High Tide Low Tide

After 3 weeks of extreme tiredness, 2 weekends spent in bed and more dizzy spells, I visited the MSF hospital in Leogane today. I was reluctant to go for various reasons and didn’t want to admit I was unwell, you have to be strong and resistant here, no place for the weak!

The gates opened onto the MSF hospital, a series of containers and tents set up around sheltered waiting areas. People sat on wooden benches, staring into space or at the water tanks and hand written instructions: “wash your hands here”. You can clearly see the different sections of the hospital, gynecology and midwifery, pharmacy, physiotherapy, lab and emergencies. I could walk, talk and look after myself and didn’t think I qualified as an emergency. Outside the emergency doors, surrounded by ropes and wires hanging from the metal roof about 10 people are waiting. A couple of women are weeping and groaning under the pain. One holds her head in her hands and hits her head screaming that it’s hurting inside. I walk around the container, walk passed the crowded bedrooms with their open windows, the sheetless beds and their lack of privacy, I’m trying to find someone to talk to and check where I should wait. I finally find a doctor, Haitian, very handsome with almond shaped eyes, he is busy on his blackberry but lets me know he won’t be long. I wait. He tells me this is the right place for me, I need to sit down and wait, he will come over and examine me. I wait again and look at the hanging ropes and wires, trying to work out what they are for. MSF Hospital, raw necessities, low resources, they have to be drip holders.

A very frail and thin old man walks towards the door, he is carrying a young boy in a school uniform, the young boy is asleep or comatose, I’m not sure. He lays him on the bench and quietly waits. No one approaches them to find out what’s wrong. They wait and I feel an urge to go, I’m just tired, I’m not hurt, I don’t need to be here. One of the cleaning ladies tells us that doctors can’t examine patients on a chair or bench, they have to be seen on a bed and all beds are full. I don’t need a bed and I tell my colleague I can go home, I’m fine, just tired, someone else will need the bed more than I do. As I’m ready to leave, the handsome Haitian doctor invites me into the emergency room. He shows me to bed number  1, stuck in the corner, next to a half naked old lady who is panting and groaning. The bed is a basic metal frame with a mattress and a sheet of linoleum on top of it. It’s shimmering, sign that it has been freshly wiped. The doctor goes to a bucket of water, washes his hands, squirts antiseptic gel and starts the examination. He tries to pull the green curtain made out of various bits of material, it still doesn’t close completely and worries about it, I tell him it’s fine. He has a soft and warm voice and carries on the examination. He runs his hand on my stomach, my arms and makes casual conversation. He needs to listen to my lungs and asks permission to unhook my bra. I let him do so and notice that he is struggling and for less than a second I’m getting a sense of comedy within the situation. I breathe in and out a couple of times and it’s time to re-hook the bra. I try to do it but he insists in doing it. He does get the two pieces together and as he finishes the task I feel the elastic pinching my skin,  he moans and says “ouch” as he catches his finger in one of the hooks. He then adds, “I’m not very good at doing these things, it’s on the first hook.” Pats me on the back and I nod to show I’m fine, I don’t mind, but I’m hiding a smile, I really want to laugh. The most intimate moment I’ve had for weeks is on a piece of linoleum, in an overcrowded field hospital, a slight fantasy emanates from the situation and in my dizziness I try and wipe it away fast. The fantasy vanishes as he tells me one of my lungs is weak and he sends me for xray and more tests. Blood is drawn out after 3attempts, all needles being too thick. I’m given the tricky but hilarious task to pee in a tiny ziplock bag (smaller than my hand). I call onto my flexibility to achieve the contortionist’s like task in a non lit toilet and just about remember not to hold the bag between my teeth whilst I get dressed again.  Then there is the xray and who says lungs says chest and who says chest says breasts and who says breasts says 3 young Haitian doctors lined up in front of me, mumbling in creole as I undress and hug the cold slab. I’m ready and one of them says: “ do something with your hair” now that’s another challenge for flexibility I don’t want to move, I don’t have an elastic band…I look at them and ask for a pen which I use as a hairpin to fix my hair. The challenge over I go back to the emergency room where I am summoned to go back on the linoleum sheet until I get the results. I look around, the young comatose boy is not in the room. He is outside and has regained consciousness, he is walking. One of the weeping ladies laughed with me at the lab, she is in pain but will be able to walk home. It’s an incredible place, it does not look like a hospital from the outside but doctors and nurses are professional all the way and real efforts are made to attend the patients with respect, even when there is a long wait and white faces around to jump the queue. 4 hours later and after thorough examination, the doctor finally diagnoses me with a general burn out, a drop in my blood count and a weak lung. He prescribes vitamins and a week off, I know I will get the vitamins but not the latter.

