The
Earthquake leaves me with nightmares
Have
you ever experiencing something that still keeps coming back each and every
single breath you take? The Haitian Earthquake experience was the most
challenging and reoccurring memory that still comes back in my every day life.
I felt like a corpse. Rigid. Shocked and I still wonder if it was the end of
the world. To see those dead bodies made me want to die or to cry my life away.
The Earthquake experience is the most extreme and excruciating moment of my
life.
That
was five years ago. It was a Tuesday in 2010, I was in Haiti at this point
in time. I was only 13 years old and I lived with my grandmother and cousins,
My life wasn’t a paradise and neither was it a hell, We lived as God bring us in the world. I came
from school at 1:57 pm and when I got home at 2 something, that was when that
nightmares was about to be born. As I finished my homework and was about to
play, suddenly, I felt the air whispered as it’s was about to sneeze a little
much louder than usually. Unexpectedly, the sun gave up on showing up his light
and the ground started with a kind of African dance or also like a millions of
cannons. The earth was moving so quickly that it was like a giant running on
the human’s ground. I was immobilized, quiet, shocked, frustrated. I heard a
lot of rocks falling, Houses dropping and people dying. I felt like it was the
end of the world.
One
hour at watching death come, was enough for me to realize how deep and foolish
I had been by not showing love to those that matter to me. Without realizing
what was happening, I came into the house, my sisters and I were looking for our
grandmother. She was there, laid on her bed without even notice that the earth
was dancing under her feet, as if nothing was happening in her dream as she
slept. We woke her up and as we tried to get out of the house, a lot of things
like bed, clothes, plates, oven,tables,tv fell over. When we were finally outside of this hell, my
grandmother grabbed us, as if that was the last time she was going to grab us
in her entire life, her eyes were suddenly shining of tears and weakness but
we could feel the spirit of her strength getting stronger and stronger then she
screamed: “Jesus,Jesus, don’t tell me we are going to die like this? I still
have faith in you ..”. I was so impressed with her reaction, she would have
killed herself in order for us to survive, still resisted and was like a
stone. All my entire life I knew that she loved us but not that much, I
realized how foolish I was to had not tell her she was like a shooting star.
This
experience made me realize how precious life was. Life is a ugly and beautiful,
it can be taken away by just a simple mistake. As I looked at the corpses on
the ground, the survivors, and also those who once survived, I realized life
changed forever for so many of us. I saw people lie on the ground and those who
cried helplessly under the concrete, those who lost family, friends, neighbors, etc.
These
memories keep on coming back in me every day’s life. Every time I hear someone
crying, yelling, moaning like loosing a baby, it’s still come back. Every time
I feel the earth moving under my feet, even if it nothing really special, might
just be someone running and the ground just feel like running after them
also. I still remember the earthquake
nightmares. These memories will always keep me shocked ,and in excruciating
pain. I now have questions and I am tortured for the rest of my entire life.
But, however bad those memories are, they are not the only
things that the earthquake left me with.
Hope.
I have hope.
I have a good mind, a better future, I am fighting for a
better life and it’s also made me strong by knowing that life does matter.
These memories are like summer and snow time to me, I have to deal with it whether
it is hot or cold. These memories made me become who I m today. I am strong, complicated,
no fears, curious, thirsty for learning, deeply loving my grandmother and my
family. These memories increased my faith in Christ.
It also made me know
where I came from, where I am, and where I want to go.
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A Life is gone on my face
On January
12th 2010 , everything was calm in the country, the day looked
like a regular day but nobody imagined what would happen.
Tragedy.
On
this date, January 12th, I lost one of the most important people in my life. I lost my best
friend , I was looking at her dying in the earthquake , under her house. She
was calling me for help but I could do nothing to save her.
On January 12th 2010 I was 13 years old and my best friend was the same age as
me. This day looked like a regular day, everything was normal. Almost at the
end of the day, precisely at 5:15 , things are going in the wrong way in the
city. An earthquake happened, but while the earthquake happened nobody knew
what was going on because that was the first time that an event like that
happened in the country. That was a real disaster for some people. Some people
thought that was the end of the world, everybody was calling “JESUS” , even
those who never prayed to god once in their life.
This day, I was so lucky because my school
had fallen in front of my face and the school had just released the students.
It was just minutes later that it collapsed. I just got lucky that I was not still in the
school. Every student was so scared too because they never saw something like
that in their life. Me personally I was worried for my family and my friends. I
was imagining if something like that happened to my house too. I decided to go
straight home to see how my family is doing but on my way to go home I changed
my mind and I decided to go see how is my best friend because she did not come
to school that day, she was sick.
