Once up in the mountains, our driver
left the paved road for a treacherous
rocky path. We eventually came to a
shed wrapped in a USAID (United
States Agency for International Devel-
opment) tarp. I stepped into the muddy
yard and there she was: the little girl
from SONAPI, the one I knew as Jona-
tha, her hard eyes peeking at me from
behind the legs of a small woman.
Her mother, Rosemene, kissed both
of my cheeks. On her hip was a toddler,
Jonathan. Jonatha.
Aid workers had assumed this little
girl had been saying her own name. In
fact, she had been calling out for her
brother, Jonathan. Her name was Lovely.
She and her family were lucky; they’d
survived hell. But now they were living
in misery: two cots and a mattress on
a dirt floor. Eight of them slept there:
Lovely and her parents and brother,
plus her aunt, uncle and two cousins.
When it rained, a river coursed through
the shed, forcing them all to stand.
Before the earthquake, Rosemene
sold spaghetti and bouillon cubes on
the side of the road. She had planned
to send Lovely to school and had been
tucking money into a can each day to
go toward that. But the can was long
gone, along with all their other posses-
sions and dreams.
Lovely would turn three on April
27; there was no money for a celebra-
tion. A plan began to form in my
mind. My flight home was on April 28.
I would take a day off on Lovely’s
birthday and drive party supplies up
to her shed. Maybe I could offer
another surprise present, one that
would make Rosemene happy: a year’s
school tuition. How much could that
possibly cost?Over the next five years, Catherine
Porter visited Lovely and her family
17 times, all while reporting on Haiti’s
struggles to harness the international
rush of aid. With each trip, Porter’s
relationship with Lovely and her fam-
ily became more complicated. Trying
to balance her instincts as a mother
and a journalist, Porter found herself
struggling to determine what part she
should play in the realities of Haiti
after the earthquake. Although her
dual roles as donor and journalist
were constantly at odds, a third one
emerged and became the most
important: that of a friend.FRO© 2019 BY CATHM THE BOOK ERINA GIRL NE POAMRTER. PUBLISHED LOVELY. ED BY
SIMON & SCHUSTER CANADA.Truth in Storytelling
“Love wins” isn’t some fairy-tale saying; it’s instructions for life.
ARLENE DICKINSON, ENTREPRENEURrd.ca 101