The Next Big Story: My Journey Through the Land of Possibilities

by Soledad O'Brien;Rose Marie Arce

  Rose suggests we pack our bags and carry them in the car. We need to leave at some point. But we know from last night that we are not done with Haiti. We need to tell the story of Bill and Susette Manassero. We need to tell America the story of the starfish, in part to help us all get past the devastation of Katrina. No one expected the government to step up to the plate in a country like Haiti. Practically speaking, there is no government. We had low expectations that the U.S. government would rally for this island when they had not rallied for their own. That leaves us with the power of one, the generosity and spunk of individuals who just take it upon themselves to come help the people they can in whatever way they can. This is the story I want to tell.

  We revisit the Maison des Enfants orphanage to see how they have fared. I had done live shots from there for several hours showing the ailing babies in the truck. There was an outpouring of sympathy for their plight when the story aired in the United States. When we arrive, they are loading the babies into a van, and the toddlers and older children into a bus. The staff looks desperate. They say they are making a run for the U.S. embassy with over one hundred kids they believe are eligible for adoption. They think the children need to show up in person in order to be processed, and they are desperate to get them out of Haiti. They take a thick black Sharpie and write “FHG” on all the kids’ hands—For His Glory adoption services.

  We hop aboard along with a volunteer medical team from Denver, carrying the children who are most ill. The staff leads the children in singing “Hallelujah.” They urge the kids to clap and pray. The bus hurtles forward into the steaming hot, dusty, broken streets of Haiti. There are no seat belts and nowhere near enough adults to hold all the little children, so a lot of them are getting knocked about. I have three kids on my lap and one is throwing up. The staff keeps calling their colleagues at the embassy, who can’t seem to give them a clear idea of whether they should be coming at all. There is all sorts of debris in the road; it’s a very bumpy ride, but also really hot. The temperature rises above ninety degrees. The children are wilting; more are throwing up, really just uncomfortable. One of the medics forces a baby to take Tylenol. They keep telling Tanya Constantino, who is leading the operation, that they are worried about the children’s health.

  “I don’t want to jeopardize the children, but I want to do what’s right for them,” she says.

  I’m afraid for the kids who are already in precarious health. A pickup flies by carrying corpses beneath a tarp, and it takes a moment before I fully appreciate what I’m seeing. I avert my eyes. My photographer, Tawanda Scott, and Rose are standing at the front of the bus videotaping and asking questions as the bus moves. Suddenly, the bus jolts sideways on the road and they get thrown forward into a few other folks who are standing along with some small kids. They are sturdy women so it was a strong jolt. The kids scream and begin to cry The bus charges forward. There has been a very strong aftershock while we are in motion.

  “What if I’ve made a mistake?” Tanya cries out. Then the van ahead of us stops and one of the staff gets out and comes aboard. “We just got a call from the embassy telling us not to bring the children,” says the staff member. Tanya argues with him and urges the drivers to press on. We come within two blocks of the embassy when she finally decides to stop. The children pour out of the hot bus onto the sidewalk, shaken and crying. A few dozen begin to pee and others throw up.

  “The children do not want to go back to the orphanage. They want to go to America,” Tanya says firmly of the assortment of babies, toddlers, and children around her. The medical team is frustrated. They insist that this is not a good plan. Tanya relents and they decide to turn back. We call CNN on our satellite phone and ask them to speak with the embassy. They tell us the embassy staff never asked the children to come and do not believe the trip is necessary They have a lot of paperwork to do and can’t speed it up without risking children being taken from their parents illegally Haiti has a big problem with child sex trafficking. Tanya is crestfallen.

  I grab Rose and Tawanda and get back into our car with the CNN drivers and security team. We decide to head for the airport, where we have been told other orphanages have gotten the green light to leave. The trip begins to feel like that crazy scene in the movie Hotel Rwanda, a frantic race to escape. The stream of people making for the airport seems endless. When we arrive there are twenty-one children whose adoption agencies have completed their paperwork. A team of relief workers from Utah has rented a chopper. They airlift the orphans from their crèche and drop them at the airport into the hands of U.S. soldiers. Tall, broad-shouldered, American servicemen are walking around with tiny Haitian kids, and they are feeding them cold clean water.

