kaiti n' haiti: storm

my neighbor giving birth

so there I was. taking a picture of my neighbor's newest baby- only minutes old. (the goat) And thinking to myself, "oh this is exciting, blog worthy!"

we are about 300 yards from my gate- in about 30 seconds the sky turns black, thunder starts cracking and dirt is stinging my eyes. in the 300 yards to get back to my gate it has already started pouring rain and the noises began....

i could hear winds whistling, trees falling, power lines collapsing, steel falling onto of steel, screaming, crying. The air formed a thick blanket.

30 children start running past, holding each others hands and crying. At this moment, I realized what this storm meant- heavy rains and high winds means no more tent.

the children, were screaming "Earthquake" as they ran past us crying- they were running to see if their families were still at their tents. It wasn't an earthquake- but probably the word they relate with natural disaster. I heard later that the tent city around the corner from our house collapsed in about 5 minutes.

it is hard to describe the chaos and emotions in the five minutes that followed. This was a pretty bad storm. But, at my Chelmsford residence we probably would have collected the outside furniture and gone inside. When I was little, my Dad and I would sit on the porch and count the seconds of the storm. Somehow this made me less scared. Maybe a few branches would hit the house. Here, this storm means something different.

First, I watched the utter confusion on the Haitian's faces as they were terrified to go under any roof yet it was unsafe to be standing outside as well. I had to pull our Haitian cooks inside because they just didn't know where to go. We stood under the little awning listening to trees hit the house and power lines fall. The pure terror on the cooks faces made tears come to my eyes. One cook was literally trembling with fear.

I could hear the girl's crying so I ran next door to comfort them. Upon entering the gate I saw the most terrified little faces shivering with fear. Their bodies shook with emotions. The kids were fearful but the heartbreaking part was the cooks, maids and nannies that stood there with us. Their eyes were filled with distress and they held children and cried out prayers. Were their homes washed away?

We waited out the storm and then started cleaning up the pieces. Some of our staff went down to help start rebuilding the tents yet I just felt lost. I watched the scramble of locals hitch rides to bring them "home". Tonight we are exhausted with emotions. Staff members are still busy trying to find places for friends to sleep that lost tents.

I am grateful that everyone at the orphanage is safe. But, I am thinking about all those little bodies going to bed in mud tonight.