“Tell Them I’m Still Here” ~ Remembering 1/12/10

“Mommy, Are These Real People?”

My daughter’s eyes were fixed on the red letters that flashed at the bottom of the TV screen: CNN.

I was glued to the couch, watching Andersen Cooper broadcasting the news from Haiti.

Here and again a reporter would put a microphone near someone’s mouth. The person—a Haitian—would say something in Kreyòl; a disembodied voice would give a creative translation that was nothing like what the person had said.

“No. No. That’s not what the person said.” I would shake my head. My mouth was dry. My eyes burned from not sleeping. I could not stop watching.  My daughter wanted to understand. She wanted to understand why I was suddenly so interested in the television—something I had banished to some corner of the house.

 

 

I agonized about allowing my little girl to watch the people wandering around Port-au-Prince with tragedy drawn on their faces like massive Ash-Wednesday crosses.

The blood and mud looked like old play-dough. I thought my daughter was far young to see these graphic images. I told myself she would have nightmares. Watching this horror would transform her. She is only five years old.

Five year-old children in Haiti are different; they’re older somehow. Surely there’s some type of math that would substantiate this, particularly when you factor in a 7.0 quake, 30 plus aftershocks, and the estimated number of casualties. The story developing in Mommy’s country now is a must-see. It’s an epic blockbuster.

I sat my daughter down next to me. She watched intently a pre-recorded news segment which showed dazed and dusty people wandering about aimlessly.  The bad thing had just happened.

There were no bandages to cover the scary playdough on survivors’ eyes, arms, legs. There were no shrouded human forms in the middle of the street—not yet. The heaps of half-dressed mannequins with muddy hair and missing limbs had yet to be piled in wheelbarrows and dump trucks.

“Mommy, are those real people?” my daughter was confused, incapable suddenly of making a basic distinction. She blinked hard, adjusting her eyes.

“They are real people,” I explained. “They are real as you and I are.”

A man walked across the screen with a baby in his arms. The baby looked like an antique doll that had fallen off a shelf and lost a few parts.

“Is that little baby sick, Mommy?” my daughter wanted to know.

“Yes, the little baby is sick.” The truth would have to be rationed carefully– told in increments — over time.

“How can we help them? Do you think they need snacks? And juice boxes? Do you thing we can give them each a Happy Meal? And then they’ll be ok, right?”

“This will take a little more than snacks and juice boxes, honey. Not even a Happy Meal will fix this one.”

Katia D. Ulysse ~ February 12, 2010

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Leslie Sauray’s “Untitled”

As the ashes clear and we move away rubble
you see my people still standing, still running
even if we stumble.

We’ve been down worse roads
We have broken many chains
Shaky grounds have been around
Long before the earthquakes came

The after shocks are the souls
of those in the after life
trying to wake us all up
so we can continue to fight

The te. . . levision can’t show
the smell and the screams
So you only got a small picture
even on a big screen

1/28/10