are unlikely to survive more than a cou-
ple of days without water. For children,
it is even less. Michele couldn’t fathom
how Jonatha had survived almost a
week, but she assumed the same grace
had not spared her parents.
While I listened to Michele telling
me the story, I studied Jonatha, looking
for signs of what she’d been through.
A volunteer came over with a Styro-
foam container of food, and Jonatha
was eating like a linebacker: shovel-
ling rice and beans into her mouth,
sucking the meat off the ribs and then
crunching down on the bones and
swallowing those, too.
Michele took hold of the container
to pull it away, and Jonatha gripped it
and narrowed her eyes. There was a
toughness in this kid that I didn’t see
in my children. Is that what had kept
her alive all those days under the
debris? What horrors had she wit-
nessed? Had someone sung songs of
comfort to her, or had she heard noth-
ing but the moans and cries of despair?
The following day, Jonatha’s life was
about to be upended again. After 10
days, Michele was going back home,
as were many of the other catastrophe
missionaries who had arrived on the
scene. Who would care for Jonatha?
“We don’t want to take her to an
orphanage. They are all broken rubble.
She needs stability,” Michele said. “But
what can we do?”
Less than an hour before, I had been
under the UNICEF tarp in the United
Nations compound just down the road
from the airport. Many agencies’ head-
quarters had been destroyed, so they
had set up there.
That’s where I learned that UNICEF
had established three clandestine
safe houses for children who had lost
their families. Sitting beside Michele, Iemailed a contact at UNICEF about
Jonatha. He replied within minutes: an
officer would be by as soon as possible.I LEFT PORT-AU-PRINCE 10 days after
I arrived. Brett and I were loaded onto
a bus at the Canadian embassy and
driven to the airport. As we passed the
statue of three hands, I craned my neck
to see the blue gates behind which
Jonatha was likely still living. I didn’t
have a chance to say goodbye.I RETURNED TO MY JOB, BUT I WAS HAUNTED.
FOR THE FIRST TIME, I’D SEEN HOW
INDISCRIMINATE AND UNFAIR DEATH CAN BE.rd.ca 99