When I reached her neighbor I could not believe my
eyes . My best friend’s house had also fallen and everybody was calling “JESUS”
. That was the most terrifying moment I had ever seen in my whole life. I saw
my best friend under the fallen house and nobody was there for her to try to
help her, she was trying to get out of there by herself. I was like, am I
dreaming? When she saw me, I felt that I gave her more power trying to get out
of the fallen house but that was so difficult for her. She was calling to me to
help. I felt that she believed that I could get her out of this situation. That
made me feel bad because seeing the situation and I knew that could never be
able to get her out without more advanced help.
I automatically
ran to her and I was talking to her trying to give her more assurance.
- “Help
me , help me Fred please”. she said
- “ok
calm down, i’ll try my best to get you out of here. I told her.”
- “I believe in you Fred. please please.”
She kept telling me “please”, but I did not know
how help her . Suddenly i saw one of my friend at school running on me like a
crazy person.
- “Fred, your parents are looking for you”. he
said ( he could not even breath well)
- “ok calm down, take your time to breath, I’m
ok, now we have another problem”.
- “What other problem you are talking about
Fred? Don’t we have enough problem?” he said.
He did not even see her under the house because
when I saw him coming on me I moved away from the fallen house. I showed him
the disaster with a movement with my finger and my eyes. When he saw that, the
size of his eyes get bigger. He moved nearer to the fallen house and started
crying.
- “stop please, crying is not going to help us
in this moment, we need to get extra help to get her out of this situation”. I
said.
- “ok Fred, I will go get some help”. he said.
- “ok I’m staying with her”.
I moved next to her and I powerlessly tried to
remove some bricks on her but that was not that helpful. I felt like I was
pointless. Suddenly I heard that she said:
- “I can’t breath well Fred, the bricks are too
heavy on my body, i can’t no more Fred”.
- “Try to breath slowly, everything will be ok”.
After a few minutes next to her , talking
together about our friendship, she died slowly , her hands in mine. I was
sitting next to her crying. A few
minutes later, my other friend came with her family but that was too late and
her parents could not believe it, they was next to the house yelling, crying. That was so sad, that was the worst moment in
my life.
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Earthquake in Haiti
People who never
experienced an earthquake can’t explain how detrimental an earthquake is for
those in it. An earthquake is one of the worst natural disaster and it is one
that scientist can’t even predict when it will happen. The earthquake that
happened in Haiti had a detrimental influence on every Haitian’s life. That
earthquake was one of the memories I have, that every time I think about it it
brings tears to my eyes. The earthquake memory is stuck in my mind and disturb
me often.
January 12, 2010 was a really sad day. Sometimes I ask myself how did that happen. Every time I saw the building on the streets all that comes to my mind is the earthquake that I experienced in January 2010 in Haiti. I closed my eyes while I’m on the bus I think about the same thing that happened in Haiti five years ago. The day of the earthquake I thought I would never see my family again. The earth was shaking so hard that houses started to collapse some of the building disappeared into the ground and the earth opened in half . All of the people in the country were screaming for help. We couldn’t communicate with other people the communication were cut. All we had to do was stay far from the building and listen to the radio with batteries.
The earthquake turned Haiti upside down , school were closed
for two month and a half we lost our families members we didn’t have the chance
to see the corpses. They did not allow us to approach near the big holes that
they dug to bury the dead bodies. Some people was trying to save other people
but it wasn’t that easy for them because they had to lay down on the breaking
walls to grab the feet or arms of the victims to pull them out and take them
to Dominican Republic in other part of Haiti.
Over 300,000 people died and they did not even count the
amount of people who disappear. A lot of people didn’t have a place to sleep at
night. Some guys rapped the girls at night because
they didn’t have a place to sleep it was really crazy in Haiti. That situation
stick in my mind forever.
Every time I try to forget about the earthquake two days
after the memory always come back to my mind. I can’t even explain the way
people died during the earthquake . We were in sorrow everyone lost at least at
least one person that they were really close to. Some people that come from the
U.S after the airplane land they died during the earthquake that was the
saddest part during the earthquake . People who came the visit the country for
the first time died during the earthquake a few hours after they arrived in
Haiti . The most beautiful house in Port-au-Prince collapsed. A lot of people
who were working inside the white house were crushed under the walls of the
building. Most of the people who were injured didn’t have the chance to make it
because a lot of hospitals In Port-au-Prince didn’t have enough room to receive
all these victims. A lot of students who were in class died on their knees
during the earthquake the reason why they died on their knees is because they
were praying while the building was shaking but unfortunately the building
collapse on their bodies while they were praying on their desk. One week after
the disaster several nation around the world come in Haiti to rescued us . A
lot of people were still on the street still looking for their family members
that they haven’t seeing for one week they didn’t even know the location that
the were because everything were destroyed . I always think about that
situation it had a detrimental influence in my mind . The earthquake makes me
think negative about life and I also believe that it has a bad influence on
every Haitian who experienced that situation on January 12, 2010.
