A Connection

The Caribe Tours bus was scheduled to arrive in Petion Ville a neighborhood in Puerto Prince at 5:00 p.m. this evening. Corrigan knowing that bus schedules In Haiti are not reliable went to the station with reading material. I arrived after 8:00 p.m. He drove me to his home where several Haitian boys two younger kids and one young Haitian woman hanging out. Actually, Christiana, the young women was working in the kitchen. Corrigan tells me that she and her two children are now living with Corrigan and Shelley as their house had fallen down in the earthquake. The little girl’s leg was in a full cast having had it broken when the house fell down.

Corrigan proceeded to make us a large plate of taco fixings which we ate and then left on the table. He said the rest will be eaten. Shelley, Corrigan’s wife, and their children just left to return to the states yesterday as an opportunity opened up allowing them to expedite the adoption of two Haitian children.

Last Saturday, sitting on my coach, safe and comfortable in the “Man Room”, I watched a WSU basketball game being played on Friel Court in Pullman. The students in the stands were all wearing white T-shirts with “509” written across the front. Being raised in Pullman I knew that was the area code for Pullman as well as all of Eastern Washington. I mentioned this to Linda and asked the rhetorical question - why would a college routing section decide to wear their area code emblazoned on their chests. Today I might have found the reason.

The country code for Haiti is “509.” I believe that the WSU students found this fact connected them to this earthquake ravaged country. The world is mourning for the Haitian people.