And the Walls Came Tumbling Down

April-May, 2010.

Miami spoiled him.

Denny's Restaurant. Cracker Barrel Old Country Store and Restaurant. Three fried eggs, bacon, toast, and pancakes for breakfast. It had been weeks since Michael Brewer had eaten that well. Weeks since he had used a bathroom. He showered twice a day just because he could. And clean sheets on a bed. A real bed. He wrapped himself in the sheets and laughed.

Thoughts of Haiti, however, stayed with him. The boys. Like family. He has no other beside his eighty-year-old mother. No ties that bind him anywhere else. Michael, Michael, Michael, the boys chant, demanding his attention. You get to know these kids, it's pathetic, Michael tells friends. They're good kids, not bad. Good intellect. They have a hell of a lot of potential but are ignored.

In Miami he didn't see anyone. They were either in their houses or cars, AC on, windows shut. It was weird. He was used to having the kids around.

He awoke one morning at four and remembered Emmanuel wanted boots. He got up, drove to a Wal-Mart, and found a pair for nineteen bucks. A steal, even on his budget. Hours later, he caught a flight to Port au Prince.

Now he regrets leaving.

Michael stands stoop-shouldered with a slight paunch in the middle of a speck of dry, desolate land above Port au Prince someone, he doesn't know who, dubbed Camp Benedictine.

The humidity laces a cotton haze over the horizon. He downs a can of Battery, a local energy drink, and fingers his shirt pocket for a smoke. Flies hover around him. Men and women piss in the open outside their huts. Children carry inflated condoms like balloons while other kids make kites from discarded plastic bags. More homeless people gather at a well, all of them, Michael included, victims of the catastrophic January 12 7.0 magnitude earthquake that rocked Haiti and killed more than 200,000 men, women, and children.

Buildings, too, fell by the thousands, including the four houses Michael built for homeless children when he started his nonprofit Haitian Street Kids, Inc., in 2000. Three of his boys died when buildings collapsed on them.

The widespread destruction included all Port au Prince hospitals; air, sea, and land transport facilities; and communication systems. Debris blocked shattered roads. People slept in the street, in their cars, or in makeshift camps fearful that damaged buildings would not withstand the steady wave of aftershocks that followed the earthquake.

Now, almost four months later, the rubble has been removed from the roads, aftershocks are few, and downtown Port au Prince bustles with traffic, but the ruin of people's lives remains visible in the hundreds of camps still standing and in the weary faces of homeless families waiting for the billions in promised international aid to filter down to them.

In March, UNICEF promised Michael three large tents to use as a dormitory, a school, and a clinic. The Clinton Foundation promised him a truck. More than four weeks have passed. How much time does it take? If he's not one hundred years old by the time these promises are kept, he'll be all right.

Communication is terrible. His laptop was stolen. Volle motherfuckers, he says, using the Creole word for thief. He doesn't answer e-mail as fast as he should and that could cost him funders, cost the kids real shelter that keeps out the heat, wind, and rain.

He needs money, but he doesn't have a clue about getting corporate sponsors and endowments. He lives hand to mouth, asking friends for donations and trying to attract media.

With money, he could rent a house so he and the boys would no longer have to live in huts like someone in the television series Lost. Yeah, a house. Where he and the boys can again take for granted running water and a working kitchen and clean bathrooms and hot showers and fans.

He turns fifty-eight this year...