Sleeping in the car turned out to not be the best idea, as Stephane's mom and grandmother placed the air mattress in the bed of the truck and every time they rolled over or moved, the entire truck shook, making it difficult to tell what was an aftershock and what was just them getting situated. (I'm sure the same was true for them every time I twisted around in the seat trying to find a less uncomfortable position.) Very early in the morning, maybe 330am, there was an actual aftershock, a rather large one that woke most of us. Once I realized that it was just an aftershock and that everything still seemed to be standing, I tried to go back to sleep. Other people chose to simply get up. By 615, I couldn't tune out their noise any longer, so I gave up and climbed out of the truck, rather irritated. While I understood everyone's fear and nervousness, I also knew the importance of sleeping, or at least resting, during times like this. Under such extreme stress, a person's body uses far more energy than normal and without at least some rest, it leads not only to exhaustion and physical illness, but it also impacts a person's decision-making abilities. People do dumb stuff when they are worn out.
When I woke up, Stephane told me that Steve had to go back to the city for work (he runs logistics for a UN unit, so they were clearly in need of him right now). Steve had offered to take me to the Embassy on his way to work. Although Stephane and I had agreed that I would evacuate as possible, when the time actually came for me to leave, I didn't want to keep my end of the deal. I tried to put on a stoic face, but I'm not sure it was very convincing as I said my goodbyes. Mommy Lu said that I would come back to Haiti and when I would be coming back to my home. This meant a lot to me; I have come to think of Haiti as my home, and I was happy that she thought of me as belonging there.
Stephane's mom was initially less gracious. She pulled me aside and informed me very strongly that she did not agree with my leaving, believing that Stephane was forcing me to do so and that I should stand up to him and stay with him, b/c that's what you do when you're with someone. I eventually managed to express to her that although she was correct in perceiving that I did not really want to leave, my departure was not the result of Stephane forcing his will on me, but rather it was a difficult decision made by both of us together for the greater good. I pointed out to her that the 16 other people standing there with us were all looking to Stephane to figure out how to take care of them, that he also needed to start working on how his agency was going to conduct relief efforts, and that if I stayed, Stephane would continue to spend too much time worrying about me and not enough time worrying about these other important issues. Babeth was satisfied with this line of reasoning, and gave me a big hug.
I was standing with Stephane, each of us trying not to cry as we said goodbye, when Didie’s younger brother approached us and asked Stephane for a cigarette. Stephane said that he didn’t have any and suggested that the brother go ask Junior for one. Didie’s brother responded, in complete seriousness, ‘Ugh! I don’t want to ask Junior, he doesn’t smoke the kind that I like!’ Stephane had predicted the night before that people would ‘start to get annoying’ now that we had made it to safety; this incident seemed to confirm that.
Steve, the cats, and I left without having breakfast, and as soon as we started to drive away, I felt like my whole body was telling me this was the wrong decision; my stomach got tight, my heart beat faster, and of course I started to cry, albeit quietly b/c Steve had already told me that if I cried, he would cry and then he couldn’t drive. Not far from the mission, we passed a car that had been heading out of town but hit a huge pothole and blew out a tire. This is not an unusual scene in Haiti – they have potholes that could swallow an elephant, I swear – nor was it unusual that the many, many cars passing this one did not stop to offer help. What was unusual, but typical of him, was that Steve stopped. He stopped his car even though he was going in the opposite direction and he got out and helped these people.
While he was busy with that, the cats and I waited in the (very hot) car. It occurred to me that I could get out and walk back to the mission, but I knew that Steve would stop me if I tried, and at any rate, he had locked the car and apparently you can’t unlock the doors from the inside if they’ve been locked from the outside. Which became a pretty serious problem as we continued to sit in the car, parked in full sun, unable even to roll down the window further than the tiny crack that I had made while we were on the road. The cats both started to pant, which is a bit strange for cats, but it was the first of many times they would do so on that day, while I sweat profusely. I finally managed to yell loudly enough for Steve to hear me and he released me from the oven for a couple of minutes while he finished up the tire. Enjoying the relative comfort of standing outside of the car, I watched as the vehicular exodus continued: tap-taps were more heavily laden than normal, even their roofs were covered with passengers, the same for buses, all driving at breakneck speed out of town. Every once in a while a bus or car would drive by in the opposite direction, heading toward town with a couple of passengers either going to look for loved ones or providing transportation to those who wanted to leave and could afford the fare. At one point, a truck that looked like ours started heading toward us and I hoped that it was Stephane coming to get to me, but of course it was not and I continued to wait for Steve, taking advantage of the time alone to cry a bit.
