This episode features Regina Dennis, a student in Campfire’s Intro to Storytelling class. Students told stories around the theme of responsibility. You can learn more about Regina Dennis on the Campfire website, https://cmpfr.com/events/fall-2018-intro-to-storytelling/.
These episodes of The Campfire Storytelling Podcast showcase students who went through our Intro to Storytelling. These students take a six-week class to prepare to tell a story about life and how they live it.
This episode was originally performed in November 2018, produced by Andrew Warshauer, and recorded live at The Stage at KDHX.
This episode features Regina Dennis, a student in Campfire’s Intro to Storytelling class. Students told stories around the theme of responsibility. You can learn more about Regina Dennis on the Campfire website, https://cmpfr.com/events/fall-2018-intro-to-storytelling/.
These episodes of The Campfire Storytelling Podcast showcase students who went through our Intro to Storytelling. These students take a six-week class to prepare to tell a story about life and how they live it.
This episode was originally performed in November 2018, produced by Andrew Warshauer, and recorded live at The Stage at KDHX.
Steven Harowitz: 0:06
Hello, Internet. I'm Steven Harowitz, the director of Campfire. You are listening to Camper at Home. It's our way of bringing our live experience to you, whether that be listening and reflecting by yourself or experiencing it with friends. Each Campfire invites listeners into discussions about life and how we live it. Before we get too deep into Campfire at Home, what you're listening to, I want to a share a few opportunities for you to get involved beyond our live show or this podcast. We offer public speaking and storytelling classes and coaching for individuals and training workshops for organizations. If you or your organization are interested in becoming great public speakers and storytellers, visit cmpfr.com. That's c m p f r dot com. Each Campfire Season poses a life question that is explored by our Campfire Fellows, together with our audience. We're doing something a little new and having our class graduates share stories at a showcase event. They're not quite answering the exact question, but they're telling stories that relate to the main theme of the Season. So let's go to The Stage at KDHX to listen to the students' stories on responsibility.
Steven Harowitz: 1:20
So first up is Regina, and she's dedicating her story to the people of Haiti and to all victims of trauma. So please help me welcome Regina to the Campfire.
Regina Dennis: 1:37
We all have experienced some type of challenges or difficulties in our lives. Today, I'm going to share with you one of the most traumatic experiences in my life, the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Who heard about that? I know, no one saw it on television? Nobody, right? I was there. What I'm going to share with you are my personal experiences. I went to Haiti in August of 2009 as a U. S. diplomat. I was working with United States Agency for International Development, USAID or US Aid as we often refer to it. It's a U. S. government agency that implements your tax dollars performed through foreign assistance. USAID implements programs in the area of healthcare, agriculture, democracy and governance, basic education, including humanitarian assistance. When I got there, the Mission Director in my first meeting said, "Hi, how are you, Regina? Welcome to post." And she said that we need someone that will assume the responsibility of being a Mission Disaster Relief Officer. I told her, "Ma'am, I've never done that one before. I've never taken the training. I had people on my staff, on my team that did that." She said., "That's what I need you to do here." I said, "I'm here to serve. How do I get started?" "Just go down there to United Nations log base, where they're holding their meetings and trainings and sessions and get to know the people there." So I did. I went down and I got to know our stakeholders, the Germans, the French, and more importantly, the most important organization in my mind is International Federation of Red Cross. They have chapters all over in different countries, and each country is often representative. So I got down and got a chance to know all of them, and we got the chance to communicate and start developing our plans. USAID was assigned to assume the responsibility of developing trigger indicators. Any disaster would take place. What would be the response? What will you do? So we were preparing for the hurricane, hurricane that would take place during hurricane season. Hurricane season in the Caribbean area is during the month of May through November. So we were waiting on the hurricanes because in 2008 Haiti had a major hurricane, Hurricane Hanna, that killed over about almost 400 people. So they wanted to really prepare for it. The, so the hurricane, eh? So what we decided to do was continue to work on the hurricane preparedness. That year, Mother Nature was very kind to Haiti, and there weren't any hurricanes. We were all so so happy. At the end of November, I got a chance to come home