My Story, Continued

There are so many stories from this earthquake. Each family has its own, its tale of "What if I had been there a few minutes longer?" or "If only it had been different." I have heard many, many, and could share them, saying "One of my seventh graders..." or "One of the employees from school...", but Tara Livesay said it best the day after the quake:

There is no way to even begin to share the things we’ve heard and seen since 5pm yesterday. To do so would take hours that we don’t have to give right now. Some of them feel wrong to tell. Like only God should know these personal horrible tragedies.

(Tara is still in Haiti: you can read her blog here.)

Ultimately all I have is my own story, so I'll tell that one as best I can.

The morning after the earthquake, we went home. Our house seemed fine but it was still terrifying to be inside it. There were eleven people sleeping in our yard that first night, but one soon left to walk to Jacmel, where his family was living. I still don't know what he found when he got there.

That day was spent mostly hitting redial on my phone, hanging out with the people in the yard (including three small children, a three year old, a nearly two year old, and a one year old), listening to everyone's story again and again. Children pulled from under falling blocks, babies handed out of windows, a church collapsing full of people gathered to pray. I played games with the kids, found food for people, picked up some things off the floor (though it seemed pointless to do so, since surely they would just fall again, as the earth kept shaking and shaking).

Our plant manager came over and left with my husband, and they drove around doing whatever they could, finding out what needed to happen next. My husband came home and told me a little about what he saw, and cried. Someone went out to see what vegetables were for sale, and came back and told what she had seen, and cried. Trips were made to find relatives who hadn't been heard from, and people kept coming to the gate all day, reporting that they were alive, reporting on those they knew of who weren't.

That night we all slept in the kids' rooms, but I couldn't sleep at all; I fell asleep for a while because I was just exhausted, but soon woke up in a panic. The tremors continued, and even when they weren't going on, the earth felt as though it was moving. Early in the morning I went outside and prayed with the people in the yard, and felt comforted, a little.

Some time on Thursday morning, my husband showed up with four women with suitcases. They were a work team from North Carolina who had arrived in the airport minutes before the earthquake. They were waiting in the truck for the pastor who had come to pick them up. He had gone inside to check on some late luggage, and while he was in there the earth shook, and the ceiling started to fall in big chunks, and some people were hit, and he stretched out on his face on the ground and cried and prayed. Meanwhile the ladies at first thought the truck was shaking because the red caps (porters) were not happy with the tips they had received, until they saw the trees moving too, and realized what was happening. They spent that night in a field and delivered two babies (one of the women was a dentist but that was the most medical training anyone had). They said the people in the field praised God all night long.

We talked a lot, sharing what we had all been through, played games, shared food. Sometime that day I turned on a power strip upstairs to charge my cellphone (which had still never connected in spite of my constant pressing of redial). We still had some juice in our batteries; in this one very limited way, people living in Haiti were better prepared than people in the US would be, since those who can afford it already have backup to city power. We work with inverters, car batteries that charge up when city power is on or when we run the generator. Our wireless connection was on the same power strip so I decided to check to see if the internet was working, though I was sure it wouldn't be. It was. I started to send out emails. At that point the phones were not working and we were sending emails or Facebook messages to people within the country. I was able to talk to some people from my family. They had known we were OK from about 8 PM Tuesday, since a staff member with an AT&T phone had been able to get a text message to her mother with my parents' phone number. Even so, they were relieved and happy to get to talk to me.

The NC ladies stayed at our house that night. People in the US were working on getting them out of the country. On Friday they went to the airport at some point and returned because the flight didn't go. At some point on Friday my husband and I started talking about whether the kids and I should leave. We realized that resources were going to become a problem very quickly, and anyone who wasn't contributing directly to the relief efforts was just draining supplies. We went back and forth about it; there were arguments on both sides. The main argument for staying was that we have stayed several times when others have been evacuated, and we know too well that feeling of abandonment you have when others go. I didn't want to cause that feeling for anyone else.

