Scherline Derilus last spoke with her father in Haiti on Sunday night. She told him she would visit in July. It would be her first time seeing him since she left the country nine years ago.
She hasn’t been able to reach him or her siblings since Tuesday’s devastating earthquake. She’s called Haiti “every five minutes” to no avail. She hasn’t slept or eaten.
“When I heard the news, I can’t even tell you how I felt. I was crying,” said Derilus, 23, who sends money she earns as a housekeeper home to her father. “I don’t know if he’s alive or dead.” She, like many other Haitians in Flatbush, came to Radio Soleil d’Haiti yesterday to see if the station could somehow help find her relatives. She went home with what she came with: photographs of her missing loved ones.
“My heart is beating since [Tuesday] night,” said Jacques Dossous, 67, who is awaiting word from his 15-year-old niece. She just left New York on Sunday after spending Christmas with him. “I can’t wait to hear from her.”
Porez Luxama, 31, a math teacher who moved here 12 years ago, doesn’t know what happened to his cousin, a priest in Port-au-Prince. He’s been trying to find schoolmates through Facebook and Twitter. He plans to buy a ticket to Haiti. “There’s an expression in Creole: when you have dirty clothes you wash it with your family,’” he said. “It’s my people. I feel an obligation to help.”
