This is the place where the telling becomes difficult. On the road to find Ginette, and during the days since the journey to find her began, sights, sounds, smells, experience, and revulsion have replaced the urgency to tell her story. There are hundreds of stories to tell, and while one is trying to explain how we found Ginette, the others shout for attention and the mind can no longer sort the images, one from another. So, now the reader knows.
We found Ginette and she is OK. She is broken in some ways, but she will live to remember being covered in concrete and wood.
Rain beats on the window now, and other buried images are screaming for attention. They must wait.
Ginette
On Day Two we joined our fixer, Andre, and drove up the coast along Highway One to the coastal town of St. Marc. The rubble and despair of Port-au-Prince was left behind. To our left was the passage through the Caribbean Sea known as the Canal de St. Marc--to the right the Matheux and Montagnes Mountains. Along the way we buried a boy and noticed some blue tarps tucked into a dusty plain. The tents seemed unremarkable upon our first passing.
The remarkable boy is still screaming. But, the writer must ignore his memory.
Driving into St. Marc, a sign offered a greeting. "Welcome to St. Marc for all the injured people from Port-au-Prince." The sign is the key to all of the stories. When the 7.0 quake hit for 34 seconds at 4:53 pm eight weeks ago on January 12, it destroyed the entire infrastructure for three million people. The injured had to be moved out of the city to rural areas to obtain care. St. Nicholas Hospital in St. Marc did its best to care for those it received and is still doing so.
As we searched for Ginette in the labyrinth of wards, 300 people waited in the courtyards for the opportunity to see one of four rotating Haitian doctors. 500 people languished as in-patients. The administrator told our doctor that the hospital had no antibiotics. The doctor offered his supply of medicines that will last for about a week, and pocketed a list of urgent supplies that will cost $93,000 to obtain. St. Nicholas needs Santa Claus.
The good news is that Ginette is doing well and has made a new friend whose name is Ketna. Ketna is in bed number 30 in the orthopedic ward and wanted us to take her photo with her sons. When Ginette saw this happening, she called for one of the boys to lift and carry her so that she could be photographed with her friend. She looked like a rag doll as the boy lifted her. Ginette had become so big in the writer's mind that it was a shock to see how frail and very small she really is. That she survived when her house fell on her is a miracle. God pays attention to some, and that is the lesson that Ginette offers.
But God is ignoring the 5,000 who became visible upon the return to Petionville.
"What is that?"
Thousands upon thousands of meager tents appeared as if in a mirage as the angle of the sun changed. A sign read, "We need help." The doctor stopped. But we were only three, and 5,000 had seen no one since they were moved from the open spaces in Port-au-Prince four weeks ago. The wind whipped the plastic non-shelters mercilessly in the 90-degree heat, and dust clogged the nose and blurred camera lenses. Still, one must try. Always try.
The doctor said he would see immediate problems, and within minutes mothers and babies formed a line. How did they know? It was as if the winds carried a whisper of hope through the camp.
An older man stood quietly nearby. Whenever he stepped forward, the doctor and the writer said, "babies first."
"Will you treat an old man?" It was a humble request.
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