Baby Jadine is not officially an orphan, even though both her parents are dead, buried under the rubble of their home in the Carrefour district of Port-au-Prince. Jadine’s aunt, Laura, who was with her at the hospital, told me that she was babysitting Jadine at her house when the quake hit. She was able to get out into the street with Jadine and her 12-year-old son before her house collapsed around them, but not before a piece of cement crashed down on her, hitting Jadine in the head and fracturing her skull.
Since Laura is homeless, she said that she will be happy to stay at the hospital as long as she can, and then she will try and find her way to relatives in the mountains. Leaving Port-au-Prince is dangerous, with buckled roadways and machine gun-toting hoods — and she has no idea if her relatives are alive. So, for now, this tent is her home, and the screaming patients next to her are her family.
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The aid workers didn’t know whether baby Jadine’s parents were still alive, and for now she’s living at a United Nations tent with her aunt.
Photo by Lisa Lucas |
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