Personal Narrative: My Earthquake In Haiti

Where is my heart? I couldn’t help but feel small while resting in the clouds. Depositing all my trust in the machinery I sat in made my stomach sink, and I couldn’t help but feel the slightest bit nervous. Then it appeared, the country I had no idea I would fall in love with eight days later. Port-au –Prince, Haiti laid directly below me; complete destruction enveloped my vision. Four years earlier, following the earthquake that devastated Haiti, seeing it remain in ruins, made my heart sink. Before I realized it, the plane’s wheels landed on the Haitian soil and we were on our way to meet Ken and Andrea Taylor- a couple that has devoted their lives to assisting the Haitian people with medical help. That same afternoon we bumped our way …show more content…
His skin was shedding off, he looked like a burn victim. Not only that, but his fingernails were falling off one by one. Overly malnourished, this boy was suffering a slow death. I have to do something. I can do anything I put my mind to, right God? As I inched closer to this baby, his eyes became visible to me. His eyes screamed for someone to take the slightest bit of his pain away. God, can I take this pain from him? I can’t watch him die. You’ve got to give me the power. I want to heal him. Something. God, please! What a fool was I to think that for a moment I could heal a child? I myself was as helpless as the boy that lay before my eyes. Tears started to roll down my cheeks as I heard Ken humble himself and tell the child’s grandmother that he couldn’t do anything else for this baby. I bent over and kissed this baby’s face, as I walked away, I felt as helpless as I had ever felt in my entire life. God, just this once. Please. As I climbed into the back of our caged in truck I was unable to talk, unable to erase the child’s face from my mind. At the end of the week I boarded a plane. As the engine vibrated, and we were elevated into the sky God whispered to me, “You’re not finished here.” Every mile that passed, my heart ached. Every day that passed, I longed to be back to the country that stole a piece of my …show more content…
To the far back corner was a concrete house that was the size of my room as a child. As we walked toward this house I felt someone grab my hand. As I looked to my side, I smiled when I saw a young girl walking with me. She was wearing a light pink shirt and dark pink Capris with peach sandals. “Bonswa! Como ou ye?” I said to her as she looked up at me with a shocked look on her face. “Mwen Bien!” her smile was as ginormous as mine when I got a bike for Christmas when I was little. We started kicking rocks and whistling. Children from the houses surrounding me started peeking out from behind their doors and their parents’ legs wondering who that white girl was. Slowly, they all came out and started kicking around a water bottle, the Haitian soccer ball. I jumped into the game and the children’s laughter was all I could hear. The girl that was holding my hand a few minutes earlier started calling out, “Mwen mama! Mwen mama.” I thought she was calling for her real mother, but she ran up to me and tugged on the end of my shirt. “Mwen mama!” she said with a slight annoyance in her tone. It was as though this child thought that I should have known that I was now her mother. I looked at her and smiled. All at once, her words pierced straight through me breaking me and mending me together. Me? Your mother? Why would you ever want me to be your mother? I am in no way capable of being your mama. She looked at me and I looked