I was born in Arcahaie, Haiti coming to the US when I was 10 years old. Although my immediate family migrated to the east coast of the United States, the majority of my family stayed behind. Although I have come to view America as my adopted (and adopting) home, my heart beats and soul shines for the beautiful shores and wonderful people of my homeland.
Today, my heart beats quicker and my soul’s shine flickers and dims in the light of bad news and unanswered phone calls from home.
Sadly our situation back in the States is neither unique nor solitary. As the series of Daily News interviews today painfully illustrated:
“My family’s whole house went down – women, children everything,” said bus driver Ulrick Alexis, 38, of Brooklyn. “This is really, really bad.”
Security guard Carl Jean, 30, repeatedly called relatives in Haiti, finally reaching a cousin whose description of the damage sounded like hell on Earth.
“So many people died,” Jean said. “My cousin says people are just standing in the road screaming and crying. They have nowhere to go. The hospitals and schools have just collapsed.”
Ninaj Raoul of the Brooklyn organization Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees said she was getting word of utter destruction all over Haiti.
“I just spoke to a friend who told me that a church went down in an area his family is from, which is called Croix de Mission [in the southwestern part of the country],” Raoul said.
Dahoud Andre, host of a local Haitian radio broadcast called Lakou New York, said the largest cell phone company in Haiti, Digicell, reported that most of its cell phone towers were destroyed in the 7.0-magnitude shaker.
“People are trying to reach family and it’s very difficult. There’s a lot of panic right now,” Andre said.
“Everybody here is calling us, trying to find out what we have heard, if we have been able to get through,” he said. “It’s just a very, very tense difficult moment right now.”At the Brasserie Creole restaurant on Linden Blvd. in Jamaica, Queens, grim-faced patrons tried to comfort one another, hoping against hope that the catastrophe wasn’t as bad as reported on TV.
“I’m helpless right now. I can only pray,” said Ralph Muse, 40, of Elmont, L.I.
Muse said worried for his sister, who works a hospital in Port- au-Prince. He wasn’t sure if it was the hospital that collapsed in the quake.“I’m just hoping that it’s not as bad as they say it is,” Muse said.
U.S. President Obama’s just issued this statement:
“My thoughts and prayers go out to those who have been affected by this earthquake. We are closely monitoring the situation and west and ready to assist the people of Haiti.”
Blogging For Haiti 