to attend Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays and all those good things. Afterwards, back to post in January. And I went back on January 9th, a Saturday, in time to get ready, to unpack and get my things and shop, put food in the house and do all those things. So Saturday, Sunday, Monday in the office. Tuesday, I decided to work late in the office. The hours in Haiti are usually between six o'clock in the morning to about 3, 4:30, because people work way up and live in the mountains and come down in the valley. I decided I don't want to live in the mountain areas. I want to live down in the valley because it'll be closer and easy to get to work. I don't want that 1 to 2 hour commute, So I'm in the office working late on Tuesday, January 12th 2009, uh, 2010. About 4:53 and I hear this loud roaring noise. Oooh, boom, boom. I said, "Oh Lord, what's going on?" Hey. I thought there were bombing the embassy, yo. The last thing I wanted. The only thing I thought of was we lost friends in Lebanon, Beirut in 1983. I lost friends, diplomats in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. And now I'm in the embassy building and they're gonna bomb us. Hey, I'm not ready to die. And I screamed and hollered simultaneously. The Marine Guard came over the loudspeaker, and he spoke in such a choked up and barely audible voice. And he said, "Duck and cover. This is not a drill. Get away from the windows. " The light fixures start falling. The plat storms, platforms from the ceiling were falling. The noise from the file cabinets and papers all going on. I just knew that I was a goner, but I managed to get up from my cube and run down the hallway and I ran and to a store room, and I sat there and I waited. The Marine Guards came and knocked on all the doors, and they found me in the store room alone, scared and shaking uncontrollably. He said, "Ma'am, are you okay?" I said, "What, what was that?" I could barely speak. He said, "Ma'am, that was an earthquake." I said, "Lord, why'd you give me this one? So fast forward, we all went downstairs and huddled in the embassy courtyard. But while we were down there, we only had one working telephone and we didn't have a lot of time. So it was passed around and I called to St. Louis and told my family. I said, "There's been an earthquake in Haiti. You're going to see it in the news. I'm okay. I'll talk to you later. Best." 10 to 15 seconds, that's all the time we had. That night, we slept on the floor of the embassy, and we did that for over 20 nights because we couldn't go back home because we don't know what condition our buildings, our homes were in. So after that we learned that the government of Haiti, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, had come to the ambassador's residence, the U.S. ambassador's residence, and requested assistance. But, he said, "We want a dip note, a diplomatic note, and in that note we want you to tell us when you're coming and when you go to leaving, you're going to leave. Because Haiti," the minister said, "We are a sovereign nation." You talking about a proud group of people, are the Haitians. They said, "We're sovereign. You can't come in here like you did in 1915 to 1934, for 19 years, and invade our country. We're not going to allow that." But the responsibility of the dip note fell down on me. I had just come to post, so I don't know where anything was. File cabinets didn't exist anymore. The computers, we didn't know so, but some way, in some mind, I don't know how, but I thought that I had a thumb drive, one from my last post in Ghana and I took that thumb drive and I looked through it and I found a diplomatic note model that we can use that I used for floods in Ghana. And we tweaked it and turned it around until we gotta a dip note. Then we sent it through the bureaucratic process, and after that, the Haitian government approved it. It was then, less than two hours, the Black Hawk helicopters start flying into Haiti. You're talking about somebody being so proud. We were so proud and pleased to see those boys come through there and they came. And then I had the opportunity to go out with them to visit the territory and see what was on the ground, the devastation. What I saw was so traumatic. In the port city of Port-Au-Prince, the buildings were all pancake, closed down. In the rural areas, I will never forget seeing the goats, the cows and the chickens all laying out dead. But what's even worse than the animals, we saw people, people who had just been doing, going about their lives, tilling the soil or in the outside kitchen cooking and they're now dead. It was so painful. After that, we went back and we saw the search and rescue team. They came and they were searching through the rubble and they used sniffing dogs and laser equipment. They were able to successfully pull 130 people. But then the only thing left to do was pull out the bodies that they could. And then after that, they finally said, "We can't pull anymore. We can't do any more." That's when we we had a meeting and they said they pulled it off and we left the meeting. All of us felt so helpless. There was nothing that we could