We were back on the road about 20 minutes after stopping and arrived to the edge of town not long after that. Where the day before Clercine had been jam-packed, it was now almost empty, probably b/c the gas station had run out of fuel. Steve put a handkerchief over his face for a few miles to block the smell of decomposition that greeted us at a certain spot. Not far from the Embassy we turned down a shady side street and Steve explained that he wanted to stop at his parents’ house to check on his family. They, too, had all made it through the quake and were now living in a large courtyard shared with neighbors. When we arrived, Steve’s mom seemed very happy to meet me and sweetly offered me the use of a plastic chair while she and Steve chatted in rapid Creole. It seemed that they were preparing to get out of town, but they weren’t sure where they would go. Their house was still standing, but was seriously damaged, the staircase to their second floor had fallen and there were large cracks running through all of the walls. I played with Steve’s niece, an adorable little girl of maybe two years of age sporting a shiny new pair of plastic jelly shoes that I would have been nuts about at her age. She was giggling and happy, a brief picture of joy in an otherwise horrific time. During the quake, Steve’s mom said that the little girl kept repeating, ‘M’ap mouri’ – ‘I’m dying.’
Not realizing that we were again stopping for about 15 minutes, I had left the cats in the car. Luckily, the shade had kept the car from getting *too* hot, but it was still pretty hot. Both cats were once again panting and I began to be worried that they had survived the earthquake only to die of heatstroke and dehydration. I began to want to reach the Embassy just so that I could give the cats some water. We made two more stops, one for Steve to buy ice, which he put in a big cooler his mother had just given him, and one for him to buy water, two big plastic bags filled with smaller plastic bags. This was going to be all of the drinking water that would be available to the group back at the mission for at least a couple of days and the price, Steve said, was steep (I took the opportunity to teach him the English phrase ‘price-gouging’). I was in a pretty constant state of dehydration, having had little water since Tuesday, so I opened one of the small water sachets and shared it with Steve. When it was nearly gone, I pried open each cats’ mouth in turn and forced some water in, hoping that would at least keep them alive if not totally solve their problem. You can imagine how much they loved that.
When we had passed the Embassy the day before on our way out of town, there were a few cars outside and security had been obviously enhanced (armed guards were lining the sidewalk outside, which is unusual), but there weren’t many people standing outside waiting to get in. Today, it was a mob scene. Cars were parked on both sides of the street for some distance and there was a group of maybe 300 people standing outside the gate, evidently waiting to be admitted. Steve and I managed to grab one of the Embassy staff members who was outside informing people of their various options and the following conversation occurred:
Guy: First of all do you want to go, get out of here, or do you want to stay at the Embassy?
Me, hesitating: Well, I would like to stay….
Steve, jumping in: NO!! She is leaving, she has to leave!
Me: Okay, so I’m leaving.
Guy: Then you have three choices – you can get on a bus to the Dominican Republic…
Me: Oh, you’re arranging flights from DR?
Guy: No, you just get on the bus and go there.
Me, not keen on the idea of being dumped in the DR with no continuing travel arranged: Uh-huh. What else?
Guy: You can join this big group of people here who are waiting to be very slowly registered into our system and then allowed into the Embassy to wait for transportation to the airport, which will be a while because we don’t have enough vehicles. [I am looking at this huge group standing in the sun and thinking that if the cats didn’t die standing there, I very well might.] Or, you can go straight to the airport, where they are doing the same system, but you’re already at the runway and don’t have to wait here to get a ride.
