Sophie had just stepped out for a few minutes. The confines of the small, dark shack where she lived were sometimes too much for her, especially since she was so large with the baby within her, and the heat and the still air of the fetid slum gave her claustrophobia.
She walked slowly along the dirt path, to buy a small bag of water to drink. It never dawned on her, how strange it is to buy a mouthful of water in a bag. But for two gourds, she could have a mouthful of clean water to drink. The thin pathway, which was the main street of her neighborhood, teamed with children, seemingly oblivious to their poverty, as they ran and squealed with delight with their homemade kites, and their small trucks made out of empty plastic juice bottles.
Suddenly, everyone stopped. What was happening? Everything visible was shaking. The very road was shaking. The shacks were lifted up, then let down, then thrown forward.
Simple houses toppled, tall walls fell, higher structures plunged to the ground, people were screaming and crying, some were praying out loud in voices of panic, asking God to have mercy. There was dust everywhere. Within minutes, everyone was covered with thick white dust, and looked like ghosts who had just emerged, dazed, from their tombs.
Sophie had just one thought, to hurry home. As fast as she could, she made her way through the debris on the streets, past the crying children, forgetting she was pregnant, abandoning her usual careful walk, breathing heavier from fatigue and fear, until she arrived home. Better said, until she arrived at what used to be home.
Instead of her humble house, she found a tangled mess of rusty iron, broken block, and thick dust. Materials that once formed a simple structure called ” home”, now took the form of a snarled tomb, holding in a cruel embrace the bodies of her father, her mother and her husband.
Sophie stopped in her tracks. It was not even possible to begin to fathom what had happened.
Across the city, and everywhere in between, the scene was the same. Across the city, and everywhere in between, schools and clinics fell, hospitals fell, houses and businesses fell, churches fell, and the wounded and the dead could not be counted.
Across the city, in a hospital named for St Francis, the ward for mothers about to give birth was destroyed, and many excited young mothers and the new lives in their wombs suddenly knew a few seconds of horror, and then the stillness of death. At the same hospital, just across the courtyard, the ward for children was crushed, and life was snuffed out, before very young minds could know what had happened.
Across the city in the other direction, another hospital named for St Damien heaved and cracked, fought for her balance, held a steady course on land that had become like the roughest of seas. She lost her perimeter walls and cracked her towers, but not her essential structure. She suffered superficial damages that did not spell danger. Many from across the city, and everywhere in between, flooded her gates.
Friends of Sophie headed there too, with their stunned and speechless friend. Like many others, they made there way with their sick in wheelbarrows, on pieces of old wood or dismantled doors as stretchers, making their way with hope, and with faith, seeking a helping hand in their disaster.
Through the gates which held no walls, past the many tented wounded in the gardens, Solange was brought to the obstetrical ward at St Damien’s, which had been set up with much haste by a special team from Italy.
Normally not much language is needed at the time of birth. Normally, the new mother doesn’t need too much coaching to combine her will with the natural forces of her body, to contract and bear down, and so to gently advance the baby away from the darkness of the womb and toward the light of the world, down a passage that marks the beginning of life in the arms of mom.
But this time, there was no collaboration with nature but resistance, no joining of the will to the forces of her body. The midwife was not seen as a helper but as an opponent. This drama was confounded even more by the challenge of Italian being understood by a creole ear, and creole being understood by an italian one . An interpreter was essential, and a thin bridge of feeble language was built, reinforced by compassion, but the mother refused to cross this bridge. She fought the coaching of the midwife. She spoke frantically to her unborn treasure,
“Stay where you are. It is hell out here. Out here is no place for you, for us. Please, stay where you are. I will care for you.”
A long, emotional drama followed, twelve hours long, a heroic effort to convince a new mother of the importance of her motherhood, of the importance of a new life in Haiti, of the importance of trusting the ritual of life that her body was living out, of what she and the child could become, and what God could do for them both.
The words were important, but even more so the mutual flow of tears, the deep shared compassion, the facing together the terribleness of the tragedy and the indispensability of the hope.
Finally, hearts were joined enough so that friendship was forged, hope prevailed, and the Solange’s will joined the strivings of her body. A little baby girl was born. The mother named her Josette.
RegIna Coeli, laetare, alleluia
Quia quem meruiste portare, alleluia
Resurexit, sicut dixit, alleluia
Ora pro nobis Deum, alleluia
Though an ocean separated their homes, cultures and languages, something wider and deeper still, a shared humanity, heartfelt solidarity in tragedy, and friendship forged in a faith came into play in the drama between Sophie and her Italian midwives, and made all the difference in bringing forth a dawn of hope.
The midwives helped birth more than a baby. They helped birth trust in friendship, trust in life, trust in motherhood, trust in God. Sophie gave birth more than to a baby, she gave birth to living hope, and to human courage even in the darkest trial.
A bridge was built over the first and sudden shock, which had almost created an abyss between Sophie and all life. But now a second and slower shock carves out a dangerous canyon, as Solange and Jesula step out into a world they don’t know any longer, into a destroyed city, and life in a small tent in a public square. They are a refugee family of two, amid hundreds of thousands of others, with no place to call home, and no one home to call out to them. Two small people, lost in a huge sea of human tragedy.
The cry for help is feeble. You almost can’t hear it. But you also can’t miss it.
Or can you?
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