In the days following the magnitude 7.0 earthquake in Haiti, the TV in Sabine Vilsaint’s ’10 house was tuned to CNN News.

“I woke up and it was on, I went to sleep and it was on,” she said. “It was all we talked about. It was hard seeing the images, seeing the bodies, and seeing the destruction.”

Vilsaint, whose parents were both born and raised in Haiti, is just one of several Wesleyan students who were directly effected by the Jan. 12 earthquake and have since struggled to locate family members.

“Because communication was so difficult, whoever you could reach, you asked them to spread the word,” said Vilsaint, who was particularly thankful that her aunt and four-month-old godson had just returned to the U.S. from Haiti the day before the earthquake.

Similarly, Jamil Alexis ’10 waited to hear for information from his family in the days following the disaster.

“I was concerned about my family in general, but I was really concerned about my grandma,” Alexis said. “I just wanted to know what happened to her.”

While Alexis’s grandmother survived, others weren’t as lucky.

“We’ve lost family members, we have people still missing and the agony of the wait is really, really hard,” Marsha Jean-Charles ’11, who is currently studying abroad in Brazil, wrote in an e-mail to The Argus. “It has had a huge impact on my family and myself.”

Although Jean-Charles has spent the majority of her life in America, she lived in Haiti for several years as a child and had hoped to spend this upcoming summer there. In addition to affecting her family members’ lives, the disaster also impacted her personal connection to Haiti.

“All I know is that the home I wanted to go back to, the locations in my family’s oral histories I wanted to finally see, the houses of people I’ve only heard about in ‘back in the day’ stories; all of that is gone,” she wrote.

Similarly, Vilsaint, who has never been to Haiti but noted that Haitian culture has shaped her upbringing, regretted that she would never get to see the houses in which her parents grew up because they had been destroyed.

“I’ll never get to see the house my dad built,” Vilsaint said. “It was difficult seeing the images of an island I never got to experience and knowing it would never be the same.”

She noted that some of her family members are currently sleeping in open fields because their houses have collapsed, while others are sleeping on the streets in front of their houses for fear that they will collapse eventually.

In response to the disaster, Vilsaint threw herself into community events. She immediately put together a brochure with facts about Haiti and suggested places to donate and passed it out around her hometown of Stamford, Conn. Then, along with her 27-year-old brother, she organized two meetings at the Haitian community center. At the first meeting, attendees discussed where to donate money. At the second, grief counselors helped Haitians and Haitian Americans work through the disaster.

“People got to talk about how they were feeling,” she said. “It was an opportunity to let it out with people that understood, and talk about how hard it is not knowing if family members are okay.”

Vilsaint noted that the majority of people who attended the meetings were of college-age—she observed a generation gap within the Haitian American community in how people processed what happened.

“Everyone was affected, but parents and aunts and uncles said, ‘Let’s try to get in contact with family,’ whereas our generation said, ‘How do we get things done? What can we do?’” Vilsaint said.

For example, when Vilsaint’s cousin learned that relatives in the town of Jacmel had heard cries for help under destroyed buildings, the pair organized a meeting with the mayor of Spring Valley, NY, who is Haitian. Vilsaint explained that the mayor’s influence helped aid come to Jacmel faster.

While Vilsaint was doing work in Connecticut, Jean-Charles’ family in Haiti and across America was organizing, as well.

“My aunt was also there on vacation [in Haiti] and decided to stay when she got her first flight out so that she may help,” she wrote. “Aunts and uncles took off work because of depression and overwhelming sadness, cousins tried to take over extra responsibilities and push through the pain, everyone pulled things together to donate; people became organizers seemingly overnight.”

According to Vilsaint, however, the image of Haitians as organizers is not represented in the media.

“All they ever mentioned was that Haiti is the ‘poorest country’ in the Western Hemisphere,” she said. “We have a culture and a spirit. People are so focused on how poor Haiti is, but no one is asking, ‘How did it get to that point?’”

In particular, Vilsaint questioned the ethics of the many images of dead bodies circulating in the news, although she recognized that it was important for people to see what was happening.

“They put Haitians on display for everyone to see, no one had a choice about being filmed or photographed,” she said. “What if that person is someone’s family member? What if they don’t want their family member’s dead body broadcast all over the world?”

Alexis was also frustrated with media coverage of the earthquake.

“I was really upset about the news coverage,” he said. “It takes a 7.0 and then a 6.0 for people to actually have their attentions drawn to the problem, or to pre-existing problems. Haiti has always struggled. Now that the Haitian infrastructure is destroyed, people decide to help.”

Alexis was particularly upset when he overheard callers to a radio news show assert that Haiti didn’t deserve America’s support, arguing that America should focus on its own problems.

“People focus on their own internal problems in one country without realizing that we all populate the same earth,” Alexis said. “One problem in one country can affect other countries, there’s a ripple effect. It’s beneficial to help other countries.”

As for the aid that has reached Haiti in the past two weeks, Jean-Charles expressed gratitude.

“For those providing the other forms of assistance: doctors, rescue workers, and just everyday helpers, I’ve never truly felt thankful to strangers and the warmth of human kindness as I now feel for you all,” she wrote.

In regards to long-term rebuilding, however, Jean-Charles was somewhat skeptical.

“The financial assistance is much appreciated as long as it is stringless,” she wrote. “But the U.S. government rarely gives with no strings attached and the World Bank never does.”

Similarly, Vilsaint expressed fear about possible U.S. intervention.

“I’m really nervous to see how things will be done once the clean-up is over and it’s time to rebuild,” she said. “I wonder how involved the U.S. will be and what its intentions are. Any help is great and the U.S.’s help has been great, but I’m just curious and nervous to see what their role is going to be.”

Alexis, who was also concerned about the U.S.’s pattern of exerting influence in poorer nations, outlined several necessary rebuilding efforts.

“The first thing is to fix all the damages,” he said. “But Haiti needs more than financial help. It needs manpower and resources. People have to give up time and think it’s worthwhile to build a strong foundation.”

Vilsaint worried that there is room for potentially damaging mistakes within this expansive rebuilding process.

“It is a blank slate now,” she said. “The U.S. could make it anything they want to it to be, like a territory of the U.S., like the next Puerto Rico. That’s not Haiti.”

This issue has prompted a discussion within Vilsaint’s Haitian community at home.

“People are asking, ‘Do we want the U.S.’s help? Would that be better or worse? And if they do, what will happen?’” she said. “I’m split, I don’t know what’s going to happen, and I don’t know what should happen. I just want it to be better than before. Haiti needs great leadership but I don’t know if it’s there.”

Jean-Charles echoed Vilsaint’s and Alexis’ concerns for the future of their country.

“Institutions fell,” she wrote. “We need people to help build them properly back up again.”