Uncovered Treasures

Walking along the cool, sapphire waters of the Pacific. Sunshine glistening on the waves. Sea treasures - oysters, starfish, mussels, sponges, anemones - uncovered by the low tide.

I'm with a friend I met the day we flew to Haiti. Sarah had stayed in Port-au-Prince to run a clinic set up at an orphanage after the earthquake. This is the first time we've seen each other since hugging goodbye under a mango tree.

"Part of it is closure," she says of coming to see our team in California.  Like a book you can't put down, we struggle to close this chapter.

We went to the disaster zone expecting to feel the ache of death and despair.  Instead, for some of us Haiti became a place of rebirth.

"Haiti awakened something inside me," our friend, Kezia tries to explain. "My life hasn't really been the same since."

Sitting under the mango tree at base camp, I'd told Kezia she was meant to be a storyteller, a desire she'd buried long ago. In Haiti she'd let it stir in her heart again. "I felt like I'd been given permission to dream," she said. 

Closed doors. disappointments. failures...our dreams had become ghosts - until Haiti.

Sarah described Haiti as a place "where hugs were bandaids, hands became hope and a song bonded souls." It felt selfish to be with victims who lost so much only to find a song in our souls.

I, too, had abandoned myself to the song.  At times I was a writer, at times a nurse's aide, at times an orphan's playmate.  Limitations were removed. 

I struggle to find words. Kezia does it for me.

"Not being able to express yourself speaks of something new happening inside you. You are letting His purposes be worked out rather than making it fit a model you've seen before," she says. "That is trust."

Walking along the shore, I want to ask Sarah, "It's ok to keep the treasure we found in Haiti, right?"  But words are lost among the riches uncovered by the changing tide.

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Storytellers

It's an overused but true saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. Every TV writer's heard a million times, "Write to video." 

I know when I truly got what that means.

I'd written a lead story about an illegal, multistate puppy mill ring. Our news director tore up my script. 

"See these images?" he said, cuing up shots of sad puppies whimpering behind chain link fencing. "Start here. Then go into this sound bite."

He showed me how to turn a good story into an extraordinary one; not being exploitive but using the full impact of the visual medium.  

He also gave me my first big breaks: the anchor desk, top story live shots (threatening to fire me if I screwed up), network stories.

He could be a tyrant, too. When a childhood friend's mom died, he told me not to come back if I left during a critical news time. I walked out, driving six hours in a blizzard to get to the funeral.

He called a few days later demanding to know why I wasn't at work. "You fired me," I said. "Show up," he said. It was his way of saying, "You're still on the team." 

That year we took the station to first in the ratings for the first time in 40 years.

He was fiercely competitive but taught me to use that drive to dig beyond surface facts. He denied me only one title: war correspondent. Despite the risk, I'd wanted to cover history from Iraq's frontlines.

Eventually I'd go to the frontlines of war zones of a different kind - inner cities, disaster zones, Haiti...

Storytellers.  We see the risk, but we also see the chance to tell history. See those images? Start there.

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Champions

Maria Peterson Photography

My childhood friend, Stello, came to visit and we got to talking about junior high. We can remember our first crushes but for the life of us we can't remember why we started calling eachother by our last names - and still do.

We played soccer a lot back then. We can still recall our team's starting lineup:  Stello, me, Missy, Ruthie, Pam...

An undefeated season took us to the district championships against our biggest rival. Coach kept us starters in the whole game but the score stayed tied at zero.  Exhausted, we faced a kickoff.

Each of us remembers that game a little differently. Stello, at center, was held scoreless at the front line. I missed a penalty kick, something that hadn't happened all season. Our goalie let a ball dribble by her. 

And our rival? Well, they made one lousy kickoff point.

We'd bawled unashamedly. We hadn't played just to win a title or to impress a boy on the sidelines. We had played for eachother. I had wanted my teammates to be champions more than I had wanted it for myself and they had wanted the same for me. 

But in the end we'd fallen short. Our season was over.

"Why do we still care about a soccer game so long ago?" I asked Stello before she left.  She thought awhile and then wrote in my notes, "What would the world be like if we cared more about the other's success than our own?"

So decades later defeat finally lost its sting as we imagined a world that looked like it did back on that soccer field.  First crushes included, of course.

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No Ordinary Life

Nurse Kerry jumped on a plan with only hours notice to return to Haiti

Received a distressing message today from a relief team nurse who just flew back to Haiti to help at the orphanage clinic we set up after the earthquake. Aftershocks had forced them to evacuate.

"All the children woke up, fear was within each of them," Kerry said. They'd been outside all night, most of the children too hurt to go anywhere else.

Each time the ground shakes in Haiti, it shakes in my heart.  Images run through my mind. A starving baby asleep in my arms. Sick orphans huddled on the wet ground.

I keep having a dream that I'm trying to drive my car to Haiti but a tidal wave blocks my way.

Some of my teammates returned to Haiti with only hours notice to help expand the clinic at New Life Children's Home thanks to the donation of a large UNICEF tent.  We call the clinic "Wimmer's Wing" after EMT Sarah Wimmer who stayed behind to help run it.

I expected those middle-of-the-night phone calls as a TV news crime reporter. The overnight producer would give me just enough details to throw on clothes and get out the door. Shooting. Northeast. Multiple fatalities.  

Even after leaving the crime beat, I still carry a backpack of clothes in my trunk...

As I look at how the story of my life has unfolded - from the viewer who sent a Kleenex with the snarky advice, "Honey, blot your lips," to Hollywood to Haiti - I've come to see that I'm not meant to live an ordinary life...even if that means crossing the ocean on a moment's notice simply to go hold a child's hand.