  A group of wealthy Americans, employees of a tech firm with no connection to the orphanage, have bought and stocked a private plane and come to help. They have volunteered to take these children to Fort Lauderdale. The children cling to whichever adult will pick them up. We make a quick decision to board the plane, get home so we can tell their story. We are carting small kids on our laps, have shown our passports to no one. There is no order at this moment in Haiti, no rules. As we are beginning to move, there is a knock at the airplane door. A man outside begins to beg the pilots to take an American woman and her adoptive son. They begin to cry The pilots look at each other and relent. We take off with twenty-two kids aboard.

  Sometimes, you just do what you can. The adoption issue is so very complicated. It is a fact that it is not a solution to the misery of so many of Haiti’s children. There are just not enough adoptive parents to go around, not even considering what it does to a nation of parents for people to take their kids. But for these kids, at this moment, they have embarked on a new life. These absolute strangers just up and got a plane and came to their rescue. The reality of what’s happening doesn’t hit everyone until we’re high in the sky Then a lot of the guys just stroll down the aisle looking as if their lives have embraced new meaning. Their act of generosity has enhanced them as much as these children. They are high in the sky in more ways than one.

  CNN has sent a live truck to the Fort Lauderdale airport, and when we land an incredible human moment unfolds on TV “We have just landed at Fort Lauderdale International Airport,” I say on live national television. “And we’re actually very close to where these adoptive parents, we’re told, are waiting in a hangar.”

  What’s happening, though, is the children have to be processed through first, so they’re going through immigration, they’re going through customs, and they will load them back on the plane and roll that plane to the hangar, where they get to meet their American parents.

  “But what a day it has been,” I say to one of our anchors, feeling like I have landed in some alternate universe. As I’m speaking, the plane finally gets a chance to unload and the adoptive parents rush up the runway screaming with arms outstretched. A little boy smiles and screams “Mommy.” His moment of recognition speaks volumes about the relationship he has built with his adoptive mom. A few other children look bewildered, even frightened. The parents are universally in tears. I look at the faces of these Haitian kids in the Fort Lauderdale airport bound for far-off states in the middle of America with their mostly white parents. Each of these little faces has a remarkable story behind it and quite an adventure ahead. I am not done with my work in Haiti. I am just home for now.

  My new unit is called In America but I am producing a documentary on Haiti. That makes no sense, but I am so breathless with excitement about this story that all the bosses sign off on it. I enlist Jonathan Olinger, the young man who introduced me to the Manasseros. Jonathan has great footage of the Lighthouse prior to the earthquake. He doesn’t really have a focus to what he is shooting, but at the center is the story of the Manasseros’ Christian mission to save Haitian kids. Jonathan has a terrific sensibility for people. He is also a genuinely humble guy, which you need to be to have your life’s work disassembled by total strangers.

  I love the
story he is trying to tell, but it isn’t ours. We look through his footage to find connections between his work and ours. We keep returning to two compelling images. One is the story of Cendy, the six-year-old girl, who had been at the orphanage since she was a toddler, the niece of the wash lady who had begged us to help find her missing son. Jonathan has recorded the traumatic events of her abandonment. He also has this hard-to-watch footage of the day her parents return to come take her back. The incident spells out the emotional anguish of the orphan story She is better off with the Christian missionaries who came from California, but these are her parents. He also has footage of Mark Kenson Olibris, who was rescued by the Manasseros from begging on the streets. Jonathan recorded his journey to Cap Haitian to see the parents who abandoned him. There is a remarkable moment when he puts his arm around the father who abandoned him and begins to pray before his entire village.

  Both children have survived the earthquake and are living with the Manasseros now. We decide to return to Haiti to shoot a documentary we will call Rescued. I want to tell the story of these two real-life orphans behind those worldwide appeals for charity and how their lives were transformed by the kindness of Bill and Susette Manassero.

