Dalina still talks about “how the earth shook,” her mother Anna-Marie Loomis said.
The eight-year-old Haitian was living in an orphanage outside of Port-au-Prince when an earthquake devastated Haiti one year ago today — Jan. 12, 2010 — killing more than 200,000 people.
“I feel sad for her that she had to go through that, but there’s a bit of a calmness in that she seems to be OK with what happened,” Loomis said. “It’s a memory of an experience but it doesn’t appear to have upset her.”
Loomis and her husband, Neale, had been in the process of adopting Dalina since October of 2008. Loomis recalled loosing her breath when the first pictures of the toppled presidential palace surfaced.
The couple from Caroline was thankful to be able to take their new daughter home just a few weeks after the natural catastrophe because the Canadian government fast-tracked Haiti orphan adoptions that were already being processed at the time.
Loomis said Dalina has adapted well to life in Alberta during the past 12 months.
The happy, active little girl loves soccer, swimming, fishing and is currently learning how to curl. Her reading is improving and she adored singing the words to Wavin’ Flag, a hit song featuring various Canadian artists that helped raise funds for Haiti relief.
Dalina, however, sometimes says things that quickly remind her new family of the hardships she endured in the impoverished country. Loomis said the child is often in awe of the abundance of food available to her, and once stated that corpses will start to smell if not covered.
The couple also has two other Haitian children — daughter Emmanuella, 10, who they adopted in 2001 and son Antoine, 8, who was adopted in 2004.
Loomis said it’s important that her children know about their history and culture, but images and stories of the devastating earthquake can still be upsetting for them.
The family is instead focusing on celebrating Dalina’s “Loomis birthday” on Jan. 27 to mark the day she joined her new family in Canada.
The couple is also in the process of adopting another son from an orphanage in Haiti. Loomis hopes the whole family will be able to travel to Haiti to pick him up when the adoption is finalized so the children can visit their birth country.
Doug Decksheimer, a local board member with the Central Alberta-based Haitian Children’s Aid Society, just returned home from Haiti on Jan. 1.
“I think that the biggest thing that they all deal with right now is that a fear factor still exists,” he said. “A fear of buildings, a fear of noises. A very psychological thing is always in the back of their mind that this could happen again.”
Decksheimer made his fifth trip to the country — his first since the earthquake — to tend to some of the society’s efforts to rebuild the orphanage it supports.
UN engineers quickly condemned the three-storey building located about 40 km north of Port-au-Prince when it was damaged in the earthquake, and the past 12 months have been challenging, he said.
The orphanage faced seven cases of cholera, which broke out in the months following the earthquake. There were some close calls, but Decksheimer said no one died from the bacterial infection that is often caused by consuming contaminated food and water.
The society has been able to build two temporary shelters to house more than 30 orphans between the ages of six months and five years. It now faces the daunting task of raising more than $600,000 to construct a new permanent structure.
New land has been purchased and the society hopes to build the new orphanage there by the end of the year.
Despite all the rubble, minimal reconstruction and massive tent cities, Decksheimer said Haitians will continue to manage because their lives have never been easy.
“They just seem resilient that way,” he said. “You can look in their eyes and you see some despair, but by and large they are very resilient.”
ptrotter@www.reddeeradvocate.com