Remembering Haiti

January 14th, 2010 by marv

Widow, Bord Mer LaSalle, Haiti

In 2000, I had just finished college and volunteered for a short time with a non-profit faith-based organization based west of Port-au-Prince, and had the chance to make some photographs one day when a nurse and I went out for an eight mile hike down the beach to a remote village called Bord Mer LaSalle. We were going to “thump bellies.” Not knowing what that meant, I asked and the nurse explained that the village was in need of medicine, and the easiest way to determine how many of the children were suffering from parasites was to thump their bellies. Once you learn how to distinguish it, anyone can determine whether a child’s swollen belly is caused by either malnutrition or worms by the sound the belly makes when you thump it. One is hollow, the other is a thud.

Bord Mer LaSalle was a tiny fishing village situated just off the beach and in the shadow of a long dormant volcano. No more than a few dozen people lived there. They had a few wooden boats and the houses were really just shacks made from salvaged materials, mud and wood. Roofs were thatch, cloth or sheet metal. Smoke hung densely in the hot, humid air as the villagers tended to a number of small open fires. There was a distinct odor. Most of the children were naked, the adults wore mostly rags. Its hard to describe the place and not slip into some pejorative, colonialist cliche, but it really was just like one of those Sally Struthers Christian Children’s Fund commercials.

As the nurse carried out her thumping duties, I wandered around the village, closely trailed by half a dozen little naked boys, most of whom you see repeatedly in the outside edges of the photographs. I met villagers, fishermen. A widow invited me into her home and asked me to pray for her. She was old and frail and sick, and half of her house had burned a few weeks before my arrival. I didn’t know what to pray, but I did my best. As my pathetic attempt was translated into Creole by the nurse, the old woman rose up and put her hand on my head. As she stood there she swayed back and forth and repeated “Merci, Jesi, merci, Jesi,” over and over. Running out of things to say I abruptly shoved in an, “Amen” and she immediately took me by the hand and led me to the burned out portion of her home - it wasn’t any larger than 5×8′ - and in Creole said, “Now, pray for my house!”

How does a 21 year old kid with a camera (who happened to be going through a crisis of faith at the time) intercede for a half-burned mud house? As best as you can, I suppose…and with a little boost from a poor, sick and widowed woman whose faith seemed to be in abundance.

I wonder about that widow now. If she is still alive, still in Bord Mer LaSalle, or whatever is left of it. The children with the bloated bellies we thumped that afternoon have adult bellies now. They probably have children of their own. I wonder about them too, and how all of them in that tiny fishing village off the Leogone Plain, situated within 10 miles of the recent earthquake’s epicenter, has faired.

I guess all I can do is offer up my best attempt of a prayer again.