Hidden Emotions

To date we’ve completed 72 maternal mortality verbal autopsy interviews. 72 interviews... and it wasn’t until a few days ago that we encountered the first respondent to shed tears during the survey. Two things struck me as odd. The first, a bit expected, was why we’ve conducted so many interviews up till now without a single person displaying emotion typically associated with talking about the death of a relative or friend. The second, which I didn’t realize till a bit afterwards, was that we ourselves had somewhat become accustomed to people not showing emotion at all. Here we are surveying people and asking them to recall numerous details about the deceased (often that of an immediate family member), and to see someone cry had become ‘unexpected’. Of course everyone reacts differently and maybe some Haitians just don’t always outwardly display emotions. But it’s also scary to think that for many people here death and other traumatic experiences have become so commonplace to the point where they usually talk or even joke about it as if they’re having any regular conversation. We’ve seen or heard funeral processions down the road quite often, and its evident people are mourning, but it appears as if once the body is laid to rest Haitians go back to their everyday life almost as if nothing happened.