Yesterday Mom and I picked up a group of four fresh from the States. After leaving the trauma center that is the airport, we went immediately up to Gwo Jan with them. Mom did her whole tour spiel with details about the area we were passing through, which bypasses the city but goes past President Aristid's old house and an ancient sugar plantation which has been made into a museum, so there's lots to see on the way besides quake damage. The visitors are Lamont, a young man from Brooklyn, Pat and Dave, two art teachers from a college in Pennsylvania, and Diane, a pastor and advocate. Diane and Dave had visited Haiti before the quake and felt compelled to come again to see the country again now, and Lamont and Pat decided to come with them. They brought some big tents with them and set one up on some land not far from my parents' house, right beside the tents of the families who live there. The women who live there made a huge pot of tea on a small charcoal fire outside, so after the visitors' tent was set up, the local guys brought some benches for the growing crowd to sit around the pot of tea. By this time though, only Pat and Dave were awake, but they sat and talked to the group about why they had come to Haiti and what Haiti meant to them. Pat asked them to introduce themselves, and Woutson brought a candle out and lit it so each person could hold it as they introduced themselves because it was dark and the only light was the charcoal fire. Introductions were hilarious. It was hard for most to keep a straight face as they introduced themselves, because their neighbors and friends would tease them and laugh at them, and at times they wouldn't be able to talk for laughing so hard. After introductions, the candle was placed on a rock and the jokes started. Krik, Krak, tim tim, pwa sech. Then one of the matriarchs that was there, Margaret, said that everyone should stand and tell their own stories about what happened to them and where they were when the event happened on the 12th of January.
I can't retell all the stories they told here. Most of them didn't know what the heck was happening when the earth trembled beneath their feet and rattled the tin roofs over their heads. Some thought the world was ending, that those were their last moments. The stories that were the most horrendous were those told by the men who had been in Port-au-Prince during the earthquake. They saw so many deaths, so many horrible things. They had to step over body after body. They saw people stuck half in, half out of buildings, screaming. Just the fact that those two men recounting their stories could still walk around and talk normally after living through something like that is incredible.