Have you ever felt a tidal wave? The way it feels when it crashes into you?
You dig your feet deep into the cool wet sand and wait for it. You see it coming and prepare with curling your toes deeper and deeper into the sand. But when it finally crashes into you, you stumble. You lose your footing and you fall back. Trying hard to catch yourself until finally you get your footing again, and dig your feet deep into the sand again, and wait. Wait and prepare for another wave that's about to hit you...
On monday June 14th, our team went into downtown Port-au-Prince, Haiti to truly see the devastation. There is something about seeing it in real life. I felt I was prepared. I felt I was ready. I had seen many photographs. I knew what I was about ready to see, until I saw it...
The devastation was traumatic. It was hypnotizing. Staring at it long enough and your brain would go numb. And to think if you could just make it through this one road it would all be ok again. But it wasn't. There would be just as much, if not more, devastation there. One house would be standing, the next half of it gone, the next complete shambles. And then again and again. Again. again. Again...Again...Another street, another house....Again...again....again....again......
The waves crash over you faster and faster and faster until there is no break to grab your footing. Your going down and going under. The feelings crash over you as tidal waves as the devastation gets worse and worse. And you begin to picture in your mind the picture of a building that crashed on top of a man, and he died right there, standing, and all that was out of the rubble was his arm. The waves begin to hit you harder and harder with less time between to dig your feet in. And when the smell grabs ahold of you, you begin to be sick. Praying with every mile that you won't throw up. As your mind is swirling with thoughts of people dying and you're smelling the death all around you. Amplified by the intense heat that only Haiti can offer. And it never ever gets better....
Soon your picturing that this must have been what 9-11 looked like. The wind kicks up, as does the concrete dust from the rubble, and it becomes hard to breath. And you just can't stop the video running in your mind of people dying. As you drive through the streets you see disabled people, just a few, and wonder did that happen during the earthquake? You see children and wonder did their family die? And you begin to feel like you have your footing again, until you turn down a new street with new destruction, and worse smells. And then you see it....Huge black pigs rooting through the a large pile of garbage alongside of dogs....
And once again the tidal wave crashes over you and you begin to wonder how in the world will they ever be able to clean this all up? It was so overwhelming to me. How will life ever be the same in Haiti once again? So much destruction....so much death....so much heartbreak....
But life goes on in Haiti. The waves crashing, has became waves lapping, for them....Always there and never forgotten, just a new type of "normal"......
1 comment:
Thinking of you!
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