Peace and vitamin filled hugs to you all!

Was it 4 am or 5 am when I was woken up by people chanting outside our window?

Half dreaming I listened to their voices, warm, powerful, singing about love, life and God. I listened and my dreams took me to another place, a place where people spoke Spanish and a female voice whispered to me “they’re crying because they don’t want her to cry”…I fell back to sleep, feeling the light on my face and woke up blinded by the 7 o’clock sun, I thought about that sentence whispered to me in Spanish by a voice I didn’t know with a meaning I didn’t understand.

Today was January 12th, the anniversary of the earthquake that ripped Haiti apart 2 years earlier. People had been chanting for their deads, it was now quiet outside. As quiet as it is at 7am, goats bleating, roosters singing, neighbours sweeping the dirt path, morning greetings. Quieter than usual. People were mourning the 500 000 that perished 2 years ago, they wouldn’t go to work today, they would spend the day remembering the unforgettable day that was January 12th 2010. Haitians always refer to it with exact details using the exact date even the exact time. They will start their story with “On January 12th 2010, I was…”, “On the day of the catastrophe, January 12th 2010, I was…”, “The 12th of January 2010, the day of Goudougoudou, I was…” It’s never referred to less.

Memorials bear the date and the time. Memories bear the date and the time, and all Haitians know that in less than 40 seconds their lives changed. One second they were and now they are. Now they are, what are they? They are People with amazing resilience who go through life with closed facial expressions, empty looks, chagrined eyes, severe composure. Who seem so very distant and impossible to befriend. People who wake up everyday and pray hoping that God will hear their prayers. People who out of all the surrounding chaos are humble and dignified. People who take pride in cleaning the path outside their tents, wooden shelters and makeshift homes. People who labour hard before sunrise and after sunset to be able to feed their children and friends. People who are always impeccably dressed despite the lack of running clear water, the very dusty tracks and the exhausting heat.

It takes one smile and one word for their facial expressions to soften, their looks to fill up with light, their eyes to shine and the composure to relax. One smile, one word, is all I can give to them. It took one minute of silence at the dance club tonight for the room to be filled with emotions and for us to remember the 500 000 deads. We stood up, remembering them and remembering one of the dancers.  In the same silence and with the same respect, they played bachata, Aventura’s obsession. I felt my legs twitching to the rhythm and happiness. I looked around and saw people crying, in communion, embracing each other. Pain is still visible, trauma is still present under their skin, underneath their solemn look and despite joyful tunes.

 We sat, watching, letting the music take over our thoughts, minds and emotions. I felt the song, I felt shivers down my spine when I saw the picture of this once talented dancer, now far away from the music and the dance floor he was so passionate about. A voice said “we have to carry on being courageous, we are not here to cry, but remember, music is life!” and Celia Cruz’s Rie y llora (laugh and cry) filled the room, they danced, I danced, we remembered January 12th 2012.

I am still wondering whose voice it was and the meaning of it.

Hugs and music to you all!

Today I flew from Haiti to Miami and am experiencing the expected reverse culture shock. As we were approaching the ground, I saw cars going fast in orderly lines on perfectly straight roads, I saw skyscrapers towering over the sea, I saw roofs, I saw walls, I saw fences, I saw Welcome to Miami Florida!

Once in South Beach, on Collins Avenue,  I saw legs, perfect legs, perfect female legs, scarless, smooth, pain free, healthy and fit. I tried not to look, I tried not to go back to what hurts. I went further on and I saw more legs, more toned, more tanned, more perfect and I saw my legs. Scars on display, misshaped, assymetrical, painful and disgracious. And my reality hit me…

People’s looks linger shyly or obviously on my right leg, heads turn, arms are pinched, eyes stop on what I no longer want to hide like it’s a problem. A problem it’s not, a hurdle it is. It seems they can’t get passed this hurdle, when I can.

