a dead halt, partly because their gas station seemed to be one of the few in the city to still have fuel and cars were lined up for more than a mile waiting to refuel, blocking the already narrow two-lane road. At one point we were stopped directly next to a black SUV whose back hatch door was left open to accommodate two pairs of feet that belonged to two corpses laid out in the back of the car. The drivers wore masks in an attempt to mitigate the growing smell of decay emanating from their passengers. There were several other vehicles carrying coffins or shrouded corpses. Buses, tap-taps, and private cars were jam-packed with passengers and luggage; everyone who had the means was clearly trying to get out of town.
About two hours after leaving our house, we were finally on Route 1, just slightly out of Port-au-Prince, coming into vistas of teal waters and pebble beaches. Thirty minutes later we arrived at the gate of Mission of Hope, a religious charity that has been operating in Haiti for almost 30 years, though they have had their current compound for only about 10. They operate a school, a clinic, and (I think) an orphanage; they definitely had kids living there full-time. Their compound has many acres backing up into the mountains, most of it open space, as this part of Haiti is almost desert-like in climate, yielding mostly short, scrubby bushes, and spindly, water-efficient trees. The staff was rather surprised to see us, as we had not been able to contact them ahead of time, but they welcomed us nonetheless and offered the use of three of their schoolrooms, which they were not using due to the earthquake. The structure in which the rooms were located did not appear to be damaged (in fact, they had only one building on their whole compound that had sustained serious damage), but they had cancelled classes for the rest of the week to allow the children time to process and cope a bit with the trauma of the earthquake. The children were setting up tents in the large courtyard when we arrived, where they were planning to sleep for the foreseeable future, fearing aftershocks or another quake.
After we had unloaded our numerous bags and people, Didie and Alex got in the car to return to PAP to retrieve the rest of our family and members of his ex-wife's family. I stuck the cats in a corner of one room, letting them out of their bag, but tying them to a school desk, so they were limited to a two-foot radius. I fashioned a litter box out of a cardboard box and dirt dug up from the yard (which the cats actually used, somewhat to my surprise). Then I helped Marc Eli w/sweeping out the very dirty rooms to make them a somewhat nicer place to sleep than the places we had been the nights before.
Stephane, exhausted, blew up the super-deluxe air mattress I had brought from the US this past summer. It was originally purchased to be used by guests at our old house, which had only one bedroom, but was now quite handy and amazingly comfortable. Stephane lay down to take a nap, and I was just going to sit nearby and enjoy this moment of quiet inactivity -- the first since the earthquake, really -- but instead Stephane and I ended up talking about everything and nothing, also for the first time since the quake. It was nice to be able to chat as we usually do, to reconnect a bit, to help each other decompress a little. This was also the first time we had an opportunity to have a serious talk about what we were going to do in the near and long-term future. It had begun to be clear the night before that Stephane's family was pretty much looking to him to figure everything out for them, no small task. The addition of Didie's family increased the number of mouths to be fed and watered using our limited stock. We had no liveable home and no clear idea yet of where we would be able to go, but Stephane would definitely need to spend some time in PAP locating his staff and, if possible, retrieving his agency's medical supplies and food kits to start providing some relief services in the city. And Stephane was spending a disproportionate amount of time worrying about me when he had so many other things to manage.
As we were talking, we both came to the difficult realization that my being there was, for the next few weeks anyhow, rather more of a burden than a benefit, although Stephane did say that I was his biggest comfort at this time. We agreed that I should try to evacuate with the State Department as soon as possible. However, we also agreed that a) we did not want to be apart indefinitely, and b) I could be of use in the longer-term relief efforts, helping people with grief and trauma issues. So we decided that I will be in the US for six weeks, at which point we will re-evaluate the situation (e.g., whether or not Stephane's family was safely situated somewhere, whether or not we had a house, whether or not his agency had a long-term plan worked out, etc.). If things are still not ready at that point, I will wait another four weeks, but that's it. I will be going back to Haiti, probably in March.
Stephane also agreed not to do anything that *I* would consider foolish while I was away, so hopefully that will make those family members reading this feel a bit more reassured. (haha)
We were happy to be interrupted around this time by Didie's brother bringing us each a plate of pasta, prepared by Didie's mom. This was the first real meal we had had since lunch on Tuesday; that one plate contained more food than we had eaten in the last two days combined. Probably the best freaking pasta I have ever eaten. As we were eating, a young girl walked over to us and identified herself as the daughter of two Canadians who were currently manning the mission. She explained that her parents had brought her and her two younger siblings to live at the mission for a year, even hiring a teacher to come with them and teach the two younger kids (this young lady was 16 and was doing her work via correspondence courses). She shared that she had spent the night in the clinic holding the hands of patients who had been injured during the quake and saying prayers with them. At her request, we gave her a list of the people who were with us, but told her that were not yet complete.