Steve was not sure if we could even get to the airport (we had heard one of the roads leading there had been damaged heavily), but we decided to try anyway. As it turned out, the road we used was perfectly fine, aside from the fact that traffic was backed up for about three miles because UN and NGO vehicles needing to get in and out of the airport and the UN compounds along this road kept interrupting traffic. We were once again sitting in the baking heat of the car, one of the cats was even drooling by this point (seriously, cats don’t drool unless things are pretty dire), and I told Steve I was thinking of walking the rest of the way. (All I had was the cats and a shoulderbag w/my computer, some meds, and a couple of other things, so it’s not like I had to worry about toting luggage for three miles.) Steve insisted that I could not walk alone and was going to park the car in the now-empty lot of a gas station we were passing. Like most other gas stations in the area, this one had run out of fuel and was now abandoned except for the occasional group of people seeking some shelter from the sun under the fuel pump roof.
Unsure of whether or not we should walk, I offered to get out of the car and walk ahead to see if the problem was something that might clear up soon, or if we needed to resort to pedal locomotion. I had ascertained that the problem was a convoy of UN trucks trying to get into a compound and blocking traffic in the meantime and was on my way back to the car when suddenly traffic started moving pretty quickly, the trucks having gained admittance, and I hopped in Steve’s car as he drove up to me. We then quickly reached the airport, which was pretty much as chaotic as it always is, just chaotic in a different way that day. Steve handed me a huge bottle of water he had in his car (a big gesture, really, considering how precious water was at that point) and then walked with me until a Marine told us that only people with US passports could go further, at which point I hugged Steve and prepared to start the rest of my journey alone for the first time in days. It was not a very comforting prospect.
The Marine had directed me to join a large group of people at one end of the airport, but as I was walking that way, another Marine stopped me and an older gentleman who was behind me and told us to go to a door that was back in the direction we had come from. The Marine called to another Marine closer to the door, telling him to let us in; we were apparently being given a short-cut, though I have still have no idea why. As we were walking in that door, a Marine who had been pushing an elderly Haitian woman on a luggage cart asked the gentleman with me if he could take the lady inside. Before the guy could answer, the Marine left the woman and the luggage and walked away to address some other emerging problem. The guy seemed pretty bewildered and initially not very interested in getting stuck with a strange old woman, but when we got inside and saw that we were joining a line of people going out to the tarmac, the gentleman used his newfound burden to his advantage, pushing to the front of the line with his incapacitated charge.
Seeing this, as well as a couple of people with small children or on crutches passing to the front, some of the people in line around me who were not injured or accompanied by children began to get out of line and start moving toward the front of the line. Those of you who have ever boarded a plane going to or from Haiti should recognize this phenomenon, the Haitian inability to stand patiently in a line or follow directions about who goes first. (You know I love Haiti and its people, but seriously, I have even been stepped on by people rushing to get on a plane, and the whole notion of ‘Boarding Zones’ is non-existent for these people.) Annoyed, I said loudly to no one in particular, ‘There is a *line* here for a reason,’ at which point most of the people returned to their spots and this one older guy who had been behind me even said, ‘Oh, this is a line?’ Ha.
The group – which I later learned was the last group of evacuees they allowed on the tarmac that day – moved forward quickly, delivering us to waiting Haitian immigration officers who stamped our passports, took our visitor cards, and then waved us toward a door leading out to the tarmac. When I emerged, a guy from an Army Airborne unit that was manning the airfield asked me if I was with a big group of Americans and I said, ‘No, but where do I check in with the State Department?’ The soldier said all he knew was that if I wasn’t with the big group of Americans, I was supposed to go stand with the general rabble. (It turned out that the group he was talking about consisted of 19 people who had paid that extra $30 for travel insurance, which apparently includes evacuation from a disaster area; a private plane landed a few hours later and whisked them all back to the US. I’m prolly still too cheap to pay for it, but think about *that* next time you’re booking a ticket!)
After confirming that there was no way I could glom on to the travel insurance group, I resigned myself to the mass of people also waiting for a ride. Seeing someone sitting at a computer, I made my way toward him, thinking this might be the check-in area. It was not. In fact, I still don’t know what exactly that person was doing, but he worked for the Haitian airport authority and was sitting in front of a computer with what looked like a complicated spreadsheet open on the screen; I think he may have been the air traffic guy. I flagged down someone else who worked for the airport and asked him if there was a place to register with the State Department. We were having this conversation in French and it was very loud, so when he told me that there was no place to register and no one giving out tickets, I thought that I just had not understood correctly; it seemed inconceivable that there would be no organization to something as complicated and serious as evacuating hundreds of people.
