The Foreign Service Journal, April 2010

36 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / A P R I L 2 0 1 0 port. And two embassy employees — FSO Shaila Manyam and Locally Employed Staff nurse Tammy Dol- gin — volunteered to travel to Haiti to assist with the re- lief effort. Kristi Roberts Staff Aide to the Ambassador Embassy Tel Aviv “T HEY H AD S EEN S O M UCH M ISERY ” I was a member of the first team to arrive in Port-au- Prince to evacuate U.S. citizens after the Jan. 12 earth- quake. As an Eligible Family Member, I was extremely honored to be allowed to assist in the evacuation. We took the stairs up to the roof of the embassy to sur- vey the throng of people trying to get a chance to get out of Haiti. Coming out of the darkness of the staircase into the light and then seeing the sheer numbers of people was blinding and shocking: It looked like all 45,000 Haitian- Americans and their families had decided to visit the em- bassy at the same time. I was reminded of the ubiquitous Haitian market-scene paintings, with faceless heads and multiple colors covering the entire canvas. Working hours on end to interview hopeful visa appli- cants at the embassy and seeing the never-ending line of resigned evacuees at the airport had a similar effect: often we could no longer see the individual for the crowd. It was easier that way; looking at individuals produced after- shocks too powerful for our emotions at times. Neverthe- less, it was the connections with the human beings we’d come to assist that made this job the most meaningful and powerful of my life. Here are some of the e-mails I sent to my husband: “There was just a man at my interview window who lived on Canape Vert. He was here with his Amcit son. I asked if Hospital du Canape Vert was still there. He told me that it was totally pancaked. His son’s school in Keskea is gone, too. I remember that name. He also thinks our house is gone. [We lived in Port-au-Prince from 1998 to 2000. Two days later, I saw the rubble of my old house with my own eyes. Indescribably shocking.] ... “It is the little things that remind me of the personal tragedies of this disaster. A woman had this cute, pink J.C. Penney file with dots for all her documents. This makes you realize again that she is not just an anonymous victim of the earthquake. The same with the guy who had the same birthday as my dad, a person named “Nelson” almost like my old cat, and a girl with a cute belt and big, old, brown eyes. ... “An American citizen who arrived yesterday at the air- port turned out to be off his bipolar medication. When he first arrived, he had four guys with guns around him be- cause he flailed and talked erratically. His eyes looked mad. He told us that he had to focus on familiar faces; first he picked David, and then me. He felt elated that he was still alive. The military finally came to bring him to the medical tent, sedated him and flew him to the USNS Comfort . Very intense after an already intense day of say- ing no to people more often than not. ... “Yesterday, I met the cutest little girl. An Immigration and Citizenship Enforcement official brought a U.S. sol- dier over to our manifest table. The soldier told us his story: he is originally fromHaiti and was on staff duty when his commander told him to call home. ... He arrived in Port-au-Prince and went to find his family. He heard pretty quickly that his sister and husband had died, but did not know what had happened to his little niece. He showed her picture to everyone and finally found her at some woman’s house. He was so happy! ICE will get her hu- manitarian parole once she gets off the plane in Florida, all pre-arranged. “I had to bring the little girl to the port-a-potties, and when we walked back she gave me a big hug. That made me cry, and she grabbed my face with both her hands and had her nose touch mine. OMG! And the soldier felt blessed that all of us helped him through this. But I was thinking, ‘Where were the blessings when your sister and brother-in-law died in the rubble?’ ... “A group of doctors came in the day before yesterday, the first ones to rotate back to the U.S. Evacuees who walk up and get the promissory note presented to them ask us if they have to pay because they are missionaries or doctors or whatever. “Everybody is special,” has become our motto. One of the doctors asked if they had to sign the note, too. I affirmed, “Just like everybody else who is evac- uated.” He said, “You don’t even know what we have been through.” And he just started crying really hard. They had amputated so many limbs that they did not have a place to dispose of them. They had seen so much misery.” Judith van Zalen Eligible Family Member Narcotics Affairs Section Embassy Nassau F O C U S