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Haiti: Chapter Two Begins

Haitian kids peer at us from an old truck (Photo: Dane Melberg)

Got a call today from the relief team leader I covered in Haiti to see if I can go back next week! The last trip came together in days so we'll see.

Transformational Development Agency is expanding the clinic at New Life Children's Home thanks to a large UNICEF tent.  There is an urgent need for medical staff, especially physical therapists and pediatric specialists. Sarah, our teammate who stayed in Haiti, says they need prosthetics for kids who lost limbs in the earthquake but have no idea how they'll get them.

While the needs are endless in Haiti, I can help by keeping the story in the public eye. But the longer it takes to return, the more every day life intrudes: the agent calls for an audition. the landlord wants a decision about renewing my lease. the car needs some maintenance...

I struggle with a conflicting sense of calling to both Hollywood and Haiti. Perhaps my destiny is in Haiti's ruins. But as one of our paramedics said to me, "The 'high' we experienced there may never happen again."

He's right. We experienced a rare time of working at our peak ability; of loving unreservedly; of total unity of vision.

"Why go back?" my sister asked. Why put myself in danger again?  For the same reason as before: it seems like a moment in history in which I've been invited to play a role.

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Haiti: Part 5 - Beauty for Ashes

medical team planning for the day


I've posted a few stories about covering the earthquake in Haiti.  To read part 4, click here.

Our Haiti relief team is having a reunion tonight! This was one of the best groups of people I've ever met. Most of us plan to go back to Haiti at some point. Even though I still don't see how it all fits together - the journey from Hollywood to Haiti - it was where I belonged.

Haiti - part 5

We're leaving Haiti today. We have to return to the U.S. a few days earlier than we'd planned. The re-opening of the main airport in Port-au-Prince will mean tighter restrictions. 

Even though we came into the country legally, our leaders are worried Haitian authorities might give us trouble trying to get a large team of nearly 40 doctors, nurses, paramedics and journalists back out.

I'm torn between wanting to stay and wanting to go home. Someone asks if I've said goodbye to baby Kevin - I can't hold him one more time and just walk away.

Our gear's loaded in the tap-tap by 7:30 am. I hug the staff at New Life Children's Home and say goodbye to a teammate who has chosen to stay behind a few weeks to help run the clinic. I met Sarah through a Facebook friend and two weeks later we were on a plane to Haiti. She's a hero to us - a lifesaver to the injured children with nowhere to go.

Dr. Jolie & Sarah Wimmer (rt) (Scott Mortensen photo)

We give Sarah one more hug, jump in the tap-tap, and drive through the orphanage's teal gates one last time. We truly experienced beauty in the ashes.

Back in the US
A teammate hospitalized with life-threatening dengue fever wrote:

In the worst moments, I would close my eyes and see the faces of the sweet souls we met in Haiti and wonder who was caring for them. I'd find myself falling asleep praying for the lives in the countless images that play across the slide show in my mind and heart. That in itself is the silver lining to this. ~Bree

"Don't forget me."  Scott Mortensen photo

A photographer who took these pictures urged us to make sure the people we met are not forgotten. I will do my part until I return, Haiti.  Map vini an Ayiti anko.

To read about my return to Haiti two years after the earthquake, click here.

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Haiti: Part 4 - Miracles

"If God had a face, what would it look like?" Joan Osborne

Haiti - Part 4

Today we're heading to downtown Port-au-Prince to tour the ruins of the January 12th earthquake.  This is our first trip to the wrecked Presidential palace.

The weather's been mercifully fair and cloudy all week - low 80s, some drizzle - so we can ride in the back of the tap-tap (flatbed truck taxi) without scorching in the sun. Mercifully as well, aftershocks have been mild.

The city is destroyed as far as they eye can see. Rich and poor, famous and unknown, white and black - every neighborhood equally devastated.

We nicknamed our tap-tap (truck taxi) "big blue."

Driving in Haiti is nuts!  Carts and people often block the roads, there are very few traffic lights at intersections and drivers use whichever side of the road is open.

Our tap-tap (truck taxi) gets blocked by a dump truck stuck on the narrow dirt road.  We climb out of the tap tap to see if we can find anyone who needs help since we won't be going anywhere for a while.

We're sorry

A young man calls to us in Creole. "He wants help recovering the bodies of three family members so he can give them a proper burial," our interpreter tell us. "They died when their house fell on them in the earthquake."

What can we do? We don't have the heavy equipment needed to move the tons of stone that became their grave.

Dane Melberg photo

For a moment, I wonder why God sent us here if He wasn't going to do miracles like He did when He parted the Red Sea. Why is God so seemingly blind to a nation's despair? I long to see God do something Hollywood filmmakers couldn't copy if they tried a hundred years.

Our driver inches forward as traffic starts moving. "We're sorry," our translator tells the man as we jump back in the tap-tap, "We can't help you."

If a miracle happened that day, I didn't see it.

A mother's touch
Back at base camp, I'm overcome by a sense of futility. What difference can we make in the face of such tragedy?

It may not seem like much, but there is one thing...I walk to the orphanage and cradle a starving infant - abandoned without ever knowing a mother's touch.

baby Kevin holding my thumb

Back in the US
It hits me that I did see miracles in Haiti. 

I saw the miracle of faith as doctors, nurses and others said, "I'll go."

I saw the miracle of hope as they set broken bones and comforted broken hearts.

I saw the miracle of love as they held strangers and gave water to thirsty children...miracles you see not with your eyes, but with your heart.

To read part 5, click here.

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