zach pippin

After lunch on Friday we drove over to Carrefour, the epicenter. All of the destruction we had seen up to this point paled in comparison to this city. Port au Prince had collapsed, damaged, and undamaged buildings. Carrefour had piles of rubble and severely damaged, barely standing buildings.

Carrefour is the hometown of our Haitian-American team member, Junot. One of our stops was by the collapsed stack of concrete floors that was his mother’s house. With two last tents in hand, we walked around the city. Junot inquired around trying to find the neediest families.

The first was an elderly woman who he found. We gave her the tent, but didn’t have much time to talk. Then we turned a corner. What we saw there was the most memorable moment for all of us on the team. There was a woman holding an infant. The baby couldn’t have been more than a few weeks old. The woman was his grandmother. She had pulled him out of his house, the sole survivor in his family.

A few of us got to work setting up a tent for her while Junot talked to the people there. Junot broke down into tears while holding the baby, and after talking to the grandmother plans on adopting him. For now, all we could do was give him and his grandmother that tent and a few baby clothes to replace the heavy coat that was over-heating him.

On our way out of the city we took a suitcase full of small survival kits and threw them to people on the streets as we passed. After they were all gone we found a first aid kit. We weren’t sure if it was our team’s or meant to be given away, so we gave it away. The woman screamed with joy as she opened it.

If you are seriously interested in adopting a child out of Haiti please contact me immediately at zpippin@gmail.com