I see legs, bare legs in shorts, bare legs in skirts, legs, beautiful legs and I’m curious to know what it feels like to be able to move freely, to run after your friends, to jump up and down, to sit cross legged, to dance all the steps you wish, to jog…Now I’m curious to know what those lingering eyes think when they see my legs…Disgust? Surprise? Repugnance? Nothing?

This year I turned 30 and I had to finally face my reality, the one that I tried changing through surgeries, through sports, through massages. The one reality I can’t change but the one I can challenge. In January I consulted again for surgery or for a better prosthesis, I even consulted a plastic surgeon for reconstruction and remodeling and was about to do it, but instead of that, I lived a dream within my reality. I lived a dream, I went on a wonderful trip to South America. In Rio, capital of beauty and amazing plastic, I wore shorts for the first time in so long that I can’t remember and I walked with my new prosthesis. For the first time I let it be on pictures, finally after 30 years of my leg caught and strapped.I walked and hiked to some of the most breathtaking sites. In Colombia I painted my fake toe nails funky colours. In Patagonia, walking down to El Chalten, with the sun on my back, I ran and I felt light, I felt free, I felt liberated and happy.

Miami, Lincoln Road where people try to look more perfect than perfection, where women look down at my leg with their blown up fake lips and balloonesque breasts, I felt embarrassed, I felt out of place because I haven’t tried harder to make it look better…Because it will never look better, nothing will change it, only I can work harder on accepting it.

During the South American adventures, I met another French girl of my age, disabled from birth too and in very simple words she stated a truth “You seek acceptance but you never fully accept the handicap”, our truth.

I guess this goes for those lingering eyes too, I have to accept them, even if they still hurt, will I ever?

Tomorrow, December 31st, I’ll be ready to celebrate my 31st birthday in Cartagena.

Back in Latin America, “un pueblo sin piernas pero que camina”

Happy New Hugs for the New Year!

Motionless, I stayed overwhelmed, wearing his face on my t-shirt, I was now looking at him in the coffin. A white coffin, with white inner lining and ruffles. Him, wearing his black Sunday suit, a different colour, bloodless, eyes closed, lips sealed. His bright look a memory, his honest and warm smile haunting me.

On the right hand side of the room, women in white, on the left hand side of the room, women in black. All around, family and friends, male and female, mourning. Some standing close to him, some sitting in silence, some crying. I step in the room next to the makeshift church. The crying, the weeping, the screaming, the yelling, the imploring all sound too violent and make me  take a step out. I walk a few meters and back up the stairs, shake hands with women too weak to lift their arms, too chagrined to sustain my sympathetic look.

I am the only white woman. I sit down and start feeling dizzy, dizzy from the putrid and sour smell, distressed by the pain expressed in this small room, the rage, the praying and the begging. From awful moments of silence where one can guess tears being shed to overwhelming screams of panick, I’m losing strength. After 20 minutes, the funeral hasn’t yet started, a band starts playing, two, four, six notes and the cries intensify, women start convulsing, women fall on the floor, lingering screams take over…I am shattered, I am crying. I’m told I can go out. I’m outside, motionless again. Prostrate, staring at the scene, not understanding the protocol. Staring at people taking pictures and filming the wake. Staring at my colleagues, all wearing the same t-shirt with his portrait on, their moves giving his face  expressions never to be seen again.

The coffin is taken to the makeshift church alongside another coffin and the mass starts amongst the noise, the tears and in front of sleeping homeless people whose shelter is the church. After the chaos of the ceremony, we follow the coffin down to a beautiful strong tree and we leave for the family house, a set of small USAID shelters. In the center of the courtyard, a metallic bowl with leaves, water and soap, where people inorderly queue up to dip their hands in. Several family members are scattered around the courtyard, sitting on chairs. We go around to give them a kind word and present condoleances. More young women fall and roll in the dust, men try to hold and restrain their stiff seizing bodies, powerless against their pain.

