“We Lost Everything, But We Are Still Alive”

When the winds began to howl that night, Enize Plaisimond—five months pregnant and mother of seven—had no idea that within hours, her life would be washed away.

Her children, aged 22, 17, 16, 13, 7, 5, and 2, were asleep on the floor when the first rush of water broke into their home. “My younger brother woke up asking for light,” she recalls. “When I got up, the house was already flooded. The children were crying, ‘Mom, Mom, we are drowning.’”

The children were crying, ‘Mom, Mom, we are drowning.

Outside, the nearby river had burst its banks and was raging through the community. “We couldn’t let the children go because the current was too strong,” she says. “I have three babies—none of them would survive that water.”

Desperately, Enize, her husband Frandy, and her younger brother grabbed each of the little ones, fighting to stay on their feet as the floodwaters swallowed their home. By the time the storm passed, everything was gone—their food, their school supplies, their cooking pots, even the 12 borrowed buckets of peas that Enize had hoped to repay after harvest.

Now, the family is living at a neighbor’s house. “She feeds us when she can,” Enize says quietly. “But you can’t live your whole life in another person’s house. I have children.”

The losses go far beyond the walls of her home. The family’s animals are gone—their mule, goats, and chickens swept away. Their crops were destroyed. Her cousin, who had borrowed the mule to help send his own children to school, came back in tears: the mule had drowned. “He told me he will have to take his children out of school,” Enize says. “Because their clothes, their school bags—everything is gone.”

Standing in the mud, Enize tries to recover what little remains. “I came back to see if I can remove some clothes from the mud to wash them,” she explains, her voice trembling between fatigue and determination. “I don’t know what I am going to do. But I thank God my children are alive.”

Hurricane Melissa not only destroyed houses in southern Haiti—it swept away years of hard work and hope. Families like Enize’s now face an uncertain future, dependent on the kindness of neighbors to survive.

Still, amidst the loss, Enize’s courage shines through. Her story is one of love stronger than fear, of a mother who refused to let the storm take her children, and of a family who, though they have lost everything, still hold on to life—and to hope.