The Next Big Story: My Journey Through the Land of Possibilities

by Soledad O'Brien;Rose Marie Arce

  I ask Mark Kenson to jump atop a Jeep with me and go visit the place where he had lived as a child slave. I want to understand how fifty thousand children lived legally as slaves in this country and how a young man who had suffered as he had suffered could be so resilient, so understanding, so strong in the face of this latest indignity—an earthquake hitting an island already hit hard by poverty. We drive to La Saline, a ghetto by the edge of the sea that was already in such miserable condition it’s hard to tell if the earthquake did any damage. A flotilla of garbage floats atop the sewage that runs in canals along the homes. Large black sows poke through the trash for food in constant competition with the children, who are naked and bone thin. La Saline is assembled from refuse, discarded tin and cardboard, wood boards and boxes. There is nothing to lose here when a natural disaster hits, yet there is everything to lose.

  Mark Kenson leads me through the narrow alleys that divide the structures as Tawanda records our journey We walk past unattended children who have barely learned to walk. Many are naked, crying, and clearly ill. Those children used to be him, running out daily into the streets to beg, then beaten if they came back with nothing. Jonathan and Josh Newton both lean over the edge of our pickup with their cameras, tall white guys in fading T-shirts hovering over a sea of screaming children. “Photo! Photo!” the children yell, and Josh captures images of big eyes looking up at him. The people who lived around and knew Mark Kenson cannot believe their eyes when they see him, surrounded by photographers, arriving in a car, well fed, well groomed, a warm smile across his face. Children crowd around him in awe. Jonathan snakes into the slum ahead of us. He may have grown up as a competitive snowboarder but his energy blends in comfortably in the third world these days. Jonathan’s only distraction is he keeps stopping to interact with the kids. I really admire this about him. I am like so many Americans with my single focus on work. Life is not work. Life is life. A stop to admire a child’s smile and a smile back enriches us both, even in all this sadness. He will take away from this a mental album to go with his footage, memories that will drive his quest for social justice. I watch him and realize I can walk away from this with so much more than a story Josh with his full blue eyes has captured the attention of half the girls in the slum and giggles break out. There is something oddly happy about this scene.

  We come upon a woman who rented space to the lady who enslaved Mark Kenson and his sister. The lady who enslaved him is gone, but this woman lets us see the hut where he used to live, hot but neat, with buckets of food packets from the World Food Program. Josh walks in and snaps photos. Mark puts his arms around the woman and her husband, as if they are all at a family reunion. I am overcome by the smell, the heat, and the terrible conditions. Mark is sweating profusely but smiling a wide smile. I can’t believe how neat and tidy this dump is. It reminds me of the people sweeping their little square in the street; it’s about dignity. “What do you think when you come here?” I ask him.

  “I thank God,” says this grateful young man. “I thank him.”

  And then he does something surprising. He thanks me for taking him to see where he’d come from. “I could have never come here on my own,” he says.

  “Why not?” I ask him. He smiles at me and looks around him. It is obvious. To come back with a film crew and a story worth telling is a triumph. Instead of feeling sad when he revisits his past, he is coming back to celebrate his good fortune.

  Mark Kenson tells me that he has been through so much in life that he does not see the earthquake as daunting. It is a reason to work harder. He believes he can help build a better Haiti for the future. His experience being schooled and raised by the Manasseros makes him believe that he can someday open an orphanage for his own people. That plan was supposed to include his sister, Mona, who was also taken off the streets by an orphanage that was not far away from the Lighthouse, and Mark Kenson had been able to visit her often. He obviously loves his sister dearly. She is his only real family, the only relative who has been around all his life and accompanied him through his journey

  We offer to take Mark Kenson to Mona’s orphanage to see what had become of her. That is the first time I see that smile drop from Mark Kenson’s face. Since we are profiling him for our documentary, Bill and Susette Manassero have called the directors at her orphanage to find out what had become of her. A family in Texas has adopted her. The paperwork was expedited because of the earthquake, so he never had a chance to say good-bye. Mark Kenson has lost his only close relative to adoption. He has been working so hard at the Lighthouse after the earthquake that he hadn’t been by to see her in time. But knowing she is gone doesn’t soften the blow of walking through the iron gates of her orphanage and seeing the emptiness she’d left behind.