I meet his wife. The lady who 18 days ago stood outside our gate crying, impotent facing the news. His daughter is sat on her lap, I shake their hands and the little girl caresses my left cheek and says “tu es belle”, I feel a lump in my throat, I feel my heart beat faster, I feel the ground slipping under my feet and I feel hope. Here to consolate her, she consolates me with her smile, I feel hope in her beautiful bright eyes, in her honest and warm smile.

Hope and love to you all.

I don’t seem to be able to write lately, overwhelmed by the last weeks of intense digging into my box of resilience. Once as strong as the old leather and wooden trunk kept by my mother in her bedroom my box recently felt as fragile and small as a worn out purse.

Like my mother’s old wooden trunk, my box had different compartments, it was deep and often seemed bottomless. As a little girl, I would play with the trunk, carefully undo the first drawer, always too heavy for me to lift up, I had to give it a few failed attempts before being successful. I’d set it next to me on the floor, and I’d go through it. Small bits of material with flowery patterns, ribbons, lace, wool, half knitted jumpers, sewing magazines that I’d unfold, open, touch and enjoy looking at. Done with the first drawer I’d have to dive into the trunk to reach the next and proceed to the same inspection. Sometimes finding larger pieces of material and day dreaming of an outfit, day dreaming…thinking of designs for my dolls…And I would stand up, dive further down, struggle a bit more to lift and drag out the next drawer and engage in the same activity. I don’t remember how many drawers there were, enough to keep me entertained and enough for my mother to store a whole load of things, leaving it too heavy for one person to lift it. I often couldn’t manage to close it at the end, because I ruffled and misplaced its content.

My box of resilience used to be just like that, full of resources, small options and larger alternatives, always full. I’d struggle a little to drag something comforting out of it, I’d contemplate it and move forward. This time, I dug deep into it, I felt I was being swallowed by it, I almost decided to close it and not open it again, at least not for now, not like that.

Almost.

I couldn’t close it, too small to handle the recent events and incidents, I had to look further, deeper.

An alternative is usually to write, but I can’t seem to write anymore, finding my words too raw and not finding my words at all.

Another option may be to wait and learn to be patient.

Patience and hugs to you all!

Duality is what shapes Haiti. Duality of the rich and the poor, of the white expat community and the black local community, found in what’s public and private, in the plains and the mountains, in people who are suffering and people who are providing relief., the literates and the illiterates, in the spiced meals and the oversweet juices.

The most tangible duality to me is the coexistence of  life and death. They are alongside each other and not in continuity of the other.

In people’s eyes, in their well chosen words, in their demeanour, in their believes, in their experience.

Driving to a paradise like beach, you take a turn and you find a coffin maker, working on a Sunday afternoon with children around, upbeat music being played on the radio and drinking beer…

Through town when struggling to find signs and landmarks, some of the best kept buildings are morgues, with big bright letters painted on the perfectly straight walls, spelling out a word “morgue”…

Going out to celebrate someone’s return, the only lights in the streets will be the ones of the funeral chamber where a white coffin is layed out under the lights for people to show their last respect…

Visiting schools, surrounded by joyful children, armed with a smile and with cheeky eyes a young boy says his father’s house is nearby, only that his father is dead and the house is down…

Relaxing after work and chatting with a colleague with laughter all around, a colleague asks if my father is dead, he is asking and saying his father passed away and a few seconds later laughs about a silly joke mentioned on the other side of the table…

Voodoo celebrations  are the scene for warm hearting songs and togetherness when they celebrate dead spirits…

A duality we are too well aware of but that my culture hides and makes its mention awkward and scary. A reality we like to forget or ignore through artifices, superficial activities or pleasures. A reality that you can touch at any given moment here, drip fed into your consciousness in all its ugliness and in all your moments of happiness artificial, superficial or pleasurable.

A duality at times too tangible.

Love and tangible hugs to all.

When I arrived in Leogane I found myself desperately looking for houses, for people and for life. I was taken to rue Duval where people were out amongst debris, sand pits, broken houses and makeshift shelters. The street was heaving. Adults children and babies were out in the dark gathered around oil lamps and candles in big white plastic buckets. In an environment that resembled the chaos of a war where a bomb has landed, lives were being lived.

This would not be my street.

