Emerging from the rubble

A student who survived the great Haitian quake is now a South Portland graduate.

SOUTH PORTLAND — During graduation season, there’s no shortage of students proud for what they’ve accomplished, having come from broken homes, but only one student can say that and mean it, literally.

Jessy “Nika” Francois of South Portland turned her tassel June 3, a mere 29 months after a monster earthquake leveled her Haitian homeland. Centered on the town of Leogane, just 16 miles from Port-au-Prince, where Francois lived with her family, the 7.0 magnitude quake killed 316,000, injured another 300,000, and put more than 1 million out in the streets. The Haitian government estimated that 250,000 homes and 30,000 commercial buildings either collapsed or suffered catastrophic damage.

“It was terrible, I would say, because, first of all, I did not even know what it was,” Francois said as she prepared for graduation, recalling the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake. “We were upstairs in my mom’s room just watching movies and the whole house started shaking.

“Oh, wow, it was really noisy,” said Francois, describing the hurried, if hesitant, trip down a crumbling staircase and out into the street.

The most memorable part of the experience, says Francois, apart from the abject terror of the unknown, was that deafening noise. Haitians even coined a new word for it: “Goudou-gouduo,” an onomatopoeia based on the tumultuous, thunder-in-the-ground sound made by the mighty temblor.

In Haiti, Francois says, life is now divided into “before goudou-goudou” and “after goudou-goudou.”

“After the earthquake, it was terrible,” said Francois. “Everything just stopped. You couldn’t do anything. You just had to stay scared all the time because you didn’t know when it would be goudou-goudou again.”

Francois’ family was one of the lucky ones. A newer section of the house broke off, and the stairwell fell down, but the house stood, one of only two or three in her neighborhood, Francois said, that did not collapse.

Even so, Francois and her family slept in the street for several weeks, as 52 aftershocks, each a magnitude 4.0 or greater, rattled rubble and nerves alike.

With her school destroyed, and all commerce at a standstill, Francois was left to wonder what would become of her in the new normal of post-goudou-goudou Haiti. But three weeks after the world changed, Francois was called to Maine.

Her oldest brother, James, married a girl from Maine. He’s spent the last seven years as a teacher at Westbrook High School. He brought Francois and another older brother, Steve, to live with him and his wife at their South Portland home, so they could finish their high school educations.

Steve Francois, who graduated last year with the class of 2011, and Nika arrived in February 2010. Both had visited brother James during previous summers and had found Maine occasionally chilly then. They were not at all impressed with Maine in the dead of winter.

“I do not like the cold at all,” said Francois. “My brother, James, he said the winters have not been that bad, but it was really, really bad for me. I was freezing cold.”

Another complication: Francois spoke hardly any English. Arriving mid-year with that handicap made making friends tough in those first few weeks.

“At first it wasn’t good,” she said. “I was new and I was different because I could not speak English very well. I only knew a few words. But they accepted me pretty quickly, especially as they understood where I came from and what I went through.”

Francois took English as a Second Language classes, but picked up just as much at home.

“I learned it pretty fast once I came here to live because I had to talk to my sister-in-law,” she said, with a laugh. “After I picked up English it was easy to make friends. It was communication that was the only problem, I think.”

Soon, Francois was running track, playing basketball and volleyball, and ingratiating herself as everybody’s favorite mentor in the French club. She also got a job, watching over younger children at the Redbank Community Center.

School is generally easier in America, says Francois, especially math. That helped her “pretty much ace” the placement tests she took upon arrival. Also of note, had things not changed, Francois would not yet be ready to graduate – because Haitian students have a 13^th year of public school to endure.

“I am very happy because not only is it easier here, I get to finish sooner,” she said, flashing a brilliant, pixie smile.

But, Francois said, harder does not necessarily mean better. American students have more options, she said, forcing them to take more responsibility for themselves. While Haitian schools may be more rigorous, in America, young people learn to be adults faster, Francois said.

“Here, I like the atmosphere of the school,” she said. “It’s like, people treat you really well here, they’re very supportive and everything. The society is pretty different. Here, you have options, in Haiti you don’t.”

Francois plans to attend Southern Maine Community College in the fall, anticipating an eventual transfer to the nursing program at University of Southern Maine, inspired by her mother, Marie-Carmelle. She remained in Haiti, along with Nika’s father, Mario Francois, a director in the Haitian equivalent of the IRS.

“She’s not a nurse, but she knows everything a nurse does,” said Francois, with wonder. “She knows how to take care of everything. I want to be like that, to be able to help people. I have not been back to Haiti since the earthquake, but I do want to go back, at least to visit. I hear it’s started to get better, but there are people who still live in the street. I would like to help anyone I can.”