  Hal Nungester, the director, lets us all look around and shows us pictures of Mona on the computer. Mark Kenson’s eyes scan the premises, as if she will pop up at any moment. Her bottom bunk bed is made and an old suitcase is jammed beneath. Several stuffed animals sit lonely atop her bed. It is obvious he misses her. Hal’s whole mission is to support adoptions, and Mark Kenson is torn about the idea—it has cost him his sister—so a small amount of tension hangs in the air. “It was her choice and I’m happy for her,” Mark Kenson says of his sister. But he also laments that she will be one less young person around to build a future Haiti. I ask him if he is sure he will stick around. He nods affirmatively. “Even if I left for a while I would return,” he says. “My country needs me.”

  Hal listens in and grows redder as my questions to Mark Kenson continue. “I’m angry that there are factions that are saying we should turn these kids back in to their families, when Mark Kenson obviously can’t even take care of himself, let alone his little sister. He’s living in an orphanage so he can’t provide for himself. We got her from a police station,” Hal says.

  “How did Mona come to you?” I ask.

  “She had been arrested. She was on the street, about twelve years old, little teeny tiny thing. She had scars all over her body where she’d been beat. It’s just starting to come out now about some of the abuse that she suffered while she was here in Haiti. Because while she was in Haiti she was afraid to talk about it, but she’s talking with her family about it now in the States.”

  Hal says he sees no future in Haiti for kids like Mark Kenson and Mona because the unemployment rate hovers at 80 percent. “The people who are hungry now were hungry before the earthquake. They’re getting fed somehow because the Internet and international community has stepped in, and we do appreciate that. But what’s going to happen when they step out? We’re going to go right back to what we had before,” he says. Hal says Mona dreamed of going to the United States to live with a new family and get an education. His orphanage taught her English to prepare her for adoption. Hal commends Mark Kenson for staying behind to help rebuild his country “I don’t think he’s naive. I think he’s the hope of Haiti. I really believe that if we had more young men like him, we could do something, rather than just wallowing in hopelessness,” he says.

  Touring this orphanage leaves me feeling confounded. It is very hard to tell at some of these orphanages where the effects of poverty end and the dislocation of the earthquake begins. All the children are sleeping outside, their belongings strewn about as if they are at a weekend sleepaway camp. The building is unaffected by the earthquake, but it feels dingy and upended inside. The furniture is pushed against the walls and belongings are scattered aimlessly around the floor. Hal’s wife is traveling. There are as many as 125 children in this place at any one time. The Nungesters also take children who are considered unadoptable. So in a large living room in the front, ill and listless children lay in oversized playpens. One boy’s head is so inflated by fluid that it fills the entire width of a pack-and-play, monstrous and bloated. Hal says it is too late for surgery. He is being medicated heavily until death can bring him relief.

  The orphanage system has been laid bare to the eyes of the world since the earth
quake and it is heart-wrenching. Children’s faces cry out on TV appeals for aid. People want to help. But it is not clear exactly how they can. The word “orphan” means a lot of things in Haiti, and everyone is quick to tell you that it doesn’t just mean children whose parents are deceased. Some orphans live at orphanages with their parents. Others are left at orphanages by a parent who has every intention of reclaiming them someday Others are handed over by parents for reasons of poverty, not because they want to lose their children. The country has a hundred licensed orphanages that care for dozens of children and another sixty-seven adoption creches. But every community has several more unlicensed homes for children, many run by American missionaries, according to local authorities.

