Imagine for a moment you’re one of the poor, and you’re a Haitian. Hot, dusty climate where your meal for the day is the biggest challenge. Your dress is tattered and you have no shoes. Eating mud cookies to make your stomach thinks it’s full. Never really satisfying the hunger pains tho the cramps have long gone. Trying to console your young siblings because mama’s milk has dried up from malnutrition. School is not an option and you don’t know how to read and write. You don’t even have an understanding of what it’s like outside of Haiti, or how to survive. You, only out of ignorance, know how to break it down.
Then, the only thing that seemed secure, the land you live on, breaks apart. The shaking has toppled every structure in your city. Two families, eight of you lived on the second floor of a one room concrete hut. Now everything has crumbled, smashing everything in it’s way. It’s dark and you’re in pain. People are screaming, crying out for their families. You hear your little sister but you cannot get to her. Hours go past and some of the crying stops. The eerie silence frightens you more than your parched throat, the heavy concrete trapping your body, your pain. It’s dark and you’re afraid.
You feel like rescue won’t come and more hours pass. Your body and mind become numb and you start to get a bit delusional. You think you see Jesus, and all you ask for is water. More hours go past and you know in time this will be your tomb. You don’t remember but the rescuers heard you singing, and that’s how they found you. After 10 more hours of digging with their hands, they, your people, lifted your limp broken body out of the rubble. You were trapped for 62 long hours and everyone was amazed you had survived. You told them you saw Jesus before you slipped off into subconsciousness.
You wake up in a makeshift tent. Cardboard and twine keeping your broken legs together and a new wave of pain invades your body. Uncle is with you and gives you the sad news that everyone has died and you go numb again. All you want is the comfort of your mama. You can’t imagine living through the trauma you just went through. Afraid the earth is going to shake again swallowing everything up. Another day goes by and you finally get medical help. You’re one of the lucky ones. You didn’t die from your injuries.
Uncle keeps asking where the help is? Everyone is starving. So very hungry and need water. People are dying everywhere in the streets and being left behind. Have you ever seen a dead person? Can you even imagine your loved ones in the street and you have to leave them. The stench of death can’t be escaped as their bodies begin to bloat and become unrecognizable. Soon, they’ll all be piled in huge pits and unceremoniously buried.
So please people, don’t judge the Haitians when they run for fear of tsunamis.
Don’t judge them when they fight for food. For that will decide life or death to them.
Don’t judge them when they get frustrated help has not arrived for they don’t see it.
They’re not watching CNN like us with our bellies full.
They don’t see all the countries pitching in. The bottle-necked airport. Trucks leaving in fear because of disorder in handing out supplies.
Please don’t judge the Haitians because they were born in a land of poverty and unrest.
Don’t judge them because they lived through the most horrible tragedy of their lives.
Don’t judge them because they are wounded, hungry, grief stricken and homeless.
Just help.