My street is a dirt track with many holes, puddles and rocks. My street is a dirt track far away from where I had seen lives being lived. My street is a dirt track through banana fields and luscious green trees. My street is a dirt track where friends and families play in the evening. My street is a dirt track where people wash in the stream, where children do their homework, where mothers hang their colourful laundry in the trees and where they live but I didn’t know it yet. Icouldn’t see this as I arrived in Leogane, it was dark and there was no electricity in the area. I felt the bumps, heard the songs of crickets and other insects, heard the strange roosters that sing after dark, heard the voodoo neighbours sing, heard screams. I heard and felt without seeing life outside the house. I saw the white walls of the house behind the barbed wires and the gate.

I was going to live in a house in a street with almost no other houses.

A huge white house with a small green roof, a porch, four bow windows, grids on the windows. It’s about everything I saw on that night. Inside the house was just as surprising, electricity thanks to batteries and a generator, running water thanks to water tanks and more than enough furniture. It looked like it came out of nowhere. Once in my bedroom I was hit by the weight of the furniture and the size of it. I’ve always lived in modest flats with second hand furniture and home built furniture, this was odd. In Haiti with better furniture than in Europe?

I had prepared myself to live it rough, to have little comfort and make do with it. It was part of the challenge. It seems that part of the challenge is to have more (we’ll always have more) than our neighbours, but to have more than we usually have? I wasn’t prepared for this much of a difference, a gap. A gap that can only make our presence resented and our aims misunderstood.

For a week and a half I only ever heard and felt Leogane after dark and felt a bleak gloomy shadow each time. I felt a dip in me and felt an overwhelming disgust. Tonight for the first time I saw Leogane, I heard it, felt it and shared with the neighbours after dark. Conversations in what sounded like old flowery French and creole brought many smiles on all our faces. Misunderstandings of words got us all to giggle without an end. Invitations to Church on the weekend made us all feel humble and the gap felt slightly bridged. At least for tonight.

Love from Leogane, a new home I’m trying to understand.

Touching ground in Haiti, I felt joy.

Setting foot in Petionville, I felt tired.

Walking in Laboule, I felt disoriented.

Hiking in Kenskoff, I felt happy.

Passing through Le Portail, I felt bewildered.

Going out of Port-au-Prince, I felt unsettled.

Arriving in Leogane, I felt confused.

Settling in in our big white office/home, unpacking the belongings and goods that fitted in two bags, I felt obscene after witnessing life out of our big white Defender’s window.

I spent 11 days, eating, drinking, sleeping , washing and working in Haiti, 11 days where I enjoyed way more than the 1.3 million displaced Haitians, way more than the 2 million Haitians affected by the earthquake 22 months ago.

Way more than most on this side of Hispaniola island.

Basic needs that are eating, drinking, sleeping, washing and working, needs that are a challenge for most here. We, the international community, the aid workers, the believers that small changes can turn into big changes, we aim towards those basic needs in our line of work. Or should I say business?

People ask me: “how is Haiti?” and I say “ok”, it’s not.

It’s a huge question mark, a constructed identity in a context as virtual as its money.

Addresses  you can never find, homes that are as weak as a tired breath, a market that has been destroyed by our presence, neighbours  who you will never get to meet for security reasons, roads that take more lives away than there are traffic lights, a culture, strong and rooted that you can only enjoy from your barricaded compound after dark, beaches  that can only be shared with other expats…A system that exists but how?

I’m in Haiti, Leogane, where my feelings, impressions and thoughts are as contrasted as what one experiences here.

“How is Haiti?” my answer is: “a question mark that will take a different shape over the next 9 months…

…or not…”

Love and virtual hugs to all

To be a good humanitarian you have to be flexible…

I am being flexible, so flexible I feel like a rubber band ready to snap because it’s been stretched far too many times for too many different purposes, reasons, circumstances…Maybe I got into this humanitarian relief career too late and after living under the heat of life the elastic band has started to melt, you can still stretch it but it’s fragile.

To show more flexibility I used a well known trick many use: lying. Yes lying can be pretty useful where you are about to snap, so I gave it a go.

