Collegiate Times

Virginia Tech freshman Nadia Tuck and the rest of her ministry group went to Haiti expecting to aid a country riddled with violence. Instead, they found themselves rocked by a devastating earthquake.

The mission group from Blacksburg United Methodist Church spent the first portion of its trip in the capital city of Port-au-Prince, which would later become the epicenter for an earthquake that charted a 7.0 on the seismograph, one of the largest earthquakes to hit the Caribbean area in centuries.

The group volunteered in one of the poorer sections of the city in the days prior to the Jan. 12 earthquake.

“We were working in the slums,” Tuck said.

Tuck said that while she “was pretty aware of the level of poverty,” the area of Port-au-Prince where the group volunteered was still striking.

“We were repairing tin roofs on houses — shacks, really,” she said.

This was Tuck’s first trip to the country, but both of her parents have been multiple times.

Tuck’s father, pastor Reggie Tuck, leads the Blacksburg United Methodist Church. He said he had gone to Haiti several times to work on programs through the Haiti Outreach Ministry.

The group also helped in other construction projects in a portion of the town Tuck said had been recently afflicted by gang violence.

Graduate student Michael Shroyer was also part of the mission group. He said that although the area was poor and that “there were no jobs,” the people were happy to connect with the mission group members over a game of soccer or a new roof.

“We were all amazed at how loving and kind and receptive everyone was toward us,” he said.

Although the area around Port-au-Prince was poverty-stricken, Nadia Tuck said she thought both the country and the people living there were beautiful.

“The people were nicer than I thought they’d be,” she said. “Their faith was very strong and I was very impressed by their love for one another.”

While in Port-au-Prince, the group stayed in an international missionary guesthouse, which later collapsed during the earthquake.

On Jan. 12, the morning of the earthquake, the group was not actually in Port-au-Prince. It had traveled to Cange, a town about three hours north of Port-au-Prince. Tuck said that his organization has worked with the group Partners in Health there to help build a school in the area.

The group had arrived in Cange about five hours before the earthquake struck. Although they were removed from the center of the damage, the group could still feel the effects of the earthquake.

“It felt like I was dizzy and I was going to fall,” Nadia Tuck said. “Then I realized everyone felt it.”

Shroyer said that at first the group was not sure of the severity of what just happened.

“We knew it was an earthquake,” he said, “but we had no idea of the magnitude.”

The group returned to where they were staying in Cange and ultimately used the Internet to learn the severity of the earthquake.

There was no immediate physical damage to structures in Cange, but the emotional damage of the natural disaster affected all parts of the country.

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