Evacuation

Despite a week full of announcements to "get ready, we're leaving!" we never really felt "ready" to leave Haiti. Every day we didn't go was filled with opportunities to reach out, facilitate, deliver a few necessities, practice hands-on love and care. However Friday night, Patrick received another call from the orphanage. Eighty of the 135 children had secured visas, and 30 more were being processed. Arrangements were being made for a military airlift out the next day for those children, and follow-up flights would be scheduled to take the rest as more visas were secured in days to come. Thus Saturday morning we woke early, packed bags, hugged good-byes for the 4th time in a week and took off into the streets as the sun chased away the last remnants of night. In truth, we weren’t convinced it would be our last day in Port-au-Prince. We’d been fooled before. But Haiti has long ago prepared us to expect every possibility.

We found the orphanage a buzz with activity as children were washed and clothed, little arms marked with their names, and nannies hugged the children who had so long been under their care. By all appearances, it seemed that all were ready to proceed directly to the airport once the departure time arrived. That morning we welcomed news that we had received a visa for a little girl named Valancia, who had been matched with us as our new daughter. We would be going back to the States as a family of four.

With several hours before our scheduled departure, we stopped by to see Silvia and her family. They still were sleeping outside at night, but engaging in regular activities around their still-standing home during the day. With hugs and tears we promised to see each other soon, encouraged each other to Kembe fem, and parted. We drove by the camps of a few other friends in our neighborhood, letting them know we'd be gone for a little while, but back again soon. Our gracious Haitian friends seemed happy for us. I felt almost embarrassed at their selfless celebrations on our behalf, smiles for our safety to be ensured, our families to be reunited with. No one said, "take us with you." After together surviving the earthquake and slipping into the support, survival and problem-solving mode of life that followed, I couldn't help resenting a little our decision and freedom to escape to the land of milk and honey, leaving our friends behind. We gave away what we had left, a tool to one family, a pile of medicines to another, clean water for a pastor to distribute, a few dollars to another to help his community find and buy food. We passed it all out knowing it only bought them a few hours or at most days. We read in their eyes thanks for the Band-Aids we brought them, knowing that there was no long-term solutions in our pockets that day. But swimming with the fatigue in the eyes of our friends and partners always, consistently was resilience.

We headed to the Coconut Villa—a small hotel in our neighborhood that had stood to the earthquake and was rewarded by floods of reporters, cameramen and aid crews crowding its rooms and meeting in its restaurant. There we joined a CONASPEH meeting with Felix from Global Ministries. As Felix brought news of the prayers and support flooding in from partners in the States and abroad, CONASPEH shared its vision for the future. Amidst this sharing, Patrick’s phone rang alerting us to head to the orphanage as evacuation was imminent. Tears sprung loose as the sudden reality of what was coming to pass struck. Hugs goodbye. Our partners left us with the phrase, “M ap tann w” or "I’m waiting for you.” As we walked away, heaviness fell alongside feelings of desertion. Yes, we had to go. It was necessary for our family. We’d be back. Our work was only beginning. But the reassuring did little to deflect the guilt, to slow the tears.

The Cosmos has a sense of humor. As we drove out of the parking lot of the Cocunt Villa, through puffy eyes I saw a vaguely familiar face. “There’s Geraldo,” my voice said as my brain suddenly registered.

Who? Geraldo.

Patrick threw the car into park, jumped out with camera in hand (amazingly purpose-driven after our fog of tears and goodbyes), approached the TV celeb strangely out of place in our island neighborhood, and unabashedly asked for a photo. One of the 475,000 reasons I love my husband.

Really, all things considered, no less bizarre and random than most events in our lives as of late. As we pulled out into the streets, now all smiles and laughter, Patrick turned to me and said, “I think its going to be a good day.”
Valancia and Mom

At the orphanage, we were handed our new daughter. There was barely time to celebrate. We hadn’t allowed ourselves to hope in advance, told hardly a soul about the shred of a possibility of expanding our family ahead of planned time. And yet here she was, in my arms. I let this tiny waif of a child—the same age as Solomon but ½ the weight due to severe malnutrition—curl herself into my arms and rest her head on my shoulder; my heart was instantly hers. A good day indeed.

