I've awaken early this morning, realizing I still have much to tell about my Haiti experience despite the fact that I've returned to the States. I guess I've been putting off telling the story of my last full day in Haiti due to the fact that a.) I have no pictures to help illustrate what happened which will cause me to write much more in order to describe the experience and b.) it was such a strange day, it's taken me a bit of time to gather my thoughts and process what actually happened. I honestly warn anyone who reads it - it's not for the faint of heart and it is rather graphic (in a bloody, "Fight Club" slash "Saving Private Ryan" way). So with that being said, here are the events of last Thursday.
The day started later than usual for me, as I did not feel like attending mass and my head did not feel like attending life due to a few too many drinks with Fiona and Rachel. I managed to get myself going by 8:00am and wandered over to the hospital across the street. I had been told the night before by a few long time volunteers "Yes, tomorrow you need to go to the morgue with Conan." I had no idea what this entailed or why NPH was involved with a morgue but I'm one for blindly following strangers' advice so I showed up looking for the caravan to the morgue.
My ride was easy to spot: two flatbed trucks, the first carrying 30 cardboard coffins. after a bit of a struggle to find our exact departure time (again, with the struggle that is Haitian time) I end up on the back of the coffin-less flatbed with Conan, volunteer/musician Bryn, and 7 other volunteers who were from the cholera camp. Still not sure of where we were going or what we were doing, I decided it was going to be a great adventure and good for me to just kind of go with the flow.
The truck stops 45 minutes later at the Port-au-Prince General Hospital, which is immediately behind the nearly collapsed Palace. We park and I instantly have a bad feeling about the morning. Cesaer, the badass Italian doctor, had been riding in the other flat bed - shoes off, sitting on these cardboard coffins, drinking rum, and smoking. He hops down and comes up to me, "You will need this," and hands me some rum and a cigarette. Yes, I enjoy drinking at strange hours but even 9am is pushing it. I decline the cigarette and, after a little coaxing from Cesaer, I end up nearly 5 shots deep by 9:30. This was the best decision I made the whole day.
Conan, who had been finagling with some of the authorities at the morgue, tells us its time to go in and to suit up. Most of the volunteers wear only rubber gloves while the Haitians who were actually getting paid for their work, wear full body HAZMAT-like suits. We open the gate to the morgue and are greeted with a smell that I will never be able to describe nor do I ever want to be able to recall. If I wasn't slightly drunk, I might have puked. The morgue has a long dark hall, with two metal refrigerated cellars on the right and a autopsy room on the left. The autopsy room has 5 metal tables, some equipment, and a puddle of blood and water on the floor. Directly across this room is a little 10 foot wide gap between the two cellars that contains a few stretchers and on this particular day, a very recently-dead body laying on the floor.
We enter the hall and I try to find a place were I can observe for a while without actually getting to involved, seeing as how I am still unsure what we are exactly doing. After some body bags are carried in and placed in the 10 foot gap, a new group of Haitians show up and start to sing. They are amazing. For anyone who has ever listen to the album "Graceland" by Paul Simon, these singers are very similar to that South African sound. They start slow, the lead singer in his rhythmic baratone, looks like he's going to cry. I'm almost going to cry - he is that good. They finish their slower, gospel song. Nearly immediately upon completion, many of the Haitians start playing drums on anything they can find. They are pounding on the floor, using the cardboard coffins, smacking the walls. I'm told later this is to awaken the spirits of the dead that we are about to move. The lead singer returns to his singing, this time much faster and lively. He looks like a man possessed, dancing and sweating and convulsing. One of the Haitians grabs me and I dance with him and begin playing drums on one of the cellars.
The cellars are opened by Conan. The inside is a site that could never be forgotten. Unlike America, where morgues have individual 'drawers' for the dead, this morgue had one floor that didn't care who you once where - you are now part of this rotting pile of bodies. Thrown in and stacked up, the pile was at least 3 feet high. With me on my drums and the singing group still wailing away, the HAZMAT suited Haitians begin to wade into the cellar. For the next 2 hours the process worked as so: a body would be brought out (many of which did not resemble a human being anymore due to the poor refrigeration system and intense heat in Haiti), placed in a cardboard coffin or body bag, given a rosary, and carried out to the flatbed truck. Because of the amount of volunteers and paid Haitians, I am only needed to carry 4 bodies and to continue my drumming. Everyone is dancing. Even the Haitians who are carrying bodies out of the cellars. I am pouring sweat by time the event is over and the music stops. The singing has helped pass the time and given, what in reality was a somber experience, a lively and joyful feel. The bodies - all 75 of them - are now loaded onto the back of one of the flatbeds and we drive to the same fields that I had been to earlier on Tuesday for the candlelight vigil.
We arrive to find 75 pre-dug graves, a Haitian priest, and a band. The bodies are unloaded of the truck and placed into the graves. After some music from both the band and the soul singers that have followed us out the grave site, the old Haitian priest says a few words for the dead. It is a surreal site with 75 graves, two bands, and the Caribbean ocean in the the background; the extreme contrast between beauty and death.
We load back up onto the trucks and I'm left with my thoughts of the day for the next hour until we reach the NPH campus. Since that day, I've told this story a few times and nearly everyone I tell responds the same way, "Too bad that was the last thing you did in Haiti." I disagree. It was difficult to see at times and may give me a few zombie nightmares, but overall, it was one of the most powerful experiences of the whole trip. These people are left to rot by the hospital and have no means of a proper send off from this life. What NPH does, by giving them a respectable burial and hiring singers to sing voodoo inspired songs, is truly amazing. This event happens every Thursday. I personally couldn't do it every week but I admire the people like Conan who take it upon themselves to help those in need, even the dead. Gruesome as it was, I will never forget my last full day in Haiti.
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