The first time I heard the
name was in high school. My English teacher was flying there to adopt a child.
At the time I just thought of it as another less fortunate country, one of
many. When he came back he talked about how the streets were very crowded, full
of people without a purpose, clamoring for anything, reaching for everything.
His new son was very sick; barely a year old and already a host to diseases and
parasites. It would take a second year to heal him. After that I didn’t hear
the name again for years, until an earthquake struck.
There were many articles and
broadcasts about the unfortunate incident. The one that struck me was a camera
panning across a crowded sidewalk where people sat and lay, as if waiting for a
bus. They calmly clutched at broken or severed limbs, but none of them wept or
cried out. They just waited, as airlines carried so many broken passengers to Europe and North America, where they could be treated. But they would be
brought back. Once their wounds were treated, and their bodies healed, they
would be brought back to Haiti, to begin rebuilding their broken
homes.
