Toronto Star: A good day in Haiti as Lovely graduates from kindergarten

[marmar]

By Catherine Porter
Columnist


FERMATHE, HAITI—Lovely Avelus graduated from kindergarten Saturday.

It was a full-day event, starting down in the sticky-hot city, where her father, Enel, met me at 8 a.m. to buy more supplies for the celebration — a vanilla cake and some beef patties at a bakery.

We were then joined by Lovely’s uncle and two aunts, who jammed into the back seat of the dusty car dressed in wedding white.

When we arrived at their little concrete one-room house up in the mountains 30 minutes later, the aunts set about bathing Lovely and feeding her breakfast and dressing her in her first outfit of the day. Three sets of hands preened her, pulling up her lacy socks, buttoning and fixing her dress, smoothing her fuzzy hair with pomade and tying it up into a tiny ponytail with a white satin bow.

It was a big day for little Lovely, now 5. Two years ago, she was buried in the rubble of the two-storey house her family rented a room in by the 7.0 Richter earthquake that smashed this already broken country into shards. Lovely was counted among the dead who, by the end of it all, measured some 300,000. She emerged unblemished from the rubble six days later, and was eventually reunited with her family. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1216416--column-a-good-day-in-haiti-as-lovely-graduates-from-kindergarten-porter?bn=1