Unforgettable Experiences

Remember being young and listening to your parents' conversations? Remember listening in and shaking your head in disbelief? I was one of those kids who loved listening to my parents' conversations, and I always thought they were exaggerating; there was no way. Sometimes they were exaggerating others; they were under exaggerating. I remember being eight-years-old listening to my mom and her friends talk about earthquakes, and I was like, earthquakes? What is that? They told me it's when the earth would shake due to sudden movements along the faults of the earth. Eight-year-old me was like this one of their over-exaggeration stories. There's no way the earth could shake; just crazy. Then, a year later, on January 12, 2010, everything went down, literally!

January 12, 2010, was the first day of school for me in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, except I didn't go to school that day; my school uniform was still being made. On that day, my mom left me with a friend, and she went to work. The day was pretty typical. I ate, studied, and slept until it was time for my mom's friend to pick her kids up from school. On her way to pick up her kids from school, my mom's friend dropped me off to my mom at her workplace. I sat with my mom for a while and talked about how my day went, and we played. Then, my mom told me that I would stay at her friend's house for the night because she had to resolve something about her cousin. On her way back from picking up her kids, my mom's friend stopped by to take me with her, but my mom said she could take me later, so her friend left. About 30-45 minutes after, my mom and I were sitting on a chair under a light poll waiting for a motorcycle to take us home. And I looked up everybody was running. I looked into my mom's eyes and saw horror. I saw the building across from just dropped with everybody inside. I think I screamed, but I'm not sure.

For a second, in my mind, everything stopped; then I looked up, and my mom and I were moved to the side as the light pole that we were sitting under dropped. Then, I looked out to the street, and the ground was parting. Then, I looked at the buildings, and they all collapsed. I think I passed out after that cause I don't remember anything that happened after. But, I remember waking up that night, and it was very dark. My mom and I were surrounded by people camping out cause we had nowhere else to go. While laying down on my mom's lap listening to the people around us cry in absolute pain, I heard my mom's name being called, it was my mom's friend, and she was bleeding from the head. My mom and I stayed at that campsite for a few more days and watched as they pulled people from under the broken buildings, some people came out alive, and others weren't as lucky. After my mom's friend reassured us she was OK, my mom and I decided to look for some family members, but we did not know that her friend was not OK and she would die a couple of years later due to that head injury. We did not know, so we left and found family, we got on a bus and went back to my mom's province, but no matter we went, I could still feel the ground shaking from under me for years to come.