Club Creole, the Haitian student association on campus, held a candlelight memorial Monday night to commemorate the four-year anniversary of the 2010 earthquake that killed more than 220,000 people and left 1.5 million homeless.
“It may not be in people’s minds anymore, but we wanted to remember the many affected by it,” said Malissa Alinor, a 20-year-old UF sociology junior and president of Club Creole.
The event included a candle lighting ceremony, a poem recital and a rendition of the Haitian national anthem.
One of the students in attendance, James Fertil, a 19-year-old UF political science freshman, was in Haiti during the earthquake.
“I was doing my homework, and the house started to shake,” he said. “The last thing I remember is that I just ran outside.”
Fertil said the ceremony was a moving event to remember lives lost.
“I feel like we were connected about something that happened in the past,” he said.
But the effects of this tragedy are not just relegated to the past, said Ben Hebblethwaite, assistant professor of Haitian Creole and French.
“Four years later, we are working with a society that has been transformed by that natural disaster,” Hebblethwaite said. “It’s woven into the fabric about dialogue about Haiti.”
A version of this story ran on page 5 on 1/14/2014 under the headline "Vigil remembers Haiti earthquake"
Shawama Jean-Gilles, 20, Sarasha Guillaume, 19, and Roldyne Dolce, 18, look onto a ceremony honoring Haitian earthquake victims. Monday marked the four-year anniversary of the disaster. Read the story on page 5.
