New Yorker leaves everything behind to help.
Editor's note: In this special report, students from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism explore how New York’s Haitian community is dealing with the emotional aftershocks of Haiti’s earthquake.
NEW YORK — With three giant suitcases, an overstuffed backpack and a tent in tow, Regine Zamor rushed to catch flights that would land her in the earthquake ruins of Haiti.
Zamor carried few of her own belongings. Most of the contents were donations — medical supplies, clothes, shoes, tents, hygiene items, wash cloths — all gathered by Zamor during a frantic three weeks of preparation for her journey. Each bag weighed close to 100 pounds.
“It’s $350,” announced the American Airlines check-in agent at LaGuardia Airport after weighing the bags. Zamor pulled out her credit card, reluctantly, to pay the excess baggage fee.
“I’m afraid that the cash that I have is the cash for Haiti,” she said. “And I don’t know if I'm going to a bank."
Born and raised in Brooklyn, the 29-year-old Haitian-American was leaving behind her mother, four brothers and sisters, eight nieces and nephews, dozens of friends and a job she loved to move to Haiti to help earthquake recovery efforts.
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| Regine Zamor. (Alice Speri/GlobalPost) |
This would be Zamor’s second trip to Haiti since the Jan. 12 earthquake. Two days after the disaster shook her beloved country, she had flown to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, spent the night in a nearby border town and drove to Haiti the next morning to help. After three weeks of living in the destruction and assessing the severe need for aid, Zamor made a life-changing decision: Return to New York, sell her belongings, quit her job, and return to Haiti to live — and to rebuild the country.
"It's like everything has come down to this one thing," said Zamor as she packed her bags in New York. "It's scary. But I've never felt my purpose so much before."
Getting ready for her move involved a three-week whirlwind of meetings, good-byes and fundraising. Zamor also attended the first official screening of "Strange Things" (or "Bagay Dwol" in Creole), a documentary that she had co-produced, about a group of homeless Haitian children. The documentary seemed suddenly more relevant than it ever had in the three previous years, working with director and co-producer Alexandria Hammond.
"It was hard to see [the film], because I just came back" from the earthquake zone, she said. "The film felt different, looked different. Haiti looked different in the film," said Zamor, noting that after the earthquake, almost everyone seemed to live on the streets in Haiti — just like the street children of Cap-Haitian, whose pre-earthquake lives were chronicled in the film.
"All of it is history now," she said.
The first time Zamor visited Haiti, she was 5. She met her great-grandfather, whom she remembers as a "beautiful tall man," and she felt an instant connection with the community, the beach, even the smell of Haiti.
Since that first journey, Zamor has visited as often as she could, staying with an uncle in Martissant, a neighborhood of Port-Au-Prince, and making many friends. Last summer she stayed with another uncle in Carrefour Feuilles, near Port-au-Prince, who had moved there from New York a few years ago.
Carrefour Feuilles is densely populated and stretches high into the mountains. Last summer, Zamor volunteered there with local organizations, identifying Haitian communities where funding was needed the most.
The experience she gained from volunteering, the relationships she established and her strong connections gave her an advantage when she arrived in January to the initial post-earthquake chaos.
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/study-abroad/100326/diving-heart-first-haiti
