At 4:53pm on January 12, 2010 I was in Port au Prince, Haiti.
Perhaps that day sounds oddly familiar. It was the day of the 7.0 earthquake that rocked the impoverished island to its knees, causing inestimable damage and inflicting unimaginable loss of life.
To be more accurate, I was in Petionville, just a few miles west of Port au Prince, in a guesthouse on the Methodist grounds of College de Frรจres, a sort of campus of school buildings, meeting and office spaces and a church. I was on the second floor of a guesthouse for American volunteers, typing away about news of the day, ready to hit the send button to tell my husband about the conference I was attending, when the earth began to move. In one moment I was glib, unaware, tapping away about what now seems unimportant and trivial. In the next second life changed.
Many people think the thing you feel bodily, the shaking, is what you remember most about an earthquake - the floor shifting beneath your feet, books tumbling off shelves or glasses toppling in cupboards. But the thing I remember most is the sound. The earth makes a very loud, deep rumbling sound during an earthquake that is never forgotten. I had heard this sound over thirty years earlier in my life. I was twenty years old at the time, and studying in Italy during my college days. It was a small earthquake by comparison. The sound of an earthquake is like a large empty trash dumpster being dropped to the earth over and over again. It creates a large roar as the waves from the quake make the earth shudder, heave and vibrate. I didn’t understand what that sound meant at twenty years of age when I first heard it, but now at fifty-four in Haiti I remembered it instantly and ran to the doorway nearest the rolling office chair where I was seated. There in the opening of a sliding glass doorway, facing into a small balcony over the back courtyard, I fiercely gripped the doorframe on one side and the sliding glass door on the other, and I wondered if I would survive. I thought of my children and my husband. “Oh no, this is bad,” I thought in the beginning. It seemed much stronger than the quake I had experienced when younger. Then halfway through the quake the shaking seemed to intensify and I thought the house would not hold. Fearing the worst, I said a silent prayer. In that moment I guess I gave God permission to take me, surrendering to the knowledge that I had no control over what would happen next. I remember distinctly saying this silent prayer: “God, I’ve had a good life and if I don’t make it, it’s okay. I thank you for the life I’ve had.” But in the next second I thought of my children again. I could not bear the thought of them suffering the grief of losing a parent. What would their lives be like without a mother? They were 20 and 23. What would it be like to marry or have your first child without your mother there? My desire to live in that moment was inextricably tied to the desire to be present for my children.
When the roar of the earth’s rumbling stopped I realized I had survived, but the earth’s sound was replaced by the shrill and desperate screams of children. The doorway in which I stood during the quake faced a school courtyard and the sound of terrified children fleeing the school buildings jolted me to loosen my grip on the doorway and race downstairs. Injured adults from the neighborhood were already making their way to the front courtyard of the guesthouse hoping to find first aid and assistance. When I discovered that many of my conference friends were already downstairs and unharmed, I ran around to the back courtyard facing the school and found hundreds of children in their starched uniforms pouring out onto the campus grounds. They were hysterical, unglued. I scanned the crowd expecting to find injured children, only to see scraped knees and tear stained faces. Fortunately the buildings they were in had held up like the one in which I rode out the quake. Now they were racing down stairs and stumbling in the dirt, frantically clinging to one another in fear.
At one point a young girl who was perhaps eight or ten walked toward me with her head tilted backwards, screaming uncontrollably at the top of her lungs. Instinctively I grabbed her and held on for what must have been 30 seconds or more. Patting her back, I spoke softly to her, “It’s okay. It will be okay.” It was a stupid thing to say, not only because of how ridiculous my assurances were, but for the more obvious reason that I was speaking English to someone who could understand only Creole. Even so, her breathing slowed and cries became further apart until I let go. Immediately she began to scream again at full volume and began stumbling toward the gate that led to the street outside the school’s courtyard.
I think of this child sometimes and wonder what happened to her that day when I let go. Did she go home to a collapsed home? Did she lose a mother, a father, or even both? Did she become an orphan that afternoon, or did her mother or father race through the rumble-filled streets, frantic to make a way to her, to find her? Was there a joyful reunion that day? What became of her?
In tragedy or disaster we cling not to dusty earth or clods of soil, but to those we love. As the earth shook, my hands were gripped onto the edges of a doorway opening, literally; but the deepest part of my being was hanging on fiercely to my family. The thought of Ken, Liz, and Abby and my deep love for them was like a lifeline to which I clung as the wood in my left hand and the glass door in my right became like lashing waves on a turbulent sea. Later I clung to a frightened child. Perhaps sometime later she clung to her parents. I hope so. When you stand in a moment that marks life in one second and potentially death in the next, what you love most deeply comes to you like a rope tossed into those churning waters. It becomes a tether that you fiercely grasp as you try to hang on. I did not hang on to doorframes so much as flesh and blood. I did not so much hang on for dear life as I hung on to what in life was most dear to me. It pulled my heart forward because it was my life’s treasure and the deepest, strongest connection to what really mattered.
There is a Haitian proverb that conveys the deep truth I learned that day. Ti moun se riches. Our children are our treasures. My treasures, Liz and Abby, were there in the doorway with me, and I held onto them and my love for them until the shaking stopped.
The reflections and stories I will share in the coming weeks are offered in tribute to the children of Haiti that held on, to the mothers that hold on to them, and the ways that they both hold on today despite all odds. The great quake of Haiti in 2010 left many dead, as many as 250,000 or 300,000 according to some estimates; but it left survivors too. The children who survived are those who will remember January 12, 2010, and who will feel most its devastating consequences. They will grow up in a country that is being reshaped and remade after yet another disaster. They have survived, but they are not just a remnant – they are a treasure. A treasure for the present, a treasure for the future of Haiti.
The stories I share here are of the women and children of Haiti, from a newborn infant named Baby Lovely, to a young man named Jacques, to a mother named Yves Rose. I hope you see not just the difficulties and challenges they face, but more importantly the hope that resides in them, for themselves and their country. They are precious gifts, both the children and their mothers. Treasures to be admired and encouraged, loved and made to feel secure, fed and nurtured. I hope that in these posts you too will find a treasure.
Ti moun se riches! Ti moun se riches!
-- Rev. Pam Carter
