Personal Narrative: My Earthquake In Haiti

Haiti overloads my soul with so much joy, but breaks my heart into a million pieces. Haiti, the supreme monetarily deprived country in the Western Hemisphere that also hosts the most dangerous slums, paradoxically, has the richest society in affection, bliss, and compassion; the people are vibrant, strong, and resilient. The country itself is a realm of contrasts. Since the year of 2010, my world, and Haiti, has never been the equivalent to their previous ways of life. An earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 on the Richter scale, killing more than two hundred and thirty thousand people, displacing over one million lives, and injuring over three hundred thousand is where this story originates. I gazed upon beautiful pastures occupied by the utmost emaciated cows I had ever seen, assorted with goats that backed into a vast mountain range to my left, while cars and motorcycles zoomed past myself to my right as if I was moving in slow motion. I felt entangled by the chaos, but yet, I felt this internal sense of peace that I had never felt before. My eyes glistened as I took in the beauty enveloped in the disaster that stood in front of me. I drew in a breath and exhaled subsequently, at that moment prepared myself to
tread through the slum paths filled with debris and the echoes of a foreign tongue with the sounds of anguish in their voices. I shuffled through the streets trying not to create eye contact. Frightened and yearning for the place I called home, I quickly grasped I was not in America any longer. The way the streets smelt and the feeling of the Haitian dust and rubble beneath and all over my decrepit sandals added a peculiar sensation that petrified me, but gently comforted me as-well. This unfamiliar sentiment, this abnormal contradictory feeling and the individuals I came across in the course of this time, contributed and altered my adventures forever in this entity we call life. The images of crumbled structures and the audible blare of heart-wrenching pain, will always stay in my thoughts-I reminiscence to these moments constantly. These pictures and noises are so real, anything in the least to prompt of these memories yield me back to my initial stay in Haiti. Traveling to a third-world-country at a prearranged time, termed by an American is labelled dangerous, but nevertheless, traveling to a third-world-country just after a natural calamity is not merely treacherous, but as my twelve-year-old self describes it as, “One of the stupidest things a being can endure in their total life.” As soon as my family and I arrived in the country, we were bombarded by numerous Haitian in the destroyed airport, speaking a language we had not yet learned.
As a group we marched out into the streets of Haiti and started our expedition with the lady we would be residing with. Legrand Mellon, a seventy-three year-old woman at the time, who then and there became my traveling companion and role-model whom I never wanted to
leave. Educating myself the history of Haiti in conjunction with its art, food, religion, music, and literature mesmerized me. I began to meditate to myself the thoughts on, “I could grow used to this” and “This place is not so terrible.” My first-world-self sought to gripe due to the absent AC and running water, but my new-found-self recognized that those were not necessities and others do not have the capability to experience those types of conveniences that I constantly have to my expense. People from America assumed we were courageous, and others rumored we were irrational and unwise, but, the year of 2010 is at what time Haiti ignited a passion in my core that spread identical of wildfire. Since 2010, I travel to Haiti three times a years and for each time I devote more and more developing in the Haitian culture. Ever since January 2010, I have learned a new language and have created indescribable bonds with the people of Haiti, and even a few Americans who shared the same desires as myself.