Sometime on Friday a doctor came to the house. He is related to the family living in our yard and I knew him already. He had come from the south to check on the family and had found that there were many people where he was staying begging for help. He had the skills to help them but no supplies, and he asked if I had anything. I said I didn't, but when I went in the bathroom and started pulling out supplies, I had more than I realized. Ibuprofen, antiseptic wash, gauze pads, even a pair of gloves. He laughed and said it was like a pharmacy at my house. The NC ladies had some supplies, too, although they had used most of their stuff during their time in the field. I also wrote him a note to the nurse at school to ask her to give him some gloves.

At some point (I keep using that phrase, but really the chronology is very vague in my mind and I think I was mostly in shock during this time), my husband heard about some extra seats on the flight that the NC ladies were going to use. It turned out that a NASCAR owner, Rick Hendrick, had sent his private plane to be used by MFI for evacuating people. (Read more about that here.) My husband informed me that if he could work it out, we were leaving. I said I thought we should talk about it a little more and he said, "We aren't going to talk about it. You're going." (This isn't the way he usually talks to me.) He went over to school to make contact with the MFI people and see if he could get the children and me on the flight.

For a long time he didn't return, and finally I walked over to school to look for him. It was getting dark, and again I saw that our neighborhood was very much as usual. The only difference was that there were many, many people in the road, setting up to sleep the night there.

When I arrived on campus I saw people on the soccer field. The CRI trauma team had just arrived and I gave Theo, the leader of the team and one of our former students, a big hug. The overall feeling on the campus was one of peace. Peace and purpose. It was the first time I had felt peace since the quake.

I talked to my husband and found out we were to leave on the flight, and we could each pack a small bag.

I'll continue the story in another post.

Small Losses

All day my mind races with thoughts to share here, but then when I sit down to write, everything seems so trivial. I've noticed I've been using that word a lot lately; all of my concerns and worries seem so pointless and silly given that I'm alive, that my husband and children are alive, that I have plenty to eat and drink and am sleeping inside.

Today the children and I went to the public library. I haven't been able to read more than a page or two since the earthquake. My mind wanders and I can't focus. If you know me, or if you used to read this blog pre-January 12th, you know that a me who doesn't read is not the real me. It is one symptom of the displacement, the dislocation, the exile, the total disruption of my life and the life of my dear adopted country.

Boo hoo, poor me. Others have lost everything, and I can't read.

I didn't know what to check out. It needs to be intelligent enough to hold my interest, but no great dramas, please. I thought about the earthquake scenes in Corelli's Mandolin but then thought that would just be too much. I finally settled on a couple of Jane Austen novels - since they are so familiar, perhaps they will be comforting; something by Joanna Trollope, since her books are usually fairly calm, and something historical about Mozart. I also checked out The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, both for the familiarity of it and because I thought about it the night of the quake, and talked about it with my daughter as we were lying under the stars on the soccer field. We talked about the scene where the ship is moving into the darkness, and there is no hope and no way out, and Lucy calls out to Aslan and hears a voice say, "Courage, Dear Heart." We talked about it, and it made us smile, and perhaps gave us a little courage.

Speaking of books, I recognize some books from my classroom in this picture:



It was posted on the blog Ben and Katie in Haiti. This isn't a direct result of the quake, but of classrooms being cleaned out so that the rooms can serve as headquarters for aid. I don't even know what my classroom is being used for, but it's not for teaching.

Again, how can I grieve my lovely classroom when others have lost all they have? And yet I do. I spent six days a week in there for the past four and a half years. I gathered my classroom library with love. I collected everything I could to make my room a place where kids could learn and grow. I prayed for my kids each morning in homeroom. I don't know when I'll see those kids again.

I have pictures of my home after the quake but they seem silly - my bookcases fell down, while others were crushed under their roofs.

I told my kids that they are donating their bedrooms to earthquake relief, since aid workers and doctors sleep in them. They are donating their daddy for earthquake relief. I am donating my classroom and my husband. Not that we had any choice in any of these matters, but at least it makes us feel a little useful.

My losses are so small. The losses of so many countless thousands of others are so great.

From the Book Blogs

Children's books set in Haiti

Children's books about earthquakes

Earthquake Hymn

I didn't know that Charles Wesley wrote earthquake hymns.

What Use am I?

