BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – WEDNESDAY (Jan. 12) marked one year since Haiti was hit by a devastating earthquake, and after watching the sunset from his new home a male teenage survivor remarked that nature had a way of making people wise.
Stephane Vincent, a 17-year-old Clarence Fitzroy Bryant College (CFBC) student who moved from Haiti to St. Kitts in 2007, said he was at his uncle’s home playing with his little cousin when the earthquake occurred.
“I was at my uncle’s house waiting on somebody to go out. I was sitting down in the living room with my little cousin on my lap. At first I thought it was a bulldozer in the street, then it heightened and I realised it was a quake. My little cousin fell to the ground and I was sitting there in my chair glued. My legs gave in and my aunt was telling me to run out the house but I couldn’t move. I wasn’t feeling my lower body at all and I was trying to tell her that, but I couldn’t because no words were coming out of my mouth. I was in shock,” he said.
Vincent, who normally travels to Haiti to visit family during breaks form school since moving to St. Kitts, went to Haiti in December 2009 and was scheduled to leave just two days after the earthquake struck.
He said fortunately no damage was done to his uncle’s home but when he managed to get up and went outside he watched as a neighbouring house collapsed.
“Nothing was going through my mind at that time. For the first time in my life I couldn’t come up with any thoughts. I was there just watching everything but not processing it. I was crying but it was like happiness and sadness at the same time because I had survived, but it’s hard to explain,” he said.
Vincent said he watched the people suffered and wondered if it would have been better if they had died.
“But, at the same time, God puts us through a trial so we can learn and become better individuals. It’s awful but it’s for us to appreciate all we have now,” he said.
Vincent said one year after the 7.0-magnitude earthquake had buried much of the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince, killing more than 230 000 people and leaving 810 000 homeless, he has not seen any improvement.
According to reports, recovery is slow in Haiti and the country is now struggling with a cholera outbreak while facing issues such as political unrest and criticisms on how aid money is being spent.
“It’s so sad that some people have the means to help, especially the officials in Haiti.
It’s really bad! The situation is unexplainable! And now after a year it seems like nothing has changed but indeed gotten worst,” Vincent said.
Vincent hopes to one day be able to return to Haiti and and play an important role in national building.
At the CFBC he is pursuing studies in Law, Sociology and Communication. He has also written three poems about his earthquake experience.
He wrote ‘The Haitian Experience Part One and Two. Part One speaks specifically about the earthquake while Part Two is about his experience and what he has learnt from it. Part Three, Vincent said, speaks about “how the earthquake has raped the people of Haiti memories”.
“They can’t live in peace. Every now and then it comes back and haunts them, and how Haiti has been deprived,” he explained.
In ‘The Haitian Experience Part Two’, Vincent wrote:
“And the earth shook in the moment of being. It came with no warning; no sense of foretelling.
Yet, the dust settled, hope died and the earth stood...still. Nothing but silence moved. STILL.
Silence came like a gentle reminder that life and time are the noisy silences in our lives. And, in the thought of human reflection, my mind wandered...wandered to the place where I felt comfortable to be Haitian.
That place where my passions seemed so misplaced...But in that moment, all I cared about was Joshua, little Joshua – his silent bundle on my lap. We shared a smile of familial comfort...With seconds left in the world of vanity...the earth stopped.
And, the earth shook in the moment of...scattered screams and scampering screeches, abeam the toppling Haitian flag. Municipalities and plebeians swam the torture through Scrabbling, Stealing, Scratching for life...life: that thing that had little value.
That thing that wrapped our humanity around a thread of sheer nothingness...It now meant something...”
