MARCELINE, Haiti — The four white coffins sat underneath a white tent where potted palm trees and plastic wreaths served as decor, and a flattened St. Agnes Catholic school in Marceline, a reminder of the reason why they were all here.
Amid the wailing and anguished cries in an empty soccer field next to the collapsed school building, mourners called out the names of their dead, recounted cherished memories and asked why.
“We are all wearing the same hat, we are all in the same boat,” Pastor Samuel Rodney said, himself carrying the burden of having to bury his mother, a victim of the quake. “God has a reason for why each of you is here today, why each of you has tears in your eyes so you cannot ask, ‘Why me?”
Hoping to bring comfort, he told mourners that there was no discrimination with Haiti’s latest natural disaster: “It didn’t distinguish between rich, it didn’t distinguish between poor. It didn’t know small, it didn’t know big. Everyone was shaken.”
A week after the deadly 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck this community and rural regions across Southwestern Haiti, families have begun to bury their dead.
On Saturday, it was Franck Morin’s turn. The government employee in the Ministry of Agriculture lost five family members, plus the sister of his sister-in-law, when both his home and that of his brother’s fell.
As he and his wife looked on at the caskets, the crowd around them wailed. In three of the four coffins were his mother, Marie Rose Morin, 86; his nephew, Kelly Phildor, 15; and his daughter, Wood-Langie, 10. The fourth coffin belonged to Carl Handy Valmont, 4, also killed.
As the ceremony got underway amid Creole hymns, a stoic Morin, 43, tried to remain strong as he consoled his wife, Judith Lysius. Wood-Langie, 10, was their only child. Outside the field, food distributions continued, and in the city of Les Cayes, a search and rescue team from Mexico continued to sift through the rubble for bodies using a live locator.
Serge Chery, the delegate for the region, said he hopes people can still be found alive. “We hope that, but we can’t say for certain,” he said.
Haitian government figures have put the death toll at more than 2,100, with 332 missing.
Three pastors officiated Saturday’s funeral service. Each noted it would not be their last as they called out the names of other victims whose funerals they have either celebrated or will soon officiate.
Rodney said he’s already performed five funerals of church members who perished. And now on Sunday, he will celebrate the service for his mother, who died when their Church of God of Deliverance fell and crushed the family home below.
“God gave me the strength to stand and celebrate their funeral,” Rodney said of his church members. “Now all I am asking is that God gives me the courage to celebrate my mother’s funeral tomorrow in this same location.”
As the service unfolded, reminders of the tragedy were everywhere. Near the collapsed rubble of the school, the stench of death emanated in the air. And as a piece of debris fell, panic erupted, leading everyone standing near a partially collapsed school building to run out into the field, believing it was an aftershock.
“Yes, it’s true we have suffered immense loss,” Rodney said. “But God can give us strength again. ... Life needs to continue.”