Here's a post I wrote back in 2008 while Haiti was going through terrible destruction from a hurricane. I expressed then that I am not much good in an emergency because that's just not what my skills are. Here's an excerpt:

This is something I think about a lot. I mean, what good am I in an emergency? I can just hear it now: "Ah, someone with a literature degree! Two literature degrees, you say! Just what we need right now in the middle of this crisis, in this country with a 50% literacy rate! Hurry over here, there's a text to be explicated! What a relief to have an expert on hand!"

Several have reminded me that while I am not a medical person and am not even in Haiti doing interpreting or other things I could do (and so wishing I could be helping), this is a long-term project we are dealing with here. Haiti is going to need help for a long time, and there are going to be kids to be taught and a new normal to be found. Right now my own children need me to keep life stable for them as much as I can.

The day we left Haiti, I was talking about this with the two other teachers who flew out with us and we were suggesting various skills we had that were completely useless at that moment - like helping kids with phonics, diagramming sentences, recommending a good novel. Right after the conversation a young girl with the work team being evacuated with us turned around and asked me what a word meant - she was reading what looked to be a school library copy of Ibsen's A Doll's House. I supplied a definition and had to laugh. See? You need vocabulary help - I'm there for you!

I apologize if this post seems trivial, but I want to encourage people who are feeling helpless like I am - this is going to be going on for a long time. There will be all kinds of help needed. Right now you can give cash. Later, maybe you can go and there will be work for all kinds of people.

I know many people have more questions about how we got out of Haiti and I am going to be posting on that. I am trying to get my thoughts in order and adjust to the new life I suddenly have.

God Bless the Haitian People

When I started this blog in 2006, I decided to be anonymous for many reasons, but one of the most important to me was that I don't like to be the kind of expat who whines constantly about life in her adopted country. While life in Haiti always had its frustrations, my family had chosen to be there and in general we were very happy. Many years ago I read a book about Africa that did not name the country it was describing and a preface explained that the author did not want to draw attention to the aspects of a developing country that the people there were trying hardest to change. As a missionary kid myself, I know what it is like to have outsiders criticizing the country that you love. I explained some of my reasoning here.

Now I am trying to draw attention to Haiti, and trying to encourage my few readers to reach out to the people there in their time of great need. I don't have lots of readers like Tara or Leslie (especially now she writes for Esquire) or Sean or Corrigan, but maybe some of my readers, who come here to read my book reviews or catch up on the latest in the highly important controversy over whether reading Twilight is good for kids (in other words the trivia which mostly fills this blog), will be able to think of Haitians as people just like them, except maybe stronger, more resilient, and more filled with faith.

That's how I think of Haitians. I know that they put me to shame with their faithfulness to God, their acceptance of hardship without complaining, their focus on people instead of on things. In those early nights after the earthquake, once we had started sleeping inside again, I would wake up in a panic, my heart racing, unable to stop crying. I would spend hours like that, and then in the morning as soon as I could without waking people up, I would go outside and pray and talk with the people living in my yard, people who had lost friends, family members and houses, and I would find myself encouraged. They woke singing each day, praising God for sparing their lives. Although they also woke in fear with each aftershock, they mostly slept peacefully because their trust was in God. And throughout each night I would hear others praying and singing, songs like "Showers of Blessing," which seemed wildly inappropriate to me, in the circumstances. How could they find blessing in the lives they were living? They were sleeping outside because they were afraid to go inside, and some had lost their homes. They still are sleeping in those conditions each night, under a tarp and a mosquito net.

When I left the country, I promised these people that I would tell about them, begging people to pray for them and to donate to the relief efforts. Pat Robertson may think they deserve what they get because of an incident in their long-ago history, but I urge you not to listen to him. Please, please, help these strong, beautiful, wonderful people.

One Week Ago

This time last week, my whole world changed. Today, I am living in a different country from the one I lived in then. My family is separated, my house is a place where relief workers and refugees camp out, my children are enrolled in another school and dressed in clothes that I did not buy. I am not going to work, even though a week ago I was in the early stages of new units with my seventh graders and my eighth graders, and they seemed to be going well. All my lesson plans still sit on my desk, but I am not there.

