Yesterday I made my third failed attempt to get to the epicenter in Port Au Prince. By failed, I mean my insistent requests for transportation to the center of town were denied in favor of more important things, like medical shipments and airport runs. Though I had traveled over 3 hours to get to Port Au Prince for this very purpose, I again had to accept that it just couldn't happen. I couldn't see the heart of the damage.
And it made me cry. Not because I didn't get my way, but because something inside me needs to see the crumpled palace, impassable roads, and piles of rocks where buildings once were. Something in me needs to see these images of destruction.
I'm not sure why. I've been seeing images of destruction ever since the quake. But the images I'm seeing are not the same as those that filled the screens of televisions in homes across the world.
No what I'm seeing are the blank faces--eyes on the floor, lips straight--of friends who talk again about the family they've lost: hurt. I'm seeing the little dance our laundry lady does when she asks me if I felt the latest tremor, and she alternates stomping her feet and shaking her fists back and forth: fear. And I'm seeing it in the wet cheeks and trembling chins of the men who pass in front of the church on Sundays: brokeness.
Though there aren't fallen buildings and tarp cities on La Gonave, these other images of the earthquake are forever etched in my mind. I will never forget walking into Merline's house and seeing her whole family lying on blankets under a tarp, hardly talking. And I'll always remember the faces of my English students as our room started to shake and they scurried under tables, one of them on his knees hugging a door frame.
But still something inside me is begging for more proof. Did this disaster really happen? Is it as bad as they say it is? In spite of all I know and have seen, part of my heart still will not accept it. I want to deny what I know is a reality, which may be why I'm longing to see such overt images of destruction.
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