Makeshift shelters in downtown Port-Au-Prince
So my 'blog' is getting off to a slow start...but I am still determined to share stories of Haiti, little by little (poco a poco as they say in Spanish).
Last night I returned to my apartment to unpleasant chaos. My first thought was "how can people act like this when people are dying in Haiti?" Funny how everything seems to relate to Haiti since I returned. A few fellow members of the medical team at Heartline hospital, the last place I volunteered at, started a Google group to 'de-brief' from our experience. It has been much more difficult than I thought to adjust to 'normal' (is our lifestyle normal?) life. I have lately been overwhelmed by a feeling that I guess could be called exhaustion...not the indescribable fatigue that I felt after 10 days of working in Haiti at the field hospital and downtown at university/general hospital but more of an emotional exhaustion. A sense of unrest knowing that the suffering is so great in Haiti while I am here.
One of the helpful posts on our Google group related to explaining our experience after returning home. I remember thinking in Haiti "How will I ever describe what it was like being here? How can I explain the misery and devastation in words? How can I do justice to the stories of so many people I came across that were affected by the disaster?" One of my fellow volunteers commented that she is trying to suppress the need to 'have to have' people understand what it was like in Haiti, as they can't and won't. And that's ok. To borrow the phrases she has been using to explain her experience, it was completely life-changing (cliche but true). And my favorite: "I've lost my ticket to complain about anything. Ever."
The other part of the struggle for me is that I have an overwhelming desire, and also I think a responsibility, to share what I can of my experience to those who have not experienced Haiti. So, maybe this is wear this blog comes in, and the opportunities I had while at home to share a little of my experience here and here. I just hope that with my words I have given and can give my time in Haiti, and more importantly the beautiful people, justice.