On Tuesday I read articles about tourism in Haiti with my eighth graders. We talked about the plans the Haitian government had to encourage tourism and how this would bring in revenue. The kids were working on feature articles and I had encouraged them to find positive things about Haiti that they wanted others to know about, since we've talked before about how the focus is often on what is negative about their country and "The Phrase": "the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere."

After school I read some emails, chatted with my mom online, encouraged my daughter to finish her homework, and then the two of us headed home. My son and husband were still at school. When we got into our courtyard, there was something out of place, and before going inside I fixed it. As I was opening the door (or getting out my key - my daughter and I remember this differently), the quake started. There was a loud noise like a very large truck, and the house shook, not just back and forth, but like a bucking horse. I saw the ground move like the waves of the ocean. My daughter was crying and yelling, "What is it? What is it?" and I was answering inanely, "It's all right! It's all right!"

When everything stopped, we ran inside and looked around briefly, noticing that a couple of our large bookcases had come down, including a huge one in the living room. If we had been in that room we could have been severely hurt or even killed by falling books. My daughter was crying and the woman who works for us held her and said, in English, "You're in the arms of Jesus."

I immediately started trying to call my husband on my cellphone but nothing went through. I grabbed my daughter and said, "We have to go find them." We ran back to school and when we neared the gate we saw my husband coming out. I asked breathlessly about our son and he told me he was all right. At this point I felt everything was over - we were all together, the damage in our neighborhood didn't seem huge, and everyone was safe.

I had no idea.

We gathered the students who were still on campus all together and prayed and talked about what would happen - how they should wait for their parents and not leave without checking their names off the list that was being made. We were all shaken, literally and figuratively, but there was some joking around and we were in pretty good spirits. One student asked if there would be school tomorrow and I said, "I don't see why not!"

People started to arrive on campus to pick up their kids or just because they had turned back since the quake had caught them in the road. Then we started hearing more details - the palace was down, Caribbean Market was down, other large buildings...I dismissed most of it, saying they were just rumors, unless the people had seen it with their own eyes, but gradually I was forced to accept that this was a very serious event. It seemed that our neighborhood was unusual in having little damage.

We spent that night on the soccer field, lying on a blanket and trying to keep warm. More people arrived: my son's teacher, workers from the Snack Shop, maintenance workers. Some gathered in a group and sang songs. Then injured people started to be brought - a little girl with terrible scraping on her face and a head wound, and a pair of underwear on her head for lack of a bandage; a young boy who had been hit on the head; a woman who seemed not to have serious injuries but moaned in pain so must have had something internal.

Towards morning, the moaning woman stopped moaning, and when the sun came up her family found that she was dead. They began to cry and scream, saying again and again in Kreyol, The Lord gives, the Lord takes, blessed be the name of the Lord. The words sound more tragic in Kreyol, more final and less churchy. I stood with the family for a long time but finally could not bear it any more.

That night I had hardly slept - perhaps half an hour total. It was cold. The aftershocks, some very large, were constant. Although I still didn't know the full extent of what had happened, I knew that life was not going to be the same for a very long time, if ever.

Overwhelmed

Right now I am completely overwhelmed.

Overwhelmed with grief and pain and fear. I am reading bad news about people I know and love. I am wondering if our dear Haiti will ever be the same again.

I am overwhelmed, too, by the kindness of strangers and friends. I left Haiti on Saturday with my two children and a small bag each, and now we are all dressed head to toe in other people's clothes, talking to professional counselors, being given things and bought things and encouraged and helped.

Overwhelmed, too, with guilt - why me, why is my family all alive when so many others are dead, why am I getting all this love and affection when others are still lying under buildings, why did I get to leave when others can not?

Leaving was such a difficult choice, because a huge part of me wanted to stay and suffer this with my Haitian family, but I was sitting at home taking care of my children, using resources others could use, distracting my husband from his relief work because he was worried for us. I have stayed through many crises in the past: a flight embargo, a US invasion, kidnappings, the departure of a president leading to days of violence and chaos - and yet all of these things now seem so trivial, leaving me wondering why we were making such a fuss.

