Finding a Home at Heartline: Rosena’s Story
Photo by Nadia Todres
A smiling face, an attentive ear, a touch of humor on difficult days. She’s the kind of person we all like to have around. Her name is Rosena: 42 years old, mother of three children (one girl and two boys), and housekeeper at the Heartline Maternity Center.
Rosena is originally from St-Michel de l’Attalaye, the second-largest city in Haiti by land area. It’s far to the north of Port-au-Prince, up in beautiful Artibonite, where rivers and mangrove trees color the landscape. She grew up in a small community called Nan Kalvè, and like many other children in Haiti, she only attended school until the seventh grade. There are lots of reasons parents stop sending their children to school – financial duress, needing help around the house, fleeing one area for a safer one. For Rosena, the problem was her own health.
“I was always seriously ill as a child. I couldn’t memorize anything in school. When my parents noticed how much school was affecting my health, they decided to keep me at home.”
Instead, Rosena learned to help her parents, a schoolteacher and a farmer, with their daily chores. When her siblings left for school each morning, she went to the fields – where she learned to grow corn, care for sugar cane, and manage household tasks.
A lifetime of resourcefulness
At only 14, Rosena headed to Port-au-Prince, taking various odd jobs in the big city. By 22, she’d had her first child. She cooked, did laundry, sold food, fetched water and fuel – but she was forging her own path and taking care of her kids. Rosena worked from dawn to dusk, or later if the day demanded it.
Fortunately, that all changed in 2015 when she was hired as a housekeeper at the Heartline Maternity Center. Rose, as her coworkers like to call her, is a very busy person. In addition to the actual housework, she manages the Maternity Center’s food supply, crucial to maintaining our nutrition program for expecting mothers.
“From the moment I arrived at the maternity ward, I was very well received. Everyone is very nice to me. I don’t feel like I’m doing a demeaning job – as some people like to remind me,” Rosena confides. “Everyone sees me as their colleague and I feel comfortable here. I am also well paid and have a very respectable schedule, which allows me to get home in time to take care of my children.”
Rosena (second from left) smiling with colleagues at the Maternity Center. Photo by Nadia Todres.
Rosena’s perspective on the Maternity Center experience
Rosena remembers her first delivery at the Port-au-Prince General Hospital. It was an experience that stayed with her for the rest of her life.
“When my water broke, I was taken to the General Hospital to give birth. When I arrived, someone at the front desk put me to bed. No doctor came to see me until they had a real signal that I was about to give birth. During the delivery, there were many people in the room. For a while, I lost consciousness. When I woke up after the delivery, I was all alone. There was no one to support me, to tell me what to do. When I woke up, there was a towel and water on my bed. I got up to wash myself and then went back to bed.”
“Here,” she adds, “it’s very different. There is always someone at your bedside to support you from the beginning of labor until you give birth. I wish I had given birth at Heartline. There is no better place to give birth. I witness the kindness of the staff. I wish I had been treated the way they treat every woman who has come here to give birth.”
Today, Rosena lives with her 3 children in Bon Repos, about a half-hour’s drive north of the Maternity Center.
A note from Heartline
It’s because of donors like you that we are able to tell stories like Rosena’s. When you donate to Heartline, you not only provide quality care to pregnant women and new moms – you touch people like Rosena, who are giving other women the care they never had.
Even beyond the Maternity Center, your gifts impact families like Rosena’s every day. When our Community Care team visits with a child living with disabilities, when the Education & Employment Center trains a young mom in a valuable trade, when our Children’s Education program means a child gets the help they need to stay in school, it’s all investing in Haitian families like Rosena’s. Schoolteachers, farmers, housekeepers. Children, teenagers, the elderly. They all share an unwavering drive to make tomorrow better than today, that distinctively Haitian belief in possibility.
About the Author
Aljany Narcius
Haitian journalist Aljany Narcius is currently pursuing a Master 2 in Media Management, online from France’s University of Lille. With ten years of experience in the fields of journalism and communication, Aljany is a linguist who uses the Creole language as her