The soccer field at College Ste. Pierre
I saw people living under plastic, cloth, and canvass tents and shelters and, literally, hundreds of thousands of people living like that (everywhere). A thousand people grouped together in a tent community is called a sit (pronounced see-t and meaning at least 1000 people or more living together in tents). You see tents and sits everywhere as they fill streets and any open area in which the multitudes of refugees can find a place to survive. The impact of these tent communities is indescribable as they define a post January 12th Haitian landscape.
I stood beside the ruins of College Ste. Pierre with hundreds of people living on its soccer field, kids playing jump rope, a group of men and boys huddled around an outside TV watching soccer, and a young girl on a bed under a tree with a leg that has been operated on twice in the past three weeks. I stood in prayer for the future of this high school with two Haitian priests, Millie, Mary Balfour, and Phil with the stench of death still emanating from the ruins; but I simply can’t describe what I was feeling and sensing at that moment – it was powerful and challenging.
Evening in P-au-P
As we left what used to be Holy Trinity School (the site has now been totally reduced to a sea of rubble that is being removed), Pere Val drove us toward the City Center and the waterfront. The sun was setting and the orange glow produced an other-worldly effect as it filtered through the dust that hangs over the city. The streets were filled with trash, fires slowly burning, people – everywhere people - and lined with buildings collapsed, crumbling, and just waiting to fall. I have never seen anything like this and I simply can’t describe it, the pain of the people is palpable.
On the ride home we skirted an enormous slum called Cite Soleil. First the sights, the sounds, the smells, the hardship and suffering, the masses of people and then came the feelings that welled-up within me (and also in those who were with me). As we drove home thinking about the day, Pere Val’s refrain, “oh my God – oh my God”, echoed through the Land Rover and our hearts. Then he said: “I never expected to see anything like this in my life and in my country.” I don’t think I can describe what I was thinking or feeling at that moment. +TJ