Spotting what looked like a missionary group, I approached and asked them if they knew of a registration area. They laughed and said they had been there for a couple of hours and still not seen anyone from the State Department. They also mentioned that they had been assigned a day to evacuate when they somehow managed to contact the Embassy by phone. This group had been staying at an orphanage in Ti Goave when the earthquake struck, helping out with the kids, repairing/building things around the compound, etc. Although reports from that town were quite grim, this group said the orphanage had very little damage and all 41 children were safe, although they were concerned about security in the coming days, as the compound wall had fallen and hungry townspeople were letting themselves in. There was another singleton like me in this group, a guy around 23 who had been evangelizing in the streets of Croix Bouquets. It turned out that he was from the Baltimore area, the same place I was planning to go if we managed to get out of the country.
I attached myself to this group, thinking it was better to at least look like part of a group than to try to elbow my solitary way onto a plane. They were mercifully camped out in a shady part of the waiting area, the shadow created by the visibly damaged airport behind us. The wall directly behind us had a huge crack in the shape of a capital X; every time a plane or helicopter made a lot of noise/vibration, I would look uncertainly back at this wall, half-expecting to see the whole building to come tumbling down on us. The Haitian authorities must have had similar concerns, as they instructed us more than once to move away from the building. Of course, this directive directly contradicted the instructions given to us by the State Department officials on the occasions they came out; lacking sufficient water to distribute amongst us, they were understandably worried that if we spent too much time in the sun everyone would get dehydrated, so they repeatedly told us to move back into the shade, closer to the unstable building. I chose to brave the shade.
In total, we stood outside of the airport for about nine hours. We never registered anywhere, but the evacuations did get underway, starting with families with children, injured people, and the elderly (I guess that guy was happy he took over old lady duty then!). Two groups evacuated before us, one on a Coast Guard plane and the other on an Air Force transport. Previously, I had never seen more than four airplanes at one time at this airport. On this day, there were five planes parked at any given moment, with a steady stream of take-offs and landings and planes arriving bearing the flags of Venezuela, Colombia, France, and many more. (I later heard there was some uproar about the American forces hogging the airport; I can tell you first-hand that I did not see that. If planes weren’t getting in, it was because the tiny airport was overwhelmed, not because of discrimination against other nationalities.) Planes have been using the airport night and day, a huge change from normal operations, when no one flies after dark b/c most airlines have security policies forbidding their staff from being in Port-au-Prince then.
And that’s what we did: Stood, traded horror stories, shared water, marveled at the gigantic luggage so many people had with them (seriously, I was shocked at how many people had two or more big suitcases, but maybe they were taking everything they owned and starting over in the US). The cats had given up on worrying and spent most of this time unconscious or at least motionless. Some officials from the military brought out MREs around 3pm, telling us that four of us had to share one MRE b/c they didn’t have enough (we were just grateful for food). I asked a couple of the State Department people if they knew a friend of mine who worked at the Embassy and said she would be working at the airport that day. One of them informed me that she was working a later shift, while the other one, a small Hispanic-looking dude in aviator sunglasses who had been flitting around the tarmac like it was America’s Next Top Model: Disaster Edition, rolled his eyes when I asked and said in an exasperated tone, ‘I am NOT even FROM here – I work in Santo Domingo!!’ Well, okay then.
When the commercial plane that eventually took us to Miami arrived, it wasn’t clear that anyone was going to get on it. They offloaded a full planeload (around 200 people) of assorted relief workers and then…..the plane sat there. And sat there. We stopped speculating about whether or not we would get on that plane b/c it seemed as if the plane wasn’t going to move. Then, suddenly, there was a glut of State Department people, most of whom appeared to be my age (27) or younger, urging us to form groups of 25, then lines of 25, then to move the lines, move them back, make them straighter, straighter still, on and on for about an hour and a half until finally they determined the exact number of people present. There were *exactly* enough seats on the plane to accommodate everyone, not one more or one less. We were then given a five-page form to complete before boarding, which included a promissory note wherein we agreed to reimburse the State Department for the cost of the evacuation, but the cost was not specified, making some people understandably nervous (it’s not as if the government is known for being cost-effective).