  There is just one catch in this story line. The night after we leave Haiti, bandits assault the Lighthouse. Jonathan captures the terrifying aftermath as Susette and Bill completely lose their composure. Robert Taylor, who came to build things and ended up a medic, now runs security They gather in the darkness in a panic. By the time the sun rises, these Christian missionaries are calling the Haitian police, an intimidating force, and arming their increasing number of guards to the teeth. The walls cannot be rebuilt so they gather the children to tell them they are moving back inside. A girl who had been crushed and trapped in rubble gets hysterical. She is afraid of the aftershocks. Susette and Bill force the kids inside, dragging mattresses and clothes into the basement of their homes. “Somehow I missed this part in the Christian missionary manual,” Bill says, trying to joke away the stress.

  Robert is making calls and sending e-mails trying to find everyone a way out. Volunteers are leaving any way they can. He finds benefactors willing to bring in helicopters, maybe even charter a plane. They can’t take the kids, but maybe they have to just go. People repeatedly tell Susette she needs to think of her family. She is frightened and under enormous stress but doesn’t know what to do. They talk about heading for the hills with all the children, just hopping on a bus and ditching their life’s work at the orphanage. At one point, Robert finds a ranch in the state where they can go. He asks Susette if she can leave it all behind. She cannot take the Haitian orphans with her. “I don’t know, maybe, yes. I don’t know,” she says. She may be about to throw the parable of the starfish out to sea.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  RESCUED

  Our second trip to Haiti is less dramatic than the first. It’s now mid-February and the airport is open and CNN has plenty of supplies. That doesn’t make up for the continuing aftershocks and the fact that the city appears to be in even worse shape. People are still sleeping outdoors and they are worn down by life on the streets. The infrastructure remains the same—there isn’t one. The orphanages are still being flooded with children. We’ve hired Jonathan Olinger to videotape and he has disturbing footage of a mother begging Susette to take in her baby, even though the orphanage is at full capacity. Susette relents, but vows that she will not make the mistake of getting in over her head. There is so much need outside her door.

  I arrive in Haiti with Rose and Tawanda, again, and am greeted by my new, temporary team of young Christian filmmakers. Jonathan is invisible when he shoots footage, which makes him a great addition to our team. His partner, Lindsay Branham, shoots stills and also has a way of disappearing into the background. They connect with a photographer named Josh Newton who shoots affecting stills. He is this tall, fair, muscular guy with full red lips. Suddenly, I am surrounded by all these attractive young Christian journalists on a mission. Their dedication and faith is inspiring. Back home, we have decided our first In America feature will be the story of two gay men having a baby with a surrogate. From Christian missionaries to gay parents, that’s the range of my new unit!

  I arrive at the Lighthouse not exactly sure what I’m going to find. Bill and Susette haven’t left, and the kids are still here, as are the guards. Jonathan reports that all the girls are sleeping in the basement of the Manasseros’ home, with two floors of concrete house above them. They are scared every time there is an aftershock, as there was this morning. Cendy, who we are going to profile, has always been shy She was two when her aunt, Matile, the wash lady, brought her to Bill and Susette because her parents had abandoned her. She was running around a ghetto on her own. She was the youngest girl here for a long time, and Bill Manassero worked to break through her tough exterior. She would run and cry and hide. He cries when he recounts the day she finally extended her hand. “I wondered what happened to this little girl. Who could give up this precious little beauty?” he says.

  Then, two years later, when Cendy was four, Jonathan recorded the drama of her life. Her parents showed up at the orphanage unannounced to pick up their daughter. Jonathan’s footage of that afternoon is disturbing. Cendy clung to Susette, terrified and stressed, jerking back each time her mother reached out to touch her. She had known only the Manasseros. Susette looked equally traumatized. She and Bill are legal guardians of all the children but their parents can take them back. “If they had wanted to take her we would have given her up. We have barbed wire and walls to keep bad people out, not to keep anyone in,” she said. “The parents are entitled to take their own children.” But it would have been heartbreaking all around.

