Day of Mourning

Ben got it right:

"Media outlets want to talk about what isn't being done and point blame all around. However, this is what real right now - sorrow and hurt so real. A tightness in your chest. An indescribable agony at the utter magnitude of loss. A slight comfort that you know that everyone in the room is feeling it too."

The churches are packed, overflowing; people spill out onto the stairs and down into the street. There is singing to be heard everwhere. In the streets there are processions; we saw one group of two to three hundred people, all dressed in white, on their hands and knees in the road.

Lots of people are just aimlessly wandering around, though, as if they want to do something to mark this day but aren't sure what. That's how I feel. I want the day to mean something, to give some kind of explanation: Oh yeah, so that's why 300,000 people had to lose their lives all at once.

We drove down Delmas and saw building after building still in the same shape they were the morning of January 13th, 2010. Each one slaps me in the face with its broken, crumbled concrete. It says: Nothing has changed.

Banners over the road announce that various companies mark the anniversary, remember the dead. Other banners encourage mothers to nurse their babies to protect them from cholera. Tent cities spread out in every direction.

I am so grateful to be alive, so grateful that my husband and children are alive. And so overwhelmed with grief.