Zamor ready to board her flight to Miami, where she would transfer to Haiti
With three giant suitcases, an overstuffed backpack and a tent in her hands, Regine Zamor arrived at LaGuardia Airport in early March, rushing to catch a 6 a.m. flight to Miami where she would transfer to another plane bound for the earthquake ruins of Haiti. Born and raised in Brooklyn, the
29-year-old Zamor is first generation American with Haitian upbringing. On this March morning, she was leaving behind her mother, four brothers and sisters, eight nieces and nephews, dozens of friends, and a job she loved, to move to Haiti to help with earthquake recovery efforts.
There were few of Zamor’s own belongings in her baggage. Most of the contents were donations – medical supplies, clothes, shoes, tents, hygiene items, wash cloths – all gathered by Zamor during a frantic three weeks of preparation for her journey. Each bag weighed close to 100 pounds.
Zamor checking in over 300 pounds of luggage stuffed with proceeds for Hait
“It’s $350,” announced the American Airlines check-in agent at LaGuardia after weighing all of the bags. Zamor pulled out her credit card, reluctantly, to pay the excess baggage fee.
“I’m afraid that the cash that I have is the cash for Haiti,” she said. “and I don’t know if I’m going to a bank.”
Two days after the January 12 earthquake shook her beloved country, Zamor made her first post-quake trip flying into Santo Domingo, then spending the night in a nearby border town and driving to Haiti the next morning to help any way she could. After three weeks of living in the destruction and assessing the severe need for help, Zamor made a life-changing decision: she would return to New York, sell her belongings, quit her job, and come back to Haiti to live — and to rebuild the country.
“I totally understand everything, everything everything that’s happened to me before. It’s like everything has come down to this one thing,” said Zamor thinking back on the events that preceded her decision.
On February 6, Zamor returned to New York, and in a three-week whirlwind, of meetings, goodbyes, and fundraising, she got ready for her new life. She also attended the first official screening of “Strange Things” (Bagay Dwol), a documentary that she had co-produced, about a group of homeless Haitian children. Suddenly, the documentary seemed more relevant than it ever had in the three previous years when she worked on it with director and co-producer Alexandria Hammond.
“It was hard to see [the film], because I just came back. The film felt different, looked different, Haiti looked different in the film,” said Zamor, noting that in the aftermath of the earthquake, almost everyone seemed to be living on the streets in Haiti — not just the street children. “All of it is history now,” she said.
The first time Zamor visited Haiti, she was five years old and she said she felt an instant connection. She said she just fell in love with the community, the beach, and the smell of Haiti.
Since that first visit, Zamor has visited as often as she could, staying with an uncle in Martissant, a neighborhood of Port-Au-Prince, making many friends. Last summer she stayed with another uncle at Carrefour Fuellis, who had moved there from New York a few years ago. Carrefour Feuilles is a densely populated area of Port-Au-Prince, which stretches high in the mountains. Last summer Zamor volunteered there with local sustainable organizations, identifying Haitian communities where funding was needed the most.
The experience she had gained from her volunteer work, the relationships she had established, and her strong connections, gave her an advantage when she arrived amidst the initial post-earthquake chaos.
When she first arrived in January, she walked around recording information, hoping to help create a better system for distributing supplies to the victims.
“It’s tricky when you have all these supplies and you don’t know who to give it to,” she said. “Some places are getting water but they’re not getting any food, some places getting food but they have no tents, some places getting water but they need medicine.”
She focused her efforts mainly in Carrefour Feuilles, which had received very little assistance since the earthquake, partly because of difficulties with transportation, and partly because the major relief organizations didn’t know exactly where the people were. Zamor said that many of the foreign aid workers were also afraid to go to Carrefour Feuilles because they were told that area was the “red zone.” For Zamor that was ludicrous.
“This is what they use in a war,” said Zamor. “There is no war in Haiti. These are just people.”
She befriended a group of medics and convinced them to go with her to a camp she had just found. There were about 20 people, mostly children, including new born twin-boys sleeping on the ground.
“When I showed them everyone was like ‘oh my God’, they were speechless,” remembered Zamor.
And that is how she started working with mobile medical clinics brought by volunteer doctors to Haiti. In the scorching heat, wearing her cargo pants to save her from mosquitoes “that would bite through everything” and her New York winter boots to climb the rocky hills, she walked around looking for small camps in need that the Haitians created themselves after the earthquake. Then she would tell them to spread the news, and the next morning she would arrive with the group of doctors. They would set up a few chairs and a table and start treating them all.
“And so we just walked to different camps and the higher up we went, the more severe the wounds were,” said Zamor.
Many of the wounds the doctors found were seriously infected, because they had festered for too long without medican attention. The doctors sewed up what they could, and Zamor translated their instructions on how to keep the wounds clean.
After a few weeks, Zamor made her return trip to New York. She quit her job as a program manager at Creative Connections, a 21st Century grant funded after a school enrichment program throughout New York City.
That was easy compared with saying goodbye to family. But Zamor found her family highly supportive of her new mission. Her sister, Marie St. Hilaire, got her a magicJack, a device that would let Zamor plug her computer into any standard phone jack in Haiti, so all the sisters can talk for free. That’s vital, because Zamor’s other sister, Marjorie St. Hilaire, is coordinating an assistant fund that Zamor set up in New York just before she left.
Zamor’s mother, Marie Beaubrun, got medical supplies donated from the nursing home where she works. And her brothers gave cash donations. They sent their help, but could not join her.
“I’m the only one without kids, not married, so I’m able to do this stuff that they can’t do.” said Zamor.
At the airport, Zamor did a last check of her bags. Her friend Richard Morris, owner of Port-au-Prince’s Oloffson Hotel, would pick her up at the airport when she arrived, help with her over 300 pounds of baggage, and set her up to stay in his hotel. Zamor had about a couple thousand dollars in cash with her — all gifts from her family or proceeds from the clothes she sold to Beacon’s closet, a clothing exchange store that buys and sells vintage clothes. She had no idea how long the money would last, and she wasn’t focused on that at all.
“I’ve never felt so calm, so clear. No question – this is exactly where I need to be… I’ve never felt my purpose so much before.”
Zamor has already started fulfilling her purpose. Since she arrived in Haiti on March 3, she has already identified problems, rejuvenated her old connections and started working with sustainable programs. After the busy days, she makes sure to update her experiences in her blog www.bagaydwol.wordpress.com, hoping to keep the world informed about the reality in Haiti.