I am overwhelmed by the idea of continuing with life, making choices, decisions, looking at the future. How? How, when people are still missing, and beloved friends are having funerals, and tomorrow promises to bring more of the same?

Facebook

If you know my name, friend me on Facebook - I am posting more there. Please keep praying.

We are alive

This is my first time online after the earthquake - guess I just outed myself about where I am. Please, please pray. Things are worse than anyone can imagine. Our whole family is fine and our house and school are standing and apparently undamaged. 14 others at our house.

Being Foreign

An interesting article from the Economist on the condition of being foreign.

Poetry Friday

Tricia is hosting the Poetry Friday roundup today at The Miss Rumphius Effect.

Chapel

OK, I'm not going to publish every word of the day, but here's another really interesting one, from an etymological point of view. I had no idea of this word's origin. You can subscribe to this list at Merriam-Webster's website.

The Word of the Day for January 6 is:

chapel \CHAP-ul\ noun
1 : a private or subordinate place of worship
*2 : an assembly at an educational institution usually including devotional exercises
3 : a place of worship used by a Christian group other than an established church

Example sentence:
The school required all of its students to attend chapel daily.

Did you know?
"Chapel" is ultimately derived from the Late Latin word "cappa," meaning "cloak." How did we get from a garment to a building? The answer to this question has to do with a shrine created to hold the sacred cloak of St. Martin of Tours. In Medieval Latin, this shrine was called "cappella" (from a diminutive of "cappa" meaning "short cloak or cape") in reference to the relic it contained. Later, the meaning of "cappella" broadened to include any building that housed a sacred relic, and eventually to a place of worship. Old French picked up the term as "chapele," which in turn passed into English as "chapel" in the 13th century. In case you are wondering, the term "a cappella," meaning "without instrumental accompaniment," entered English from Italian, where it literally means "in chapel style."

And the New Ambassador is...

The new Ambassador for Young People's Literature is Katherine Paterson.

Myrmidon

I knew about Achilles' Myrmidons but I never knew that this word has a negative connotation in English. I love learning new words. This one came from the Merriam-Webster Word of the Day email, which I get in my inbox daily. You can subscribe at the Merriam-Webster website.

The Word of the Day for January 5 is:

myrmidon \'MER-muh-dahn\ noun
: a loyal follower; especially : a subordinate who executes orders unquestioningly or unscrupulously

Example sentence:
The boss was more likely to offer promotions to her myrmidons than to those workers who occasionally questioned her tactics or proposed alternate solutions.

Did you know?
The Myrmidons, legendary inhabitants of Thessaly in Greece, were known for their fierce devotion to their king, Achilles, who led them in the Trojan War. "Myrmex" means "ant" in Greek, an image that evokes small and insignificant workers mindlessly fulfilling their duty. Whether the original Myrmidons were given their name for that reason is open to question. The "ant" association is strong, however. Some say the name is from a legendary ancestor who once had the form of an ant; others say the Myrmidons were actually transformed from ants. In any case, since the 1400s, we've employed "myrmidon" in its not-always-complimentary, ant-evoking, figurative sense.

Jon Scieszka Ends his Term as Ambassador for Young People's Literature

Here author Jon Scieszka reflects on his term as the first Ambassador for Young People's Literature and gives suggestions for getting kids to love reading.

Back to Work

The kids don't come until tomorrow, but I'm in my classroom today getting some last minute things done. Most of my preparation is done because I stayed two extra days after the kids left. This morning was also a dry run - can we really still get up, get dressed, and make it to school on time? Turns out that we are a bit rusty in our morning routines - too many late nights have taken their toll. And there are no more holidays until the middle of February!

Poetry Friday

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Read in 2009

I read 59 books in 2009. This doesn't count every read-aloud to my children or my students, though some of those are on the list. It also doesn't count books of poetry.

Books 1-4
Books 5-10
Books 11-14
Books 15-25
Books 26-32
Books 33-42
Books 43-46
Books 47-55
Book 56 (War and Peace! I finally finished it!)
Book 57
Books 58 and 59

Linked to this week's Saturday Review of Books.

One Little Word

I haven't chosen my One Little Word for 2010.

Here's 2009's One Little Word.