guest post Brooke irvine

The place specifically in which I was brought into the world happens to be a small town on the East coast of south Florida. I spent a few short years as a beach baby soaking up the sun and from there I moved to quite cloudy Western Pennsylvania. My family which exceeds the normal 2.5 children was rounded off by me as number five. Our house was always overflowing with anyone and everyone who needed a place to be for an afternoon, a week, month or years. A few of them even became so intertwined with the family that we forgot they hadn’t always been there. As a young child my memories are filled with crawling into my Grandfathers lap, chattering unceasingly never thinking it strange that his ability to respond had been taken from him by a stroke. Another casualty of that same stroke was the ability to use his right arm and leg which is what drew my father, the oldest son, back to his hometown to help his aging mother to care for his now invalid father.
At thirteen my already abnormal life became even more abnormal. I had grown up listening to stories of a far off land called Haiti and hearing my mother and father employ Haitian Creole as a way to discuss sensitive subjects in front of their brood. It still came as a shock when my father was offered the harrowing task of shaping up a sixty year old development organization in Haiti. It was even more of a surprise when he and my mother decided to accept and move my 15 year old sister and I, the only two left at home, to this strange and unfamiliar land. I learned so much through seeing not just a different way of life but a difficult way of life. People dying of preventable diseases and half-naked children wandering the streets with no hope of anything different are hard for even a self centered teen to ignore. And slowly what started as the uprooting of my world and all I felt comfortable in became a refocusing of my entire worldview. The people I once found baffling became the family I never knew I was missing.
This new found worldview was shaken, battered and bruised in about thirty-five seconds one sultry January day. On the twelfth of January, a massive earthquake, felt throughout the country, struck. Moments like that become emblazoned on your memory forever. A local merchant and I were bartering over necklaces on my front porch. Suddenly everything began move. I have wracked my brain for a way to describe what it felt like, and I have come up empty. As I stumbled away from my house I heard pictures falling from the walls inside, and glass soda bottles clinking together and falling to the floor. I was joined in the yard by several employees that hadn’t left for home yet, my father, and a team of short term volunteers from North America. I remember the scared look on my housekeeper, Mme Felician’s, face. Her three children, friends of mine, were students in Port-au-Prince. The next few days are like a scratched DVD. Some moments are completely skipped over, like hours of the story are just missing. Others are frozen: sitting with my dog late at night trying to ignore the aftershocks and go to sleep as he trembles in fear next to me, standing with my plate frozen in my hand as tears role down my cheeks and my father tells me Mme Felician’s children were crushed under their home, staring at a picture of the fallen Presidential Palace a place I had been weeks earlier, and finally my father telling me there was no way in hell he would let his little girl go into Port-au-Prince right now. The final image came after my pleading to accompany the emergency medical response team that was preparing to leave. I had translated for several medical clinics and was convinced that I could be of help to this one. My father got his way and after watching my dear friend, a Physician’s Assistant, struggle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as a consequence of her involvement, I can’t help but admit he made the right choice, though I still deeply regret not being of a direct help to those who were suffering not far from me.
In the first days after the earthquake, my parents were consumed with two missions, organizing emergency response efforts, and evacuating thirty North American short term volunteers. On January 16, I loaded onto a large caged truck with these volunteers. I was devastated to be leaving, but my parents convinced me that my presence on the trip was very important, as I was the only translator. Other than the driver I was the only one who had ever made the trip before. We were driving to Cap Haitian, in the north of Haiti, from Montrois. The trip took about nine hours, on bumpy mountain roads. It was an interesting experience in many ways. My job of translating caused others to look to me in a way that adults rarely view teens. Once in Cap Haitian, our group boarded a small charter plane and flew to Florida. I spent the next several months living and attending school in Pennsylvania. My parents had moved to Port-au-Prince in order to be a part of the relief efforts.
I returned to Haiti in June, almost six months to the day after I left. Life has changed in many ways for me. I now live in the still shell shocked city of Port-au-Prince. I am attending a different school, and as I drive along familiar routes every day, I see toppled buildings and rubble blocking side streets. Some of the rubble has been cleared away, exposing minimally damaged foundations, symbols of Haiti, broken, but not destroyed. Around the dinner table, our conversation revolves around what is constantly in the back of everyone’s mind; the buildings being rebuilt, communities being restored, to keep feelings of helplessness at bay. As we walk down the street, we feel camaraderie; we are all still here. We are picking up our heads. Ayiti, land of mountains, trodden on for years has yet to be shattered. My adoptive patria is proving its resilience.