With 80 children and a team of accompanying adults, we filed onto an old school bus, sitting 3 or more to a seat. As the bus pulled out, nannies waved with tears in their eyes while the children left behind either watched in amusement or continued their games. My own disbelief of true evacuation began to dissolve. With Valencia on my shoulder and Solomon on my knee, Patrick attending to 3 tiny children in the seat next to mine, I watched the familiar streets and activity of Port-au-Prince pass by my bus window. The older kids on the bus sang as a soothing reassurance to the little ones scared at this loud mass transit. Volunteers passed out water and soothed babies. We were on the move.
Entering the Belly of the Whale

We arrived to the airport and were greeted by a host of American military personnel. We sat on the bus for a while waiting for the plane to ready. Soldiers dressed in grey camouflage escorted tiny Haitian orphans with well-hydrated and full bladders to port-a-potties nearby. Eventually our time to board the plane arrived. One-by-one we filed off the bus, each adult with several children in hand, and were counted by a dozen officials as we entered the belly of the huge military cargo plane and took seats along the walls or on the floor.
Strapping In For The Ride
Grabbing our "seats" for the journey

Once kids were strapped into side seats or positioned on the floor, other Haitian Americans filed in, filling in the spaces until the plane was shoulder-to-shoulder, foot-to-back full with evacuees. We then all sat as minutes turned to hours as one head count after another was foiled by restlessly moving children, grandmothers emerging from the latrine or shifting bodies as legs needed to be stretched and backs adjusted. After 2 hours, diapers started filling, children got antsy, and I started reconsidering my hope in departure. A role-call commenced to solve the problem of bobbing heads and moving bodies that complicated a simple procedural step.
Head Count

When all aboard were finally counted, the engines roared. The children covered their ears with both hands, half looking excited and the others a little terrified. As the huge beast of a plane accelerated with great force, we all leaned forward, cradling several children in our arms, while our abdominals flexed, our backs cramped and our stomachs lurched.
Sleep Where You Can

Patrick and I put on our happy faces, reassuring all the kids that this is what an airplane feels like, these are normal sounds, the normal dips and shakes and that WOW wasn’t this fun! Truth is, turbulence feels like an earthquake. Even our traumatized brains needed a little convincing.
Human Tetris

After awhile the aching in our backs required a change in position, so most seated passengers turned to a more horizontal position, fitting bodies together like puzzle pieces in a great human carpet across the floor of the plane. We lay with feet in faces, elbows in ribs, legs intertwined, children lying in the crooks of knees and arms. We passed the time with hand jives and songs, jokes and stories told. Kids asked us questions about strange places like Colorado, Nebraska, or Kansas, about the schools there, about snow. Fun was balanced by diaper blowouts and the massive diaper changing operations to follow. Nerves and parasitic infestation got the best of most tots, and soon diaper supplies were running low and the toxic gas level became choking. After finally (mercifully) landing in Florida, Patrick joked with a Lieutenant upon exiting " it might be cheaper to burn the plane than to clean it"
EVERYONE on diaper duty

We landed in Sanford/Orlando International Airport and stepped out into the cool (fresh) air. A team of customs agents, TSA officals and Red Cross volunteers greeted us. They escorted us into a waiting room equipped with snacks, drinks, toys, hygiene kits, diapers, and medical volunteers. Good-natured customs agents handled each tiny traveler with patience and humor as 80 children ran and toddled about. Army soldiers volunteered time to watch and play with kids. Photos and fingerprints were taken, files reviewed. We passed 14 long hours in that waiting room, not knowing how long the process would take or when we’d have to figure out the next step. As hours wore into deep night, sleep didn’t come easily. Cold, over-stimulated kids cried or giggled their way around sleep. We huddled together unknowing, but safe. Up most of the night like everyone else, Solomon entertained us by pushing people in wheelchairs, high-fiving army soldiers, and making mad dashes for the TSA barriers.

Medical teams worked their way through the group, evaluating each and every child looking for ways they could intervene in the present or plan for care upon arrival in the destination city. Not surprisingly, we met great concern and anxiety over baby Valancia and her chronically starved body. They pressured Patrick and I to allow for direct admission to the hospital upon arriving home. Understanding their concern but also recognizing how well she was doing despite the odds, we made concessions, too tired to try to make assertions on what we thought but couldn’t prove.

Night eventually yielded to morning, the time realized only by our watches as no sunrise was observed through windowless walls. Volunteers nurtured the adults with coffee, the children with milk and juice. We were then informed that the State of Colorado was flying all the CCAI children to Denver and their process would be finished upon landing. Exhausted, we gratefully boarded the United Airlines 747, delighting in the cramped cabin seats well stocked with pillows, blankets and amenities galore. I'll forever be grateful for the first-class treatment and TLC provided that morning by the crew. The children were treated like royalty.

