January 1944 · Haitianmonth known
A baby girl is taken from the water at LaSaline in the first days of 1944
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In the first days of 1944 a newborn girl was found alive by the water at LaSaline, the settlement on unsecured ground at the edge of Port-au-Prince. Sanders Johnson makes no claim about who left her or who found her. She sets out what the geography permits. Darkness covered a parent who could see no future for a child on that land, and covered her from neighbours who would have read the act as sickness rather than as arithmetic. The road running beside the sea past the old ports was the same road the women took when they walked home from their evening classes at the Foyer. One of those groups may have heard the child. A single person walking home may have heard her. Someone carried her across town to the maternity ward at the general hospital. The account is left open on purpose. The women who walked home together at night may also have been the women who carried a baby back from the sea.
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