  Cendy’s parents left, secure in the knowledge that their daughter was doing fine. The father occasionally returns to ask after her, but the mother never came back. The girl I meet barely talks at all. Her hair has been shaved down, which makes her haunting eyes all the more piercing. Cendy dislikes the cameras from the beginning. She plays constant hide-and-seek with us, even when I give her a flip cam so she can take pictures on her own. She is lanky, with very dark skin, almost like dark chocolate, shiny and lovely, offsetting those big eyes. She walks out hand in hand with Ariana Manassero, whose dreams of helping Haiti began all of this. Ariana has walnut skin and long curly hair. She is like the Oracle to this family and her insights on Cendy are illuminating.

  Ariana is just a teenager, not a therapist. But she is extraordinarily insightful and pragmatic. Cendy is lonely in life, brokenhearted, gaining distance from people in response to their distance from her. She has no single adult in the world who is responsible for her, no one she can fully count on, no plan B. The orphanage is giving her an education, food, shelter from a cruel world outside. Ariana believes in the power of overwhelming love as a great healer of the spirit. It’s not exactly a prescription from a doctor, but her plan for Cendy is just to shower her with love every day so she recognizes what it feels like, so that it grows inside her soul. The entire staff and many of the older kids have adopted that plan.

  Cendy sits by herself lost in sadness several times a day Someone always interrupts her. A lot of our footage of this little girl ends up reflecting those moments, when the warmth of a stranger intervenes on a cloudy day I watch this process a few dozen times over the course of our trip and marvel at what I’m watching. The power of one person is exhilarating to me, the notion that this vast expanse of disaster does not have to bring you down, that it can inspire you to rise up and own a piece of the solution. The idea of Susette and Bill leaving Haiti and shutting down the orphanage is inconceivable. It would be devastating for kids like Cendy, who are unaware that such a conversation has even been contemplated, let alone taken place, which it has.

  Mark Kenson Olibris also has a lot to lose if the Manasseros leave Haiti. He came to the Lighthouse at age fourteen. He is now the caretaker for the guesthouse. He has received food and an education. He walks
around fueling the generator and purifying water, helping move all the children’s things inside because of the fear of more thieves. He lives in a private room that he shows off proudly. He has come a long way from a life on the streets. He has built a life for himself.

  Mark Kenson takes us on a walk to the girls’ orphanage, where a crew of volunteers is making repairs. I am struck by how calm he is even under enormous stress. Mark Kenson has one of those faces that looks happy even when he is sad. He has large, bright eyes and a wide smile. He looks like he takes a bath twice a day and irons his clothes. He is handsome and gentle, polite and sweet. He is clearly someone driven by his faith. This was a young man whose conversion to devout Christianity was the glue that held together his life.

  We talk about his wretched childhood in Cap Haitian, where his parents struggled to provide for him. He lowers his voice whenever he talks about how tough it was for his family. Then he delivers the defining information of his life. His parents sold him as a child slave. “You were a restavec?” I ask him, the Creole word for “stay with,” which is the name given to children sold in Haiti’s legal child slave trade. He mumbles, “Yes,” and looks down. I ask him again about his sister. “Her too,” he mumbles again and looks down. It is hard to tell if he is shamed by that fact or just sad that it was true. He was sold to a lady who made him and his sister call her “auntie.”

  “How much money did the woman pay for you?”

  “One hundred and twenty Haitian dollars.”

  “Which is how much? Ten to twelve dollars U.S.? Someone bought you for twelve dollars. Do you ever think about that?”

  “No. I’m just happy”

  “Doesn’t it make you mad?”

  “No.”

  “Angry?”

  “No,” he says; his parents were poor. His humility and calm are unnerving. How could he not be angry? Then he says something that leaves me with deep admiration for this young man. He has a very limited education and so many reasons to feel angry and lash out at the cruelties of the world around him. Yet, he says matter-of-factly, “I’m just happy it all turned out.” Haiti, he explained, is a place where many people have nothing, where even the hardest-working young man can never seem to find a job. This is a place where so many people beg or sell trinkets on the street. How could he be angry with his parents if they had nothing to give him and no way to feed him? Selling him and his sister meant they would get to Port-au-Prince and maybe find their fortune, perhaps get adopted away to the United States and a better life. Selling their own children to a stranger was a way of giving them hope. He has a profound understanding of the circumstances faced by his parents.