I was out in the neighborhood last night. It gets real dark here. We don’t have streetlights and there was no moon. A guy came by on a 50cc motorbike and we exchanged hellos. I didn’t recognize him, so I called after him. I might have recognized the face in daylight but he introduced himself. His father is the caretaker at the building the pastors have for development, and someone we have been working with on an irrigation canal.
He reminded me he had been away in Port-au-Prince at university. A big deal for around here. I
asked about his university- was it in session during the earthquake? Yes, but he had morning classes and had been home after taking an exam.
The university is pretty much gone. The loss among students and professors was significant. The highest school toll was university age as most universities were in session when the quake hit. Most students and professors have day jobs. The universities (and our mission seminary) hold classes from 4 to 8PM. Many were decimated in the earthquake. Most were multistory buildings and a few had no survivors. Sadrack is the young Haitian engineer who works with us. His alma mater, GOC, well known for Civil Engineering, is completely gone. We both weren’t in a hurry so I asked the guy on the motorcycle how he survived.
He was on the way out of the house to a local pharmacy when it hit. But hadn’t been in a hurry
and was helping a younger girl with her school lesson. The house started shaking violently. It was swinging back and forth so much that it was hitting the buildings next to it. He finally figured he better get outside.
When he got on the porch he says God caused him to look up before he got completely out. The
multistory building across the street was falling down and coming his way. He stopped and turned to go a different direction off the porch just as a girl came running out of the house next door. A wall came down on her splattering him with blood. At this point he decided for better or for worse he was going to stick it out on the porch.
Directly behind his house was a school with 1500 students in it from elementary to trade school/vocational level. It was in session. He said it pretty much got them all. They did pull out a few injured the next day but he shook his head and said he didn’t think that any of them lived very long.
The pharmacy where he was late walking to sunk into the ground when the earth liquefied. Only six inches of the first floor is still above ground. He didn’t say anything about his friend who worked there.
He is third year in accounting and among other things is worried about whether he is going to lose this school year and if there is going to be a way or a university for him to finish at. Now he has time to talk. He is here with his parents with nothing to do and nothing clear about his future. But as he pointed out, he is alive.
For eight days he lived on the streets. He didn’t have any money to come home with so was stuck there. The helicopters dropped cookies (probably protein bars) and there was a huge battle for them everywhere they dropped. The thieves took over, stealing and getting stuff everywhere. The thing that saved them at his house is that there was one of the camps that sprung up in the church and school yard next door so there were always people around and
that helped.
One of the things we are helping the pastors organize at five centrally located churches out here
is retreats over Easter for the local and displaced young adults. Hoping for spiritual input and to help young people like this young man to deal with grief and trauma. I think many like this young man are still in shock and haven’t started to deal with the loss and the what-ifs. He said if you lived through it, it was only God because it totally depended on where you were for one instant on the afternoon of January 12th.
As I said before, many of the IDPs (internally displaced people) are out here and as it rains more
will come. Pastor Bernex has six or seven at his house, the pastor here as many. Boss Aletude from the shop had six but has set up three of them in Port-de-Paix. One friend has 22. Some are staying at the house and some are going to Port-de-Paix the town near us. Which bothers me. Construction in Port-de-Paix is as bad or worse than what fell down in Port-au-Prince. There are many buildings that worried me even before this earthquake happened.
When I came to this remote part of Northwest Haiti, we were the only people for two hours drive with a bicycle, motorcycle, or vehicle. All that has changed. People don’t walk ten or twelve miles to town anymore.
The vehicle of choice for doing public transportation is a little Toyota pickup. They are called tap taps because when you are ready to get off you tap on the body of the truck somewhere and say thank you to the chauffeur. With some modification to the springs, they can carry a couple tons of bagged rice or flour or twenty some people. They have just come out with roof racks which are good for one to three, and one guy lays on the hood and reclines against the passenger side windshield. Deb calls him the windshield wiper. Sometimes there are goats tied upside down in front of the radiator and usually bags of charcoal hanging off the back. How many people they can put in the bed of the truck is a mystery to me. I always lose count in the mid- twenties and don’t bother to try anymore.
But you can be sure when they have that many in there, people are packed in pretty tight and there is no personal space.
