The Desarmes family survived after the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake.They left Haiti and came to Chile, fortunately survived.
“I left my country (Haiti) and came here because of an earthquake,” Seraphin Philomene, a 21-year-old student and cousin of Desarmes, said Wednesday. “And here, the same thing!”
Desarmes said that when the aftershocks come, his family refuse to stay in the house.
“I have to talk to them all day long telling them: `There are no problems, it’s a country that’s prepared for earthquakes, it’ll pass, it’s not so bad.’ But they don’t hear me. Psychologically for them, they’re still really affected by it.”
Philomene, his cousin, plans to stay, hoping to bring the rest of her family to Chile. She was the only member of her immediate family to get out because she was living with the Desarmes in the Haitian capital to finish her studies. Her mother, father, two sisters and a brother are still in Cap-Haitien, a town in northern Haiti about 90 miles from the capital.
“God is looking for out for us,” he said. “Our family didn’t die in Haiti so they aren’t going to die in Chile either.”