The earthquake in Haiti killed her friends, her teachers and destroyed her school. But it spared Fatima Gilbert her life.
More than two months later, the 16-year-old sits in a classroom at Olympic Heights High School near Boca Raton, studying chemistry with students who have no idea what she went through not so long ago.
She watched buildings crush families. She saw people with missing limbs. And at night, she preferred to sleep outside, among disease- carrying mosquitoes, because, though her house survived, she feared the walls would collapse.
“I’m still thinking about it,” she says quietly as she cries into a tissue. “When I see people running it makes me think. … When I hear a noise, I jump. I have to remind myself that I’m not reliving the situation.”
Gilbert is one of nearly 3,300 students who fled Haiti after the earthquake and are now seeking solace in Florida public schools. More than 500 of those students are here, in Palm Beach County. They left behind everything familiar for a place they know little about.
Most are from the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince, where, on Jan. 12, the magnitude 7.0 earthquake killed hundreds of thousands and left even more homeless.
Seventeen schools have taken in 10 or more students. Olympic Heights is near the top in the number of students received, 23, and that number continues to grow. Guidance Counselor Jean-Claude Milhomme, who was born and raised in Port-au-Prince, says you can see in their faces Sexy Lingerie they are scared.
“They arrive here not being able to produce school records. They can’t find them. Even the Department of Education building does not exist anymore,” Milhomme said. “And when they arrive, some share stories. I’ll be sitting with a kid and I’ll try to put on a good face and keep things together, but when they leave, I have to shut my door. It has not been an easy thing.”
Some students speak English, but others don’t, like Naomie Thes, a 19-year-old enrolled at Toussaint L’Ouverture High School in suburban Boynton Beach.
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As she recalls her nightmare, tears stain her cheeks. Her father, who remains in Port-au-Prince, lost his house and is without food or shelter.
“He is suffering,” Thes said. “I feel bad.”
This is the first time that Joe Bernadel, co- founder of the mostly Haitian school, has heard Thes speak of that day. He scoots his chair next to hers and promises as she cries, “This school will take care of you.”
Many of these students need taking care of.
Though most are living with relatives in South Florida, they had to leave their immediate families in Haiti because the children were the only ones with visas to come to the states. Because the airport in Port-au-Prince was closed to commercial airlines for the first few weeks, many traveled through Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic to get here.
The Palm Beach County School District welcomed them with open arms. It didn’t have to make many changes, district spokesman Nat Harrington said, because it enrolls immigrant children often.
There are 150 nationalities represented in the school system, 140 languages and 13,000 Haitian students, as well as 600 Haitian employees. Though they are accepting volunteers who speak Creole or
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