  We take Mark Kenson back to his own orphanage, where he resumes his role as a force in this operation, living proof that the Manasseros’ contribution goes far beyond giving day-to-day help to needy children. He is a young man whose life is now devoted to building a country he adores. That is the power of one person’s kindness to another. That philosophy is on full display when we arrive. Loud teenage music, in both Creole and English, booms from inside the bins, overcome at times by the laughter of children’s voices. The place is still recovering from an earthquake, the directors are considering shutting down, but there is a party going on?

  We enter to find Susette in a basketball jersey and tennis shoes playing a full game of basketball with the teenage boys. Bill is helping a DJ connect more music. Cendy offers up her first genuine smile as volunteers race behind her and a group of girls in a game of duck duck goose. Mark Kenson joins a soccer game in another area of the concrete bin. A group of laughing boys launches a kite and Jonathan hops on the roof to help them navigate. They are used to his visits and barely notice his camera. One thing is clear. Susette and Bill are going nowhere.

  “What would have happened to Cendy and Mark Kenson if you had left?” I ask her.

  “They would have been left behind. I don’t know. That’s why we couldn’t leave,” she says.

  “What would you hope for her to be? What would you want for Cendy at her best?”

  “A self-assured child who loves herself, loves others, loves God, has peace with who she is. And does whatever God’s given her to do well. Whatever that is. Whatever she wants to aspire to be. We just want to be able to help her heal. Bad things happen, earthquakes happen, orphans happen. Poverty is here. I wish we didn’t have to live here. We’re here because we feel we’re supposed to be here and Cendy is here with us. So we’re trying to do the best we can with her. There is no absolute. There is no perfect.”

  The next day Susette and Bill do the opposite of give up and leave—they open a school! Just half of Haiti’s children ever see the inside of a classroom. The earthquake destroyed three-quarters of the schools that exist. The Manasseros decide they will open their own. Ariana takes Cendy to class the first morning, where a very serious Haitian gentleman who calls himself “Mr. Lavinsky” begins teaching her to read. Mr. Lavinsky says flat out that Haiti will never recover from this earthquake. Navi, Cendy’s nanny, agrees. She lost ten family members in the disaster. Navi and Mr. Lavinsky show up each day in any case, pushing everything forward. Susette and Bill and the volunteers are single focus. They do not believe they can save all of Haiti, but they do believe they can save their fifty kids. They truly are the starfish people, running something that best approximates Disaster Camp.

  The sounds of children learning bounce off the walls of the new building as Susette brings in jugs of water, toilet paper, and snacks. A team of carpenters who showed up to volunteer has built these terrific desks and chairs that look like pews. The place smells strongly of fresh-cut wood and new paint. A generator almost overwhelms the voices of the teachers, but it allows lights and fans. Susette runs off to figure out how to feed a tent city they’ve erected across the street. She tells us for maybe the tenth time she has been warned to not lose focus, not get spread too thin. So every move is calculated against how many supplies they have. Her priority has to be security and food. Bill shows up and we walk around the new place. I ask him to look back on Cendy’s life at the orphanage, all the twists and turns that came before her sitting in the classroom reciting letters in the middle of a disaster zone. “I love her,” he blurts out, and suddenly begins to cry

  That evening the sunset crashes down on the concrete yard, painting it with a patina of orange. Bill and Ariana play guitar and feed children from the neighborhood. The children get caught in the spirit, heads tipping back to sing to God. Mark Kenson looks mesmerized; Cendy is at peace. Susette stands off to the side, her perfect eyeliner unaffected by the heat.

  Weeks later, Wyclef Jean, Haiti’s most famous musician, writes me a song called “Rescued” for our documentary The meaning plays out in this big concrete bin. “Anger got the best of me. So if you’re listening we need better policies,” he sings to his guitar. “They will rescue us. Who will rescue them?”