A bit later, Stephane and I went to the main office in search of Internet and we were met by some of the Canadian staff working there, one of whom is a medical professional working in the clinic. They said that they had had several staff members who lived in PAP who had been injured or killed, and Stephane mentioned that I was a mental health specialist and that I work with trauma victims. The doctor immediately perked up, saying that one of their staff members was exhibiting some signs of mental distress. The young man had been attending evening class in the city and his whole school collapsed, killing almost everyone inside. This person escaped with his life because someone else fell on top of him just before the building collapsed; the person who fell on top of him died, but his body prevented the young man from being crushed by the falling concrete. After several hours, the young man was able to wriggle free and escape, and somehow managed to get all the way back to Mission of Hope, where initially he seemed more or less okay, but earlier in the day started exhibiting some severe psycho-somatic symptoms. The doctor indicated that I could 'be busy all day tomorrow with him.'
This was the moment where I started to realize that I am not okay. Most of my professional experience has involved working with people who have had terrible things happen to them -- children who have been sexually assaulted, Darfurian refugees, kids living in extreme deprivation and violence -- and I have never before had a problem with this. While it makes me sad to hear these people's stories, I am always able to go home at the end of the day and separate my work from the rest of my life. This time, hearing this kid's story made my whole body start shaking and I thought I was going to throw up the pasta I had eaten earlier. I had to fight the urge to put my hands over my ears while the doctor was speaking; I just couldn't handle hearing yet another story of death and implosion. This time, I had no idea how I could sit in front of this person who had experienced this unimaginably terrible thing and *not* break down myself. Basically, I was incapable of helping this person. I really, *really* wanted to help him -- this is my job, and I usually like my job -- but I just could not. I couldn't.
I didn't say anything at that moment besides a vague murmur of acknowledgement, but later when Stephane and I were in the office using the computer, he noticed that I was not quite myself and when I tried to explain what had just happened, I started to cry. I was overcome by grief, exhaustion, and guilt, and I just couldn't stop myself from crying a few tears. I made myself stop pretty quickly b/c I didn't want Stephane to worry, but I knew at that moment that something had happened to me that may never totally heal.
After we left the office, it was quite dark, and had been for some time. We had been a bit worried that Didie and Co. weren't back when we walked over to the office, and we were *very* worried when we got back to our area and saw that they still had not arrived. The next hour was spent watching the gate and trying not to think too extensively about the many things that could have happened along the road that would result in death or dismemberment. At length, however, the gate opened and Didie drove in with his in-laws in the truck (three elderly, rather unfriendly ladies), followed by Steve, Leitzia, Babeth, and Mommy Lu in Steve's car. The truck was nearly out of gas, but Steve had been able to refill at one of the UN offices (he is in charge of logistics for one of the large UN units).
Everyone was now in relative safety, out of the city and its threat of collapse, disease, and violence, and into the countryside where the aftershocks could still be felt, but at least there was a lot of open space in which one could avoid being crushed by falling debris. The overall mood was almost upbeat, everyone being high on relief, but the removal to safety also removed the focus on physical survival that had kept everyone emotionally contained over the last few days. With that urgency removed, people began to break down. Mita cried for about 30 minutes, knees tucked to her chest, arms wrapped tight around the knees. Leitzia, after getting cleaned up following the long drive from Port-au-Prince, joined the group with a quivering lip and shining eyes. I got up and went to her, wrapped my arms around her, and felt her large body go weak, clinging to me and sobbing. We sat down and I held her hand, Stephane on the other side hugging her. Those who did not cry appeared to be making a visible effort not to do so. We were all realizing that we were not okay.
Most people were having a few beers that Junior had found at the outdoor market a few miles away, or having some of the whisky that Didie had brought from his house, but I just couldn't do it. My stomach felt as leaden as my head, and I opted to retire early, curling up in the front passenger seat of our truck, drifting into an uncomfortable, miserable sleep amidst the sounds of everyone trying to cheer up or, failing that, forget for a few moments what we had been through.
On Thursday, the Miami Herald is running as an op-ed my essay about evacuating PAP, but I don't know if it will be in their print or online edition. I am also working on a policy brief to submit to my former school in the Netherlands; they have offered to distribute it among their network, which would be amazing. I am trying to focus on all of these things, doing everything I can do to help while I am here instead of feeling as if I failed to help the people I love.
5 comments:
Wow. I don't have words to respond. You are a mover and a shaker, there is a reason why you were there for this awful disaster and I know good will come out of it. I would say I'm sorry but that doesn't feel adequate...love and prayers though for sure.
As always you're in the thoughts. Let's try to see each other soon.
I've just read your posts on the earthquake and shared your blog with all of my Facebook friends. Please don't feel silly about wanting to save your cats--you know I would have been thinking the same thing. I am so relieved that you are safe. Please let your blog readers know what they can do to help. Hang in there and keep writing! <3
I am so happy you are home and safe and I hope that everyone else gets to feel safe soon. I heard about another quake this morning and hope that S and fam are all well.
Understand that I want to do anything I can to help - if you want to talk or, better yet, talk about nothing at all about the catastrophe you've been thru and are still experiencing. Where are you?
love, Kelly
OK, I'm crying now...and that's OK. I wish I had known earlier in my life how OK and healing it really is to cry.
How can we view the essay in the Miami Herald and all the other incredibly awesome stuff that you're getting out these days?
Lots of love,
Meem
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