do. Then within two weeks, Haiti began to smell. The whole town of Port-Au, Port-Au-Prince and was not rats that we were smelling. It smelt like rats. But it wasn't rats. It was the odor of human remains all over. That odor is hard to not think about. And we began to walk around like zombies, those of us who were there, Haitians and Americans, all of everybody there. We had a kind of trauma look. And with that odor we took just perfume oil, perfume, people walking around with perfume, and after a while we didn't do anything, but it was so long they would start carrying perfume and putting it all over us and cologne just so we can avoid the odor. Fast forwards, we started looking at long-term planning, and the U.S. Department of Defense had already started working with the Directorate of Civil Protection to build an emergency operational center, and the building was almost finished. Then we finished it. But then the European Union was supposed to assume the responsibility of equipping it with computers, monitors, emergency supplies, blankets, flashlights, portable radios. But they backed out abruptly. We don't know why. So it fell down on USAID. And they said the Mission Disaster Relief Officer should work with the, the Department of Defense and come up with the money to buy the equipment and supplies. I went through my budget, through our budget, came and identified some money and shipped and turned it all around. And we ordered the supplies, and the equipment came through. On the day of the handover ceremony, it was modest, but grandiose and purpose, and I would never forget when Madame Jean Baptiste, the director of the Civil Protection said, she said, [Foreign language]. This is our building. Nobody can tell us to leave." With tears down her eyes, she was so pleased that they had their own space. Last month, October the sixth, there was an earthquake in Haiti. Anybody saw that? Anybody know about it? October 6. There was a 5.9 earthquake in Haiti just this year. Just last month, When I read about it, I was trembling and frightened all over again. But I had a little consolation. Madame Jean Baptiste and her team had done such a marvelous job because this time, well, we don't want anybody to lose their life. But 10 people, only 10, lost their lives this year, which is a significant reduction compared, to some people say 100, some people say 200, official figures about 200,000 people who lost their lives in 2010. In terms of displaced people who lost their homes this year, only 100. In 2010, 1.5 million people lost their homes. So I said, "Hey, my folks, Madame, Madame John Baptiste! They're on the job." The lesson learned that came out of the research that was done after the 2010 earthquake was let the local people handle it, give them the responsibility, equip them and let them do it. Let them run with it, and they ran with it and they have done what is necessary. I have a lot of hope for the little country of Haiti, and the reason that I do, it's because after so many years, I may not look as young, some 30 some years of working in Africa and in 13 different countries, I have seen the political systems change, the military regime, the dictators, the shooting, the coup d'etats. I've lived through that. But now don't let anybody tell you they're not taking place. That's an economic boom there's going on on the continent of Africa. The economies are moving. The GDPs, the growth domestic product is at 6.8, 5. Not three, like somewhere else we know. Is that the United States? I think. Those countries are booming and moving really fast, but it's taken them time because they consolidated the democracy. They've held elections consecutively, and now development is taking place and I strongly believe that in the little country of Haiti, it will also take place because Haiti also has the oil. They have the gas and they have the natural minerals as well. Once they could ever stabilize their politics, I think they, too will move and have that boom. In terms of trauma, I consider myself no longer a victim of the Haiti earthquake. I don't even consider myself a survivor. The therapists have a word that call a thriver. So I'm a thriver. I am a thriver. I am a thriver, and I encourage each one of you, no matter what challenge or traumatic experience you may have had in your life, kick the phase of being a victim, kick the phase of a striver and move on to be a thriver.
Steven Harowitz: 20:10
One more time for Regina.
Steven Harowitz: 20:14
And that is a wrap. I'd like to thank all of the graduates of Intro to Storytelling for sharing stories on responsibility. Also, a big thank you to the Campfire team, our photographers and videographers. Also a special thanks to KDHX Community Media for being our partners on this journey. We're always so honor to host Campfire live at The Stage at KDHX and for letting us record in KDHX Studios in St. Louis, Missouri. If you want to learn more about Campfire and the work we do, you can visit cmpfr.com. That's c m p f r dot com. And if you liked what you heard, please leave a review on iTunes or wherever you find your podcasts. It really does help out. Until next time.