Diving heart first into Haiti
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.
“It’s tricky when you have all these supplies, and you don’t know who to give it to,” she said. “Some places are getting water but they’re not getting any food. Some places are getting food but they have no tents. Some places are getting water but they need medicine."
She focused her efforts in Carrefour Feuilles. The neighborhood had received little assistance since the earthquake, partly because of transportation difficulties.
Representatives from the World Food Program said organizers found it difficult to distribute food because of poor transportation and lack of structure, according to Zamor.
“Despite massive logistical and organizational challenges,” a WFP press release noted on March 30, “we reached 3 million people within six weeks.”
Zamor said she convinced a group of doctors to accompany her to a camp she had found, where 928 earthquake survivors huddled. Most were children, including newborn twin-boys sleeping on the ground.
The doctors "were speechless," Zamor said.
She started working with mobile medical clinics brought by volunteer doctors to Haiti. In the scorching heat, wearing her cargo pants to spare her from mosquitoes "that would bite through everything" and her New York winter boots to climb the rocky hills, she walked around looking for small, overlooked camps of earthquake survivors. She would tell them to spread the word, and the next morning, a group of doctors would arrive with Zamor. After a table and a few chairs were set up, the doctor’s dove into treating victims’ injuries.
Doctors found some seriously infected wounds that had festered too long without medical attention. The doctors sewed up what they could, and Zamor translated instructions about keeping the wounds clean.
After a few weeks, Zamor returned to New York. She quit her job as a program manager at Creative Connections, a nonprofit group that promotes academic and career development in New York City schools.
That was easy compared with saying goodbye to family. But Zamor said her family was highly supportive of her new mission. Her sister, Marie St. Hilaire, gave her a device enabling Zamor to plug her computer into any standard phone jack in Haiti so the sisters could talk for free. Zamor’s other sister, Marjorie St. Hilaire, is coordinating an assistance fund for Haiti that Zamor set up before she left.
Zamor’s mother, Marie Beaubrun, gathered medical supplies donated from the nursing home where she works. And her brothers donated cash.
"I’m the only one without kids, not married, so I’m able to do this stuff that they can’t do," said Zamor.
At the airport, Zamor checked her bags one more time. A friend who owns a hotel in Port-au-Prince would pick her up in Haiti when she arrived and give her a place to stay. Zamor had about $2,000 in cash — all gifts from her family or proceeds from the clothes she sold to a vintage clothing store. She had no idea how long the money would last, but she wasn’t worried.
"I’ve never felt so calm, so clear. No question — this is exactly where I need to be,” said Zamor.
Two weeks later, Zamor was ensconced in her self-defined job as relief matchmaker. She visits refugee camps, finding each camp’s informal leaders, talking with them about their needs, then reaching out to aid groups for help.
“I’m not providing aid, I’m providing empowerment, leadership, possibilities and access,” she explained. The work is so full time that after two weeks, she still had not found time to visit her family, even though they were camped in the streets just a block away from the Oloffson Hotel where she stayed.
“They don’t even know I’m here yet,” said Zamor. “When I have a second, I’ll call them. But I never have a second.”
Read about Zamor and her efforts on her blog: www.bagaydwol.wordpress.com
This story was reported by Nusha Balyan in New York and Alice Speri in Port-au-Prince.
More on the Haitian diaspora:
Flatbush: the heart of the diaspora