Update from Jayne Flem­ing, Human­i­tar­ian Project Project, Lawyers’ Earth­quake Response Net­work (LERN)
(This is from last night, but I was too tired to fin­ish it).

Some of what I feel tonight is anger. I don’t under­stand why the world is not doing more. I have inter­viewed at least 75 peo­ple. Not one has received food aid. Not one has shel­ter. Not one is phys­i­cally secure. I have seen at least 25 rape cases in 4 days and my team mates have seen an equal num­ber. We have seen dozens of wid­ows and orphans who are not eat­ing more than one meal a day. Why has the world aban­doned Haiti??

Two cases really broke my heart today. One was an 18 year old girl. She lost her entire fam­ily in the earth­quake. She has no one. She has been wan­der­ing the streets in a trance for three months. Last night an old man found her cry­ing and urged her to go home with him. He said his wife could care for her. They arrived at the house and the man showed her to a bed and urged her to rest. He said his wife would be home soon. She fell asleep. Three hours later, the man returned with three other men and they all raped her. She escaped. By some mir­a­cle, some­one found her and that per­son knows the com­mu­nity lead­ers we are work­ing with here.  They brought her to us.

I inter­viewed her. She said she does not know where the house she was taken to is. There is no police or judi­cial sys­tem to even begin a pros­e­cu­tion process. She said she had no idea where she was going to sleep that night.

I told her to stay with us and kept her in my line of vision the entire day. By night­fall, I had lined up a safe shel­ter for her with a fam­ily we know. Today we are lin­ing up med­ical care for her and three other teen victims.

The other case that truly moved me was for a 28 year old mother who is gravely ill (the doc­tors sus­pect she has metasta­tic can­cer). She lost her hus­band and six year old daugh­ter in the earth­quake, and she is strug­gling to pro­vide for her sur­viv­ing five year old. She is incred­i­bly weak, yet she trav­eled two hours to see us today (I met her yes­ter­day). I feel very pro­tec­tive of her. This morn­ing I learned that she loves to sing. I told her I would love to hear her sing a song. We ended our inter­view and I promised to fol­low up on med­ical care tomor­row and said good­bye. Six hours later an inter­preter came and told me she was still out­side wait­ing for me. I asked why, sur­prised. They said she was wait­ing to sing for me. I went to her at once. She was so weak she could barely walk. I put her in an office and got her some food and water. I then got our inter­preter and Josue (our video guy) and invited her to sing. She sang the sweet­est, most angelic ren­di­tion of “Jesus Loves Me” I have ever heard. I was moved beyond words and to tears.

The most pro­found les­son I have learned here is the strength of the human spirit. We have seen unimag­in­able tragedy, span­ning decades and gen­er­a­tions. Yet the courage and faith on the part of the Haitians I have seen is unbreakable.

It is also amaz­ing to wit­ness the patience and ele­gance of every­one. We expected 45 peo­ple today. We had at least 60 and many cases involved mul­ti­ple fam­ily mem­bers. Peo­ple waited for up to 4 hours to see us. Yet they never com­plained. They were gra­cious and gen­tle. They did not ask for any­thing (we pro­vided food and water). They were com­pletely dig­ni­fied. We all noted that every­one had come to meet us in their Sun­day best — the women in beau­ti­ful dresses, the men in slacks and dress shirts — which must have required a sig­nif­i­cant effort given the dev­as­ta­tion all around us.

We set up a CD player today and I played Diego’s music for them (the Hait­ian musi­cian from our can­dle­light din­ner). They enjoyed this and many were sway­ing to the music and smil­ing, trans­ported if just for a moment. Most of all, I think they felt safe, cared for, lis­tened to.

Hav­ing seen 150 fam­i­lies, we have learned a lot and taken on a big respon­si­bil­ity. We will not file parole appli­ca­tions for 150 peo­ple, but we will pro­vide every­one we met some kind of help, if only a tent and tarp for the rains.
More soon,
Jayne