First Person: Stanley Desarmes

As told to Andrés Schipani

Published: March 13 2010 00:47 | Last updated: March 13 2010 00:47

Stanley Desarmes: “All of my family was crying out: ‘We escaped Haiti and now we will die in Chile’”

I had a good life back in Haiti. I am a computer technician and had a busy cybercafé and call centre; I was visited by friends all the time, I had chats here and there, and good coffee. Everyone in the neighbourhood knew me. Yes, we are the poorest country around, but it wasn’t that bad for me.

But after the earthquake, my life became terrible. I have no life any more. My family has nothing. I remember everything about that day – I was walking down the street in Port-au-Prince, on my way to meet my wife at my daughter’s school. Then I felt the earthquake, and I thought: “God, I’ll die. My wife, my little daughter, they’re both dead.” I ran between the debris and saw that the school was gone. I couldn’t find them anywhere.

I rushed back to our house. It was almost completely destroyed, but they were there, outside, alive, and I thanked God for that. My mother, my father, everybody was there, shocked, crying, but unhurt and alive. We had to live in the streets. After four or five days, I thought: “I cannot keep living like this; no one knows how long this situation will last.” There was already a rotten smell of the dead and it was too much, way too much to deal with.

So I went to the Chilean embassy in Port-au-Prince and asked them to help me reach my brother Pierre. He’s a reggaeton singer who has been living here in Santiago for 10 years. The day after, I took my family of nine and left Haiti on a Chilean military plane. Pierre supported us with shelter, food and, most of all, love.

And then nature hit again. It was a fine night, I was playing with my two-year-old daughter, Standerley, and after putting her to bed I stayed up, walking around the garden, thinking of my friends back in the Caribbean, and then I went to sleep.

After 10 minutes, I felt the earth grumbling beneath me… once again. So I desperately started calling everybody: “Mother, father, everybody, rush outside!” All of my family was crying out loud: “No, God, I will die, we will die, we escaped Haiti and now we will die in Chile! God, don’t let us die!” We lived because Santiago wasn’t as bad as Port-au-Prince but there are places further south that look like some places in Haiti.

I survived a strong quake in Haiti. I came here just to survive another strong quake. I don’t want to live followed by tremors. I feel I could die at any time, that I cannot avoid it. Tragedy follows me. I thought that by coming down here I would live longer. It’s been almost two weeks since the earthquake hit Chile and almost two months since the one that destroyed Haiti, and I am still shocked.

I came here to feel alive, to have a good life, and now I feel dead. I feel I am sick in the head, that I am psychologically touched. I cannot sleep in a closed space for fear it will fall on top of my head. I sleep in the garden here. I live in fear.

I want to go somewhere else, move somewhere else, anywhere; I don’t want to stay here. I am too scared. But I have no means. I have nothing. I came here with one shirt, one pair of trousers and one pair of shoes. That’s all I have. I didn’t have much anyway, but that little that we had, everything, is in Haiti under the rubble; nature tore it from us.

Well, I have my family; that is all that matters – my father, mother, brother, daughter, wife and cousins with me here. Now I have to find a place to go. Here, even if conditions are better, I feel as if I am back in Haiti. I feel sickness every time I feel an aftershock, even the weakest one.

I want to go anywhere. Somewhere where tremors won’t follow me.