As I mentioned in an earlier post, almost all commerce occurs on the streets, sometimes right under severely damaged buildings. On one busy road I saw a big chunk of concrete hang threaten-ingly from a twisted rebar, right over crowds of passing people. This seemed to be a metaphor for the tropical sword of Damocles that has been hanging over the heads of the Haitian people ever since the earthquake. Sadly, it won't disappear any time soon.
The waiting room at the airport was a milling rainbow of T-shirted volunteers. There were the gray HODR people, the yellow Baptists, and the green “Mission Adventures 2010” folks. The back of the green shirts listed the locations of all the mission trips planned for 2010; they were an exact echo of those rock band “World Tour” T-shirts. We talked to a few of the rainbow people: they had generally been in Haiti for a week and their experience had been ‘awesome.’ They had cleared rubble or built a church or repaired a school. Some were texting on their iPhones.
There were some free-ranging volunteers too. A well-dressed woman went around introducing her 13 year-old son as well as an apparently famous rap singer (Haitian or American, I wasn’t sure which) who I’d never heard of. She said her son’s bar mitzvah was in a few weeks and she wanted to give him a taste of "the real world" before then. She handed out little rubber “I support Haiti” bracelets and offered to take people’s pictures with the rapper. I declined.
Finally there was a boarding call for our flight. As we trundled down the aisle of our plane we passed the rapper and the mother and the bar mitzvah boy all sitting in first class.
As uncomfortable as the airport scene made me, I don’t pass judgment on any of these people who had come to help the Haitian people. Our mere two and a half week stay seemed barely long enough to allow us to learn the ropes and become at all effective; a single week seemed almost pointless. But who was I to say? Even if the bar mitzvah boy didn’t singlehandedly change Haiti, he may have himself been changed. Or he at least might raise the consciousnesses of some of his friends as he described what he saw in Haiti during his bar mitzvah speech. Maybe the gray-shirted girl texting on her iPhone was telling her boyfriend that she’d decided to get a degree in public health rather than go to business school. And surely there’s value for the Haitian people to know that people care about their plight. Haitians had written on one of the green T-shirts with a black marker: “Good Travel, Miyou,” God bless you, Yves,” and “I love you.” This connection has got to be worth something.
In Miami we cleared customs and boarded a flight to Orlando. Then there was a long layover before the next flight to Seattle so Elise and I decided to treat ourselves to lunch. At Ruby Tuesday the cheerful waiter asked, “So you folks on vacation?” No, not exactly, Elise said.
The plane from Orlando to Seattle was full. Many of the passengers, of course, had been to Disney World so the overhead racks were crammed full of Disney booty. As the plane rose into the clear blue sky a little girl a few rows behind us hugged her stuffed Simba tight and said, almost in a trance, “bye bye Mickey ...bye bye Goofy...bye bye Bambi...bye bye Ariel...”
I closed my eyes, and felt the weariness of the last few weeks settle in. As the engines roared, all I could think about were the people I’d met and the patients I’d tried to help. I took a deep breath and thought, bye bye Chanté...bye bye Lissa...bye bye Azacca...bye bye Wilkenson.”
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