  Rescue is not as simple as the government rushing in like cavalry when the storm hits. I learned that they don’t even do that sometimes while covering Hurricane Katrina. Haiti teaches that rescue is about what you as an individual do for others; it’s what you do for yourself when you seize the opportunity to help. Rescue is about the guy who jumps in his own boat to yank you off the roof when the floodwaters rise. Rescue is your soul and your spirit rising above your feelings of frustration and entitlement, about the moment you decide this big unsolvable problem belongs to you, too. It’s about the moment you choose to pick up the phone and demand action on behalf of someone who can’t. It’s when you scream aloud at the authorities that something has to get done. It’s about the choice you make to take responsibility for a problem you didn’t create and just go out and assist a total stranger. That’s the moment of rescue, when you rescue yourself from frustration or indifference or lack of power, and step up to offer help.

  I don’t return to Haiti until mid-June. The documentary has aired in May and I am onto other things. I just want to go back. I decide to take my oldest daughter, Sofia, who is nine. She looks totally thrilled we are going together. So am I. I see this as an opportunity to share with her a major lesson I have learned from my time in Haiti. That one person can change the world, if only by changing a piece of it. She takes a breath when we land, not from the jolt of the plane but out of pure excitement. I am so happy to be taking this trip with her. The people in the plane clap and so does she.

  I love the sight of her rolling her luggage through the airport behind me. I love that she is seeing what I do. I delight in explaining to her that a plane to a place devastated by an earthquake is jammed because there are so many people who want to help. Half of all Americans say they plan to give money to help Haiti, and over a billion dollars have already poured in. Sofia has brought pencils and art supplies, cards and Reece’s Pieces for Bill. She is jazzed to be able to come help at the orphanage. Her hair is gathered in a low ponytail. She’s wearing a T-shirt with “I am happy!” written on it. The place sparkles from the hot sun. The windows that were shattered post-quake have been repaired. The chaos I remember from our last trip here has faded. The two of us probably look odd walking out to an airport full of military helicopters with tents set up on the grass next to the runway

  One of the CNN security people who worked with us on our last trip picks us up at the airport. He looks like a secret agent and acts like one. He blinks at immigration and we walk through. We stand in one long line where it’s baking hot, but everyone is calm. The baggage claim, inoperable the last time we were here, is churning along. We are thirty minutes early so there’s a calm that’s unusual at the airport. Outside we make a brisk pace out the airport gates. Sofia scoots along like a pro, energized by the coolness of being in this new country with this secret agent guy and all the hubbub. We arrive at the tent city, which is even bigger this time and feels more permanent. There are “snaker” stores, lean-tos with gleaming white American brands. Tons of rubble have
been swept into piles. They look like they are there for good. The place looks cleaner. Or at least more organized.

  We drive by Robert Duvall’s soccer camp. He is a Haitian man designated a hero by a special program of CNN. I met him when he came to an event for my documentary. He has a large football-field-sized space with cows grazing on the sidelines. He used to run a soccer camp to mentor kids. Now he has installed tents donated by Italian volunteers. They stand in tiny rows in one corner. Duvall had worried about the tent cities encroaching on his soccer camp, but he’s managed to have it both ways, creating housing and keeping his beloved camp. The tents feel like they’re not going anywhere soon. There are very few places to escape the sun.

  We drive on through Cite Soleil. “Goats! Goats!” says Sofia. “Pigs.” She sees them running through metal shacks where hundreds of thousands of people live. She is such a city girl that she drives through Haiti’s biggest slum and notices a pig. There are bullet holes in some of the walls. There are some markets, but garbage and plastic water bottles choke the canal. There is no clean water here but plenty of empty plastic. I know there are many people who would think this is an odd place to take a little girl. But I feel as if I am opening a door for her, and also, quite frankly, for me. I am not here to report, on a crazy mission scraping at the edges of danger. I am here to teach my daughter that we must never get far from the grief and joys of the people around us. That we share a place on this chaotic earth with people of varied means. That we live in a land of possibilities, those we seize for ourselves and those we create for others.