We landed in Colorado after a 4 hour flight that felt luxurious and pampered compared to our military evac the day before. A bank of cameramen met us as we departed the plane, children cradled in our arms. Exhausted, we fell into the arms of waiting friends and family, handing over our welfare to people we have loved for a long time. Arrival at long last. Reunions. Tears. Relief.

Through the course of our evacuation, we felt so surreal playing the role of the “evacuee,” the recipient of my nation’s “good will.” Exhausted and numb, we sat and RECEIVED the kindness of military evacuation personnel, gifts of the Red Cross Volunteer’s efforts, thanking them for hygiene packs, fresh water and snacks, diapers and changes of clothes for the children. Strangers offered their services, their homes, their care to us if needed. For a year and a half we have been the giver of services, the relievers of pain, the volunteer response to need. Now, we sat with palms open. Humbling. Disorienting. Thankfully the incredible fatigue dulled the feelings of guilt that it was US being coddled on a late Saturday night despite the fact that millions of others in more dire straights huddled under tents around crumbling walls in a city we had just waved good-bye to.

Believe it or not, it is humbling and a little hard to be the recipient of charity. If given the option, we’d all be self-reliant. Without the option, you are grateful but at the expense of a little pride. I thought of the people of Haiti, so long the “receivers” of charity whether needed or assumed, the complexity of their situation and identity is now a little more clear to me.
Smooches

Valancia was treated in a top-of-the-line, no-expense-spared Children’s Hospital in Denver upon our arrival. Imagine my stunned disbelief as the nurse took me through an orientation to our room: plasma screen TV with Play Station, 24-hour room-service, laundry services, hot showers, gift-bag full of toys as well as the multi-specialty medical services Valancia would receive. In addition to her medical team, dieticians, therapists, “life specialists” and any other service Valancia might need were all a simple request away. We were visited by the hospital administrator who welcomed us and assured us of our privacy from reporters, the kind maintenance man who introduced himself before checking to see if all services were running smoothly, nurses who advocated for Valancia and her tiny, un-stickable veins, and a housekeeper who made sure we had fresh towels morning and night.

How foreign this place of all-options-available felt. How funny the staff seemed washing their hands 3 times in one visit, masking, gloving and gowning before touching my sweet little girl, for fear of the foreign infectious microbes she might pass on to their hands and clothes. This used to be my world. This used to be my frame of reference. And suddenly I felt more than ever like a refugee.

The medical team of students, residents and attending bantered in front of us about all the possibilities that could be complicating Valancia’s well-being, seemingly ignoring the fact that she was a fighter, a survivor, that she breathed, ate voraciously, drank, and SMILED in front of them despite her bony arms and swollen belly. My view that she was doing remarkably well given her severe malnutrition and likely belly-full of parasites seemed too simplistic. So much comes from frame of reference. And I’d like to think that we all learned a little from each other.

We were visited by a few hospital staff who had just arrived back after a medical mission trip to Haiti post-quake, who sat with us, loved on Valancia and shared impressions of their life-changing week in Port-au-Prince. It was good to be with people we had so recently worked with in Haiti, who so recently experienced what it felt like to be living in the place others were reporting about. In that surreal, sterile environment, they helped ground us by shared experiences.

After a night in the hospital, all tests have been deemed reassuring, and Valancia will soon be released. Our friends and family are waiting. We've had all camping in our hospital room, attending to our needs, running errands, entertaining Mr. Solomon and giving much needed hugs and support. Now we pack our bags, ready to head to the home of friends and start the first days of our healing.... through nutrition and medication, conversation and meditation, laughter and tears, noise and quiet, through love.
Family of Four

Thank you to all those who worked tirelessly calling their state representatives, harassing Senators and Congressman, advocating on our behalf and on behalf of the thousands of Haitian orphans with families waiting to receive them. Thank you for prayers, for sending money to organizations equipped to quickly respond, for faith and support in the organization of CONASPEH and its dreams and determination to rise up from the dust like a phoenix from the ash. Thank you for reading, listening, watching, and thinking about Haiti and the incredible people that make up such a dynamic country. With or without us, the Haitian people will persevere, will rise-up, will survive and rebuild their lives. We are honored and lucky to be invited to accompany, to stand in solidarity, to hold hands in this moment in history. May we, as outsiders, define ourselves well through honoring and respecting our Haitian brothers and sisters in all we do, all we give, all we receive. For life has chapters to teach, the work has just begun and the adventure continues.