One of the challenges of explaining things, particularly cross culturally is to put something in context for the people you are explaining it to. Consider for instance plate tectonics; how the
pieces of the earth’s plates move and cause earthquakes. How do you explain this to your Haitian friends? What is all this with the ground moving all of the sudden. First the big one, and then all the aftershocks that continue to this day.
Even in a hungry country, there are a few of the market ladies that get pretty big. Fat or obesity
doesn’t have the same stigma as it would, for instance in America. Big is beautiful. When we
come back from the states, we are told (as a compliment), oh you look fat. OK, so friends make
wonderful meals for missionaries but you don’t have to rub it in. But here it is the best compliment you can give or get. So you smile and hope you are going to have time to get in a routine and get on the treadmill some. Anyhow, BIG here means you are eating. And that is good.
The best way I have found to explain what is going on with these earthquakes is to explain that one of these huge ladies in the middle of the back of the tap taps with twenty some other people surrounding her has gotten uncomfortable. When she finally gets uncomfortable enough and rearranges her mass, there are problems in the back of the truck. Because everyone is so tightly packed in, everyone around her has to make some adjustment to account for the way she has moved. That is aftershocks.
When everyone finally gets resettled, things calm down and nothing moves again. But it takes a while for the repositioning to ripple through the back of the truck because everyone is packed in like or worse than 25 people playing twister.
When everyone finally gets resettled, things calm down and nothing moves again. But it takes a while for the repositioning to ripple through the back of the truck because everyone is packed in like or worse than 25 people playing twister.
In the middle of it all, two pastors from one of our sending churches came and their first comment was appreciation that we stayed at our posts. It makes the news when they dig though the rubble to save one single someone who has been under it all for two weeks. But if you want to save lives in Haiti, there are water systems to build, medical work to be done, irrigation and drainage canals, and tons of other stuff that can be done every day. But it won’t make CNN. Because of all these people coming, we didn’t need to go to Port-au-Prince and so missed being at the center of the world’s attention for a couple weeks. But we had the luxury of keeping
working and not having to interrupt the work we were doing. And then the refugees (IDPs) from
Port-au-Prince started showing up.
Life also continues. Pastor Chrisbon’s father is dying and finally dies. He was born in 1908 and
lived on his own up until the last week. It is raining to beat all. For the farmers it is the best year in recent memory. However, the clay roads are mud and it is not weather to be traveling or trying to bury your father. My task is to get 5 drums of water for the wake and go over to the funeral to help with hauling supplies and give moral support. Like a brother. I am going down our road getting mad. A large US humanitarian group which started out pretty good in this area 30 years ago had money from USAID to fix this road but didn’t and USAID finally fired them which surprised everyone since they had (not) been doing projects like this for the last 15 years. But I can barely get down the road in the mud and rain and I can’t stay home like I normally would because of the funeral. And the same organization that didn’t do the road is raking in the money because of the earthquake with slick websites, a well oiled advertising budget and people
lobbying inside the beltway. Keep your mind on the road and keep the LandCruiser between the ditches. Let your mind dwell on something that is more positive or that you can do something about.
The man of God is buried with honor and dignity even if the graveside part was hasty because it
started to rain again. I drove Pastor Chrisbon back to his father’s house and he had to walk in the last part of the road. He didn’t get out with his 4x4 until two days later when the roads dried out.
Meanwhile, we are doing the projects we normally do, only with more sense of urgency. I still think about earthquakes a lot. As time goes on, I am more appreciative that I didn’t have to go down and work in Port-au-Prince. You remember from the last letter I said we had tents and tarps and demolition equipment stored here because of the fault that runs along the north coast near us here. And that I thought it was this fault that would go off first. The construction in Port-de-Paix is worse than Port-au-Prince and the foundation conditions are much worse multiplying any earth movement. We only sent half of our stuff to Port-au-Prince after the
quake. Just in case. Besides trying to help Port-au- Prince and the refugees out here, we are trying to get our stock of emergency supplies and equipment here back up to where it was. There is a second big mama in the back of this tap-tap. And we are praying she is comfortable and doesn’t move.
No comments:
Post a Comment