I had been somewhat concerned that the cats would be spotted and turned away, in which case I was going to be living at the Embassy (sorry – they had made it this far, I wasn’t going to leave them at the airport now!), but the only comment I got was from a flight attendant who informed that the cats would have to stay in the bag (no problem there).
It was dark by the time the plane took off at 630pm, the city below was quite dark, illuminated by the few lights still powered by generators and inverters or by flickering cooking fires. As we took off and the destruction below receded, I felt the same sick feeling that I had experienced when I left the mission compound almost 12 hours before; it felt profoundly wrong to be sitting on a plane heading away from Haiti in her time of need.
The captain addressed us several times throughout the flight, each time acknowledging in a very touching way his sympathy for our experiences and his gratitude that he was able to help us at this time. At 830pm, we landed in Miami, whose bright lights saturated the landscape and delineated its grid of well-aligned streets, a marked contrast with the slapdash ‘design’ of Port-au-Prince’s now-darkened sprawl. As we moved toward the Immigration hall, there were several Immigration Officers waiting to welcome us back, seeming somewhat in awe of our ragged, careworn appearance.
Before we landed I was pretty sure I would have to put the cats in quarantine, although I had managed to take all of their veterinary paperwork, and I was expecting that I would have to spend the night in Miami. Instead, the cats and I arrived at the Customs counter, handed over our paperwork, and were directed to follow the green dots to the exit. Upon entering the main airport, I checked a departures board and found that there were two flights going to the DC/Baltimore area, both with the same airline. Mustering the last reserves of my energy, I trucked it over to the ticket counter, which was no small distance from my original position. I got to the counter just in time to buy the last seat on a 10pm flight to Baltimore, after first repeatedly explaining to the agent that I didn’t have a ticket and I hadn’t paid for the cats beforehand b/c *I*just*came*from*Haiti*. The guy I had met at the airport who was also going to BWI got to the ticket counter a few minutes after me and initially was told he couldn’t get a seat, but got lucky when someone cancelled at the last minute and a seat came available. This was also fortunate for me, as I didn’t have a phone and borrowed his to call Bea and tell her I would be in MD in three hours.
When I got to the gate, I washed my face for the first time in four days and tried to make myself a bit less stinky for the benefit of the person destined to sit next to me on the rather small plane. It didn’t really work, but it felt pretty good. As it turned out, I sat next to a fascinating person who was both comforting and appropriately interested, helping make this overwhelmingly sad voyage somewhat less excruciating.
We touched down at BWI and Bea was waiting at the arrivals area with flowers and a warm wrap, knowing that I wouldn’t have anything like a coat w/me. She had also run out to the store in the time before my plane landed and bought cat litter and cat food, as well as Coke for me AND she had washed my sheets. It was the sweetest homecoming I’ve ever received.
I had taken a short nap on the plane, so when we arrived home I was wide awake (I think my body was getting used to the short bursts of sleep), so I enjoyed a bagel and some wine and Bea and I started watching a funny movie. I made it til about 230am, but then finally crashed, falling asleep sitting in my chair downstairs. The cats and I managed to slog upstairs and crawl into bed, where I burrowed deep in to the covers, unused to the chilly temperatures.
It seems that phone communications are more or less restored now, Stephane and I have been able to talk in the morning and evening every day since Tuesday. He sounds exhausted, but appears to be making progress, securing medical supplies and preparing to open a tent-based clinic. Also, it is possible to purchase phone credit for him (and any other Digicel users) online; if you are interested in doing so, let me know. I bought him credit this morning and apparently Digicel matched the amount that I spent (I purchased 500HTG, Stephane received 1000HTG). I don’t know if that was an accident or if Digicel is being generous (they are known for their charitable activities in Haiti, so it’s possible), but it would be pretty nice if that continued for a little while.
My essay will be run in the Charleston Post and Courier on Saturday and my blog is, I am told, making the rounds on Facebook; thank you all for your help with this, it makes a huge difference. To prove it, Google 'Haiti relocates 400,000 people' and read the news articles that come up -- they are moving people out of the city and into camps for exactly the reasons presented in the essay. This is only a first step -- demolition and construction need to start quickly once the people are moved out, and keeping these camps secure and relatively clean will require vigilance and commitment, as well as funding. But it is a step in the right direction, and I like to think that we all helped make that possible.
