She's alive

Rose Milaine has been through the unimaginable. She’s a quiet 13 year old with scared eyes and shrugged shoulders, she looks defeated and for good reason. A week ago Rose Milaine was sitting in her classroom, located on the second floor of a six story building when the earth quake hit. The building came crashing down on top of her and her classmates; they were trapped. For the next 13 hours Rose Milaine waited, sometimes screaming, sometimes crying and sometimes calling out to her friends in other classes. The building’s remains shook violently throughout the night from many aftershocks.

Wednesday morning someone was able to smash through a piece of the concrete., creating an opening large enough for the children to crawl through. Rose Milaine and some of her classmates were able to squeeze through the hole, and find freedom from their concrete prison. She escaped with a large gash on her chin and a badly banged face and head. Her family was not waiting for her when she was rescued. She was on her own.

The next few days are a bit of a mystery, alone, injured and on the streets she somehow wound up outside a Hospital in Port au Prince. I’m not sure how she got there, or how long she was there exactly, but from what I gather it had been a few days at least.

Mission of Hope sent a team of doctors to the Hospital to help. One of the doctors on the team heard about this little girl, all alone trying to scrounge up food and a safe place to sleep and had to do something, so he brought her back to Mission of Hope.

I headed up to the guesthouse as soon as I heard. There I found this scared little girl sitting, staring at the wall. I introduced myself, told her she was safe now and that I was going to take care of her. She was very quiet at first, with a far off blank look in her eyes. She had obviously been through the unimaginable. I brought up some hot water and ran her a bath. Next I started to take out her braids and brush through her hair so it could be washed. It was obvious that her braids had not been taken out since the day of the quake. There was a lot of dust and debris hidden in her braids. I noticed one section of hair was especially stiff and as I brushed through a reddish dust covered my hand. Rose Milaine’s head wasn’t cut so it took a moment to realize that the dust was actually dried blood. The blood must have belonged to someone else.

I’ve been able to keep myself together for the most part, but I knew I was going to break down at any moment. I brought her into the bathroom, showed her where everything was and told her to call for me if she needed anything. As soon as the door was closed the tears started falling, and for the first time since the quake I let them. I wept for her, for the things she’s seen and the things she’d been through. I wept for the children like her, who are walking the streets waiting for someone to rescue them, I wept for the families searching for their children, thinking they are dead when they’re not! I gave myself a few minutes and then quickly pulled myself together. I didn’t want to be a mess when she was finished with her bath.

Rose Milaine came out of the bathroom a different person. It was almost as though the warm water had washed away some of her pain. There was a little life in her eyes. I gave her some rice and bean sauce which she ate quickly and quietly. Her answers to my questions became two and three word answers instead of the mumbled yes or no she had been giving me earlier.

I put a movie on for her. At first she watched quietly laying on the couch, but then about half way through I heard her giggle. Then to my surprise she started talking. I turned the movie off and listened as she told me about her Aunt and cousins, about sneaking out to watch TV when she was supposed to be washing the dishes. She laughed as she told her stories. A little later still she started talking about the earthquake. She talked about the other children who were trapped with her, she told me lots of the children died. She didn’t tell me how she got to the hospital, or what she did in those in-between days, but that’s ok. When she’s ready, I’ll be here.

Today we’re going to try to find her family. There is a chance they might be alive still. We’re going to do everything we can to find them and let them know that Rose Milaine is ALIVE!

Rachel