"Trajedi" strikes more than just the ground of Port-Au-Prince

By Shauntel Farland
Blood, anguish, and destruction fill the air as the world crumbles underneath her feet. It rattles each house with no mercy, no feelings and no regret. Children crying, people praying…What’s next?



Senior Arianne Jean-Jacques (click "read more" below), remembers the day the tragic earthquake struck Port Au Prince, her city crumbling at her feet. It was a year ago, Jan. 12, that she ran for her life from the walls of her school crashing down. The violent quake left 3 million people in need of emergency aid and millions without homes and family. The aftershocks left thousands running past flattened buildings for cover (above).


Arianne Jean Jacques is a 17-year-old senior and survivor of the earthquake last winter that the Haitian government says killed 300,000 people and left as many as 2 million homeless around the crowded city of Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Arianne is getting used to new music, a new language, and weather that is unheard of in the heat of her native Haiti. She misses her parents back in Haiti, where a deadly disease called cholera has spread (a result of all the dust and bacteria that was “hiding” in the buildings). Arianne fears that her parents will become sick and she wants to be with them to make sure they are all right.

“It’s difficult to understand,” Arianne says of the stress she feels when everything around her in Burlington looks just fine. But with daydreams of the devastation boggling in her mind, she constantly re-lives the ground-breaking day that would ultimately force Arianne to choose between safety and the comfort of her mother.

A year ago, Arianne sat in French class, staring at the leaf-green walls. As she waited for the bell, she heard a banging upstairs but quickly realized it was not the track team running the halls, or the step team, or the marching band outside. The whole school was shaking.

“Soti al deyo!” the teacher screamed, as students piled outside as though from a crowded subway. The ground shook and students wept as they watched parts of the school they’d grown up in fall.

When the rumble, which lasted no more than a minute, had taken a rest, students and teachers tried to get in touch with their families. But phone service was down. Arianne desperately looked for a shoulder to cry on, thinking, “Where is my mom?” For five hours she waited at the school. Finally her mother arrived and relief swept through Arianne.

With their home a crumbling deathtrap, Arianne and her mother spent the night in a shelter under the school. The humid air and the prayers of fellow Haitians kept Arianne and her mother warm. “I thought everyone was going to die,” Arianne remembers.

The next day, they decided that the love from their family was what they needed, and anyway they couldn’t stay at the school so a 45-minute walk to their house didn’t seem so bad. Along the blood-stained road, they passed debris and ashes from the buildings along with homeless and injured people.

When Arianne and her mother arrived, her two aunts showed them the damage to the house. It was too unstable to sleep in, with aftershocks rating 4.5 on the Richter scale. They slept in the family car.

During the night, criminals lurked the streets, stealing from stores. Police were overwhelmed, and Haitians’ sense of safety was lost.

When Arianne woke up, she was astonished to find her sister, Tara, who was visiting from Malden, Mass., waiting for her. The fresh face of her sister brought Arianne hope.

After two days struggling to find food and safety, Arianne, her mother, and her sister took everything they could from the damaged house and made the seven-hour drive to the Santo Domingo airport. They caught a series of planes to Boston, where they stayed with her sister for a week before moving in with her cousin Samantha, in Burlington.

With no loss of family members, friends, or personal belongings, Arianne had it easier than many Haitians. On a month-long visit to Haiti over the summer, she noticed things were more stable. Relief work had begun. Still, Arianne and her mother decided her prospects were better in Burlington, and she entered the high school in September.

“I love Haiti, but it is better here,” she says.

As soon as she arrived, Arianne noticed the wealth: the houses were much bigger in Burlington than in Haiti. The middle and high schools were separate, bigger, newer, and less crowded. And school here was more liberal, or free. In Haiti, everyone took honors-level classes; there was no choice. Here, Arianne could choose her classes. Teachers were less strict, not waiting to admonish her every move.

She misses the beach in “Ayiti,” or Haiti, and the freedom of going whenever she pleased. She misses the warm weather, and Haitian rap, which is enormously popular among teens there. Most of all, she misses her parents.

“I wish it never happened,” Arianne says of the earthquake that has taken lives, and broken hearts, and is now spreading disease. But since it can’t be taken back, Arianne is not going back, but instead forging ahead in a new and very different world.