I had to prepare for the next 12 months from Colombia, France and Wales, between work, a thriving social life and vaccinations, all under 3 weeks. I booked an expensive one way ticket to Belgium, was picked up by my father, drove to the village, didn’t sleep. The next day I had to continue the vaccination fun and faced a very abrupt and judgemental doctor who told me I was careless and not serious to have left vaccinations this late…yes, in order to get an appointment asap (I had 2 days in France)I used lie number 1: ‘I’m leaving the day after tomorrow for Haiti’ when really, I was only going to Wales on training but would be sent to Haiti straight after. I finally got vaccinated, got home, and didn’t sleep. The sleepless night was followed by a hectic day washing clothes, shopping for travel essentials, packing until the next day, another night jetlagged and unable to sleep. I finally slept in the car driving to the UK. And off I went to London to renew my passport, it would take up to 10 days, perfect I thought. And off I went to Wales. I had my final vaccinations there, no news from the consulate about the passport so I booked a weekend to France, but news from the hosting NGO in Haiti said that I could arrive later as they needed their staff to arrive before I did. Great I thought that would leave me more time in France but I would lose my return train ticket…

Once in Paris I thought of lie number 2: ‘I can’t travel on Monday because my new passport hasn’t arrived and I don’t have an ID card’ to which the eurostar officer said: ‘fine, you won’t need to buy a new ticket, but there’s one condition, you must show your new passport with the date as a proof when you wish to travel’ Now that was good news tainted with…bad news.

How could I produce the new passport in Paris when said passport was in London?

On the Wednesday, I went back to Paris and used lie number 3: ‘It says on the ticket I have to show the new passport however there was a misunderstanding, they sent it to the consulate in London’ to which the eurostar officer said: ‘that’s fine, do you have a VALID ID card’ and there I proudly presented my ID card. ‘May 2011, your card has expired’ she said. I had to be even more flexible here, could I carry on with lying or just come clear, I truly didn’t know my card had expired! ‘You can ask the police and see what they say, if they let you through or not, If so you can be on the next train’ the officer said. I’ll make it, I’ll make it to London. I shyly asked the French police and they let me through, sigh of relief up until I had to report to the British police and there it was a different story, they didn’t want to let me through. I looked around to ensure the French police wouldn’t notice what I was about to do…And discretely presented my old but still valid passport and I went through…

3 lies and the elastic band is still holding!

Love and elastic bands to all!

From Cartagena, Colombia, to Pensarn, Wales bordering the same ocean, closing a chapter and opening a new one. A chapter filled with doubts, train rides, long walks, new faces that would soon become lovely friends, cakes of all sorts, messed up emotions,  starchy food, security training, October’s sunny days and emergency training. Pensarn and its tiny train stop where you have to flag the train driver to get a ride, uncomprehensible roads signs, hitchhiker friendly drivers, fire loving regulars down the pub, steep hills, welsh walls and fluffy sheep. A chapter filled with the excitement of reaching a goal and nostalgia of being here one day and there the next, away from my roots, my happiness or my new found serenity.

This very same region of Wales had been our family’s holiday destination when we were kids. Walking along the beach, I remembered my brother and I digging what we called granny’s traps in the sand, I remembered the fish and chips down the pubs with our parents, the big 50 P coin mum would give us to buy a chocolate bar at the campsite’s shop and our endless bike rides up and down Roman roads in the middle of the green hills surrounded by sheep and red faced from the wind.  I didn’t have trouble making these memories fit into my backpack and suitcase, I would carry them everywhere with me, emergency or not. Weightless. They might not be as life saving as a door wedge, but they are as comforting as the few pictures I carefully selected and packed for the next year, as fulfilling as the books I took and as happy as the music I chose. When I look at the extensive checklist and when I feel crushed by the weight of the 20 odd kilos I carry on my back, I wonder why I constantly have to move and turn into a snail to carry on with my life ? I wonder if this will ever come in useful under security threats and if I’ll be able to reach for my grab bag filled with all life saving tools, if I’ll remember to follow safety measures, contingency plans etc…I sometimes feel  security trainings are like a baby’s blanket, you feel better with it but really when it comes to it, it’s just you and your instinct…the baby cries and we…run?

Ready for the new chapter to begin by the same ocean again, this time with a wooden home-made door wedge to fight all security threats and put a smile on my face when I see it.

Love and door wedges to all!