12 pens in Haiti

From Nancy Young

Before my first flight to Haiti last April, I realized I didn’t have any pens, which is a stupid thing for a journalist to forget.

So I went to a shop at the Miami airport and bought two at 3 bucks a pop.

The pricey pens quickly ran out of ink and I went to one of the roadside stands in Belladere, Haiti, picked a pen out of a bin, held it up in one hand and held a U.S. 1 dollar bill in the other.

The woman working at the stand shook her head and said something very fast in Creole. Or it might have been very slow in Creole. Didn’t matter. I didn’t know Creole.

So I just held up the pen and the dollar again and smiled. Like an idiot. Then I started to get out another dollar in case the first one wasn’t enough.

But it was the opposite problem. She finally took my dollar, gave me 12 pens and some Haitian goudes as change. She was probably asking me in Creole if I had anything smaller than a U.S. $1.

Every time one of those pens, yellow Bics with blue caps, pops up, I think of her. She’s probably OK – Belladere is up in the countryside and was not damaged in the earthquake – but she probably lost loved ones in Port-au-Prince, probably has taken relatives into her home even if there is no room.

Monday night, I went to a Haitian awareness event organized by medical students at Eastern Virginia Medical School.

When I first sat down, I scribbled on my notepad to test my pen. It didn’t work. I ran out to my car to find another.

There, under some papers was a yellow Bic. 

The speakers at the event, all doctors, have all been to Haiti, helped in Haiti, before the earthquake and after.

Here is some of what I wrote down with one of the Haitian woman’s 12 pens.

“We got on the ground in Haiti and we had no idea where to go. We were told to try and find some space at the airport.” 

“’We need help’ This signage was literally on every single corner.”

“Haitians are... impeccably kind.”

“The six-year-old refused to come out unless we promised to get his 11-year-old sister out first.”

“The children. No water. 3 floors down. Seven days.”

“They’re going to need a lot of help for a very long time.”

“This little boy survived...others didn’t. Five people died while we were there. Two women, two babies and a five year old. The net was to keep the flies off him.”

“I have never seen so much suffering in my entire life and I’ve been all over the world.”

“Go out and start taking care of people.”

“Humbled by the enormity...just so many things to do.”

“Family of six living under a king-sized bed sheet.”

“Late infections. This is going to go on for a very long period of time.”

“They get up every day. sweep the dust off the dirt...It’s just amazing.”

“We’ve seen nowhere near the bottom, anything you can do to help...” 

“A lot of the doctors, most of the nurses, died.”

“You grieve and think about this weeks after because, in the moment. you do what you’re supposed to be doing.”

“The world is a big place and there is so much need, just go out and look...We need all of you. Haiti just opened a different page.”

And this last quote, from Dr. Alfred Abuhamad of EVMS, who was in Haiti at the time of the earthquake, is about the little boy you’ve seen in the blog before. 

The boy was taken to a hospital in Cange up in the countryside after sustaining severe head injuries in the earthquake at Port-au-Prince. In the days afterwards, in this picture, he seemed likely to die. He's pictured with Dr. Lisbet Hanson of Virginia Beach, who was also in Haiti during the earthquake.

Two months later:  “He’s doing quite well.”

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