Hispanola is a Bird #2

I handed the baby to a man who clearly had some practice holding kids. They decided it was best for him to get away from the wrecked building and over to the gathering of people where they could hopefully find some someone with a bottle and formula. The baby couldn't have been more than 3 months old.

The mother was almost free of obstruction. She had become much calmer, and was instructing us about where to dig. Her husband had died in the collapse and now laid next to her with one arm slumped over her midsection. I still think about this family. The man was large. He had probably died from a sharp blow to the head, since we could see most of his body and it wasn’t pinned down under anything. He had given his life to protect his family. And his wife had suffered lots of scrapes and cuts to protect her baby. And because they reacted automatically the way they did, without any time to think, their baby was alive without so much as a scratch.

We dug around the mother’s legs a bit more and moved some big chunks of the concrete flooring before we were able to lift her out. We sat her down on a flat piece of concrete. We gave her some of the bottled water that had been in that sideways crushed refrigerator. She had been stuck in that building for probably five hours at that point. When she caught her breath, she looked up at us and asked, “what happened to this building?” A younger guy bluntly replied, “This building?! This whole country has been destroyed! It’s finished!” She stared at him blankly, unable to process what he was telling her. After another minute we carried her down a path of concrete, twisted metal railings and a fallen telephone pole to get her over to the crowd that had spontaneously formed.

I asked around again if anyone had seen a younger white couple, and still nothing encouraging. I realized I had no choice but to move on and check on the rest of the team. I walked back up to where my motorcycle was parked. My t-shirt was still with the man from the other building, all covered in blood and concrete dust. But I didn’t quite realize that I was half-naked until I got on the bike and was hit with the wind-chill.

I was climbing up Canape Vert, on my way to check on another American couple, A and B, when I heard honking behind me. I pulled over and there were A and B on their motorcycle. It was an incredible relief to see them. I told them that I had been down the hill looking for J and R, and that I was afraid that they might be gone. They said they were just down there as well, and that someone had told them that J and R hadn’t come home from work yet when the earthquake happened. I wanted to be encouraged by this, but it was difficult.

I got around to explaining why I didn’t have a shirt on, and B told me he had one in his backpack. I’ve never told B this, but I always saw him as the number one person I would want with me after some kind of apocalyptic event. He’s always as cool as a cucumber yet prepared for whatever. And sure enough, at that moment he was able to give me the one thing I needed most, other than cell phone service.

We traded all the information that we had, and made a plan to check on the rest of the expats. I showed up at M and E’s house and there was already a small gathering of team members and other friends. We all told our stories. E was the group mother, full of positive energy and seemingly unfazed. She encouraged everyone to drink water and at least have some bread and peanut butter. We all hurried to process what we knew of the situation. Every now and then someone would say something that would remind us all that there were surely thousands of people alive but trapped under concrete. And we all responded with silence. I learned that the supreme court building had collapsed, that the Caribbean supermarket had collapsed, that the Montana Hotel had collapsed. I heard that the national palace had collapsed, but then the word was that it was only a wing of the national palace that was damaged. We all figured that the way rumors travel in Haiti, we should maybe take all this news with a grain of salt.

After A and B showed up, we came up with a plan to go back down the hill looking for J and R. I would go check with their coworkers who would have seen them last, and then check the office where they worked in case they had gone there for shelter. M and B would go drive around their neighborhood.

I left E and M’s house to drive down Delmas, the biggest arterial in Port-au-Prince. The street had become a vast campground. Where there used to be four lanes divided by a median, there was now two, and in some places only one, snaking back and forth between the two sides. Everywhere people sat on mattresses or blankets or just sheets on top of the asphalt. They swayed back and forth with their arms in the air, singing.

I drove by the corner where the Caribbean supermarket used to be visible high above the 15-foot walls that surround its parking lot. Now I could see nothing beyond those walls. Some buildings had fallen right onto Delmas. Others had collapsed sideways. It was very dark, and I remember at times seeing the silhouettes of buildings that seemed perfectly intact, but were several degrees off kilter.

I arrived in the neighborhood where some of J and R’s coworkers live. Everyone had brought chairs and mattresses out into the street and were talking in hushed tones. Because there were no working streetlights I announced myself. I couldn’t see anyone but I asked them to tell me who all was there. Then I asked if anyone had news about J and R. They said that no, the last time anyone saw them was at 4pm, when they left work. I told them that I had seen their apartment building, and that it was completely collapsed. There was a heartbreaking silence. It may have lasted only three or four seconds, but it felt like forever.

Then someone said, “They probably went grocery shopping after work.”

Someone else: “No, they liked buying things on the street, they were probably outside when it happened.”

“They’re probably safe with some friends of theirs who live in the area.”

It had probably been eight hours since the earthquake, and maybe seven hours since I saw J and R’s apartment building in shambles. I’d been through all of these possibilities over and over again in my mind and was craving some certainty. I took off again for their neighborhood. This time I went along the roads that I knew were relatively clear. When I arrived back on their street, I went to talk to people at that same improvised gathering where we had brought the mother and baby. I asked the first person I saw if he had seen a white couple. He said no. I started running towards the building to climb back up and see if I could maybe hear something. As I ran away I heard someone say, “Blan!” (white guy!) I ran back. A man told me that he had seen a young white couple.

“Did the guy have a beard??”

“Yes!”

“Did she have long hair??”

“Yes! And glasses.”

“Glasses?” R didn’t wear glasses. But I thought, what are the odds this isn’t them? “Where did you see them last?”

“Just around the corner in front of the police station. The guy had some blood on his face.”

We ran together up the hill and around the corner to the police station. As we were turning on to Canape Vert I heard Theodore shout from one of the groups of people huddled next to a floodlight there. “Hey, did you find your friends?”

“I think so! I hope so!”

And right at that moment I saw B – shirtless himself this time – coming towards me on his motorcycle with J and R perched on the seat behind him. I don’t know what sound I made, but it was probably something between a shriek and a laugh. I bear hugged them and told them how happy I was to see them. They told me that they had been at home, in their apartment on the fifth floor, when the earthquake came and it all fell to the ground. I was dumbfounded. At one point I remember I was so happy I slapped the tops of their helmets, perhaps to make sure they were really there. J, in his typically kind manner asked me to take it easy with the slapping, and that’s when I saw the dried blood on his face.

B told me to go check on M, who was waiting in the parking lot of a hospital with a woman who probably had a broken back. We made plans to meet up later, and I took off down the hill in that direction.