Men anpil, chay pa lou.

Men anpil, chay pa lou.
Many hands lighten the load
-Haitian proverb

It was around midnight and I was walking back to a friend’s place. It had been a rough week and I needed good friends around me. We were going to drown all the bad stuff in kit kat ice cream, candy and sitcom reruns. While we’re walking we are talking about the earthquake that hit Haiti. I tell them I’ve been crying for days. I’m sad, restless, confused and I’m angry.

My friend says to us, “I’ve been crying for 3 days and I had no idea why … until now.”

Why do I cry? Because…
On January 12th ,2010 at 4:53pm a 7.0Mw earthquake hit Haiti.
40% of the population of Haiti is under the age of 18.
Parents send their kids out of their home town to work for families in other towns.
Some families do not have the means to care for their children, so they are left to fend for themselves.
When the earthquake hit, thousands died. Thousands were displaced.
Thousands of kids do not know where their families are, whether they are alive or not.
They do not have homes to come back to.

The dead are being thrown to the side of the road. They are being buried in mass graves.
They have no names. No one knows their stories.
2 Canadians were killed in Haiti during the earthquake – lavish ceremonies marked the end of their lives. Pictures were placed next to the altar at the church. There were eulogies, there were goodbyes and there were tears.
As sympathetic as I am to the loss of life and the pain their families must be feeling, I can’t help but feel angry. What about the thousands of people who have died in Haiti – where is the ceremony for them??? Where are their goodbyes? Who gets to hear about the great things they did, the wonderful people they were? They are left at the side of the road, forever anonymous.

I’ve been thinking about the after-effects of all of this and I can’t help but wonder what this can do to the morale of a People. I’ve read about the psychological effects of natural disasters, read about the aftermath of the Tsunami, of wars, of abuse, of neglect. Then I read this article that talked about psychological first aid. For weeks I’ve been reading articles, looking at pictures, watching videos of the disaster. I’ve thought about the hard work the people of Haiti have ahead of them. There is so much that needs to be done. They will need help, they will need money; and I’ve been giving what I can. I hope everyone else will do the same.

"Before, I always found a way to feed my son and send him to school," she says. "I don't see a future for him."
In the desperate international effort to help Haiti's children, relief workers hope to restore not only their physical and mental health but also their ability to endure — and even to dream.
Schneider wants to be an engineer. "If I made houses with metal roofs instead of using cement," he says, "maybe so many houses would not fall down, and people would not die."

Can you imagine being so broken that you lose the will to dream? That is something I cannot fathom and every fiber of my being wishes this couldn’t happen.

This is really something I cannot begin to understand. I have never been through something as devastating as what the people in Haiti are going through. I know what it’s like to feel broken though. And even though in the moment I have felt like there is no way to recover, that I have lost faith in everything and everyone around me, I somehow recover. I eventually pick myself up, I grow from the experience and I move on. But how do you move on from something like this? I am trying so hard not to be cynical and to hold onto the stories of hope and all the kind words. I try to think about how much people care and how generous they are being. I am sure the people of Haiti are very strong and knowing that they have been through so much in their history – why wouldn’t they be able to come out of this standing tall? But I don’t feel very strong willed right now and I worry. What do you tell a 3 year old child? How do you explain this? My textbooks talk about PTSD and the implications of such a devastating event. I have read case studies upon case studies about children who shut down, who become hardened. How do you prevent that? What do you do? What do I do?
When a mother says she doesn’t see a future for her son, I worry even more.

I have no idea where I am going with this.
I’ve been reading up on psychological first aid. Did you know that there is a chemical released in our bodies that help us deal with stress? Experiments were done in rats that showed that increased physical contact (touching, cuddling) increases the production of this chemical. If the production is increased early on, the level of production remains that high later on – this helps the animal deal with stress. But if there is little contact, there is less of the chemical hence; they are less able to deal with stress.
What does that 3 year old need right now? A hug.
So why am I crying now? Because I don’t know if he will get it.