Friday morning I woke to a text from my friend Brian that read, “Call me now!” A friend of his runs an adoption agency in Colorado and had sent an e-mail asking for people to go to Fort Lauderdale to help with children coming in from Haiti. The agency had been promised visas for about 500 Haitian orphans and they needed volunteers in Florida to take care of the children until their adoptive parents could pick them up. Brian and I left for the airport later that day.

Shortly after we arrived in Florida, we found that the kids wouldn’t be allowed out of Haiti without escorts, so we booked a flight for Port-au-Prince and left the next morning.

We landed in Haiti at noon on Sunday and arrived at the U.S. Embassy at 5 p.m. We were taken to where the kids were staying and met the social worker there. The only thing she said to me after I introduced myself was, “OK, take these kids and do whatever it takes to get them out of here tonight.” Then the Marines shuttled all of us back to the airport and we prepared to leave the country.

To me, the saddest part about the trip was that of the 50 or so kids on our flight, not a single one cried at takeoff, and only one cried during the entire trip. They’ve learned that nobody responds when they cry — to them, it’s just not worth the effort.

We got to Orlando at around 1:30 a.m. and headed to customs. That was the only point during the trip that was really hard for me — heavy backpack, baby on each hip, running on little sleep. The customs officials didn’t know where to put us, so we stood around before they ushered us to a holding area where we waited for 21 hours.

The only kids who were allowed out of Haiti were those who were already matched with adoptive families — some had been matched for one and a half to two years and their adoptive parents had already visited multiple times, but hadn’t been allowed out until now.

Watching the looks on the adoptive parents’ faces as we brought their kids to them and the tears in their eyes as we put the children in their arms will remain one of the best moments of my life.

It was weird walking away after handing the last of the children to their parents. Another volunteer and I were the only adults left, and walking outside I thought, “It’s over?” We had been working on little sleep for days and then, within ten minutes, it was done. So much was just starting for the parents; so much had abruptly ended for us.
The next day I left for the airport and returned to my regular life in Ann Arbor.

This story is brief — there’s so much more I could talk about, like the dangers of child trafficking and how a more efficient way of helping these children get connected with their adoptive parents has to exist.

I could talk about how the media sensationalizes everything and how ridiculous it is that people are using this disaster for PR. I could talk about how aid workers have come together to help in so many ways when they don’t have to.

I could talk about our military and its humanitarian work and how crazy it was that I felt very safe while in Haiti. I could talk about a little boy I met with chunks of flesh missing from his head and nerve damage in his right arm who hadn’t seen his mother since the earthquake. I could talk about an adoptive mother who had two little girls matched with her only to find that one had died.

I could talk about how awful it was for the adoptive mothers who had to wait and wait and wait with no news, knowing there was nothing they could do to help. How they had no guarantees they’d get to take their child home even though they were standing in the same airport.

I could tell you about the heartbroken parents who had already waited for years, only to find out that their kids might not come home for weeks. I could talk about the mother who, while waiting for her adoptive child, found out her father had suffered a heart attack and had to take her new daughter straight to the hospital from customs.
I could talk about how children in orphanages are sick all the time because there’s no way to keep them from sharing cups or food, but that there is no way to remedy that — especially with more kids outside the orphanage door every day. I could talk about the peeling skin of the children, their itchy heads, their runny noses, their diarrhea and their parasites.

I could talk about a lot of things I witnessed. But what I will talk about is how, no matter the sacrifice, the best thing for any orphan is a family that will love him and value him and teach him and raise him and prepare him for life in this world.

— Betsy Heubner is a University alum.