At Camps in Haiti, Resilient People Leave Indelible Impression

Quang Truong traveled to Haiti, where the experience of meeting earthquake survivors in the tent camps left an indelible impression on him. (pic: BostonHaitian.com)

The following excerpt is from BostonHaitian.com, June 18, 2010, where the entire commentary is posted.

Inside the refugee camps, resilient people leave an indelible impression 

One month after my trip to Haiti, I am discovering that I possess more memories about the trip than I knew I had.

I keep recalling a woman from a refugee camp that showed me the inside her home.

Cramped and sweltering, her tiny area was bathed in a faint blue, emanating from the tarps that made up her walls. Her roof was nothing more than bed sheets held up with stakes, and two bare mattresses, one used by her and the other for her three children, were the only furniture to speak of. This was the entirety her life and the lives of her children – just bed sheets, two mattresses and the faint blue glow from the tarps.

Most images people see nowadays about Haiti are of its destruction - high aerial shots of ruined buildings in Port-au-Prince, famed monuments desecrated by Mother Nature, and who can forget the iconic pictures of the National Palace torn asunder?

But all the images from my memory are of its people: portraits of the hundreds of refugees I met in Haiti. They are mental snapshots that I took during my trip that are only now beginning to be processed.

Memories I have of fallen buildings do not affect me nearly as much as my memories of people.

Read the rest of the commentary here at BostonHaitian.com.  Click here for Boston Haitian advertising info.

Quang Truong lives in Boston.  He is now volunteering to help identify candidates for humanitarian parole, working with a nonprofit association of US-based attorneys.

Source:    Boston Haitian

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