A Short Note on Fear

Last night, I had just finished posting on this very blog. I was preparing a few documents in preparation for today and I suddenly heard people outside the window. They weren't right outside, but I could hear crowds of people at an indeterminate distance. I listened for a few moments before going to find Tom, who was working late at his own computer in another room.

His fan was oscillating on high, and he was working toward the back of the house. He hadn't heard anything. I asked him to come listen to something, and he reluctantly pulled himself away. We stood on the porch in front of the huge iron gates. Dumel had recently left and we hadn't yet bolted the gates shut. But I didn't learn this until later.

The din was growing. I asked if Tom was a little scared. He said he was. I admitted I was. The crowds were getting louder and there was screaming and banging on metal up towards the main road. At this moment we were more curious than anything. We decided to go to the roof to see what we could see, and to find out just how close or how far away this commotion was happening.

From the roof we could see almost nothing. Except for a few fires toward the city. And hordes of people on the main street, perhaps 200 feet away, gathered in nearly complete darkness, and revealed only in the headlights of a few slowly passing trucks. People were running and screaming.

I had been instructed by more than a couple of folks working for large NGOs here in Haiti that during a political uprising, the road near the compound (the Rue de Nacional) would likely become chaotic. It's the only road that leads to Port-au-Prince from Cap Haitien. These people who had 'seen it all before' recommended that, should anything like this happen again, we lay low until someone came for us. (I still don't know who that person would be, save for Dumel).

In any case, after being frozen on the roof for what was either seconds or minutes, Tom and I looked at one another without saying anything. I now know that we were simulatenously recalling previous conversations and imagining similarly terrifying situations. We ran down the stairs to the first floor and began frantically turning out every light-emitting device: power strips, headlamps, the modem. In utter darkness, I checked the front gate (see photo above) and this is when I realized it wasn't bolted. Amidst the uproar, I jammed the bolt into place. Then we ran back to the stairs, not quite sure where we would be safest if people began crawling over the walls or throwing fire into the compound. I got Dumel on the phone, and from his end I heard the same uproar. My adrenaline was pumping. This was fear. I'm certain that, from the first moment I heard the sound of so many people gathering until the moment I was on the phone with Dumel, no more than 4 minutes could have passed. My voice and my hands were shaking. I hung up with Dumel and sat beside Tom on the stairs, nearly dropping the phone because I couldn't keep a grip on it.

It turns out that Haitians love soccer. They especially love Brazil's soccer team. And Brazil had just defeated Uruguay. In a final shoot-out. In the semi-finals of the Copa America. And everyone in Haiti had been glued to their radios during the match. And then they were celebrating in the streets. And we were safe in our compound. And Dumel had giggled at me over the phone. And then we called Adolfo, the regional UN security official (who happens to be Uruguayan), and finally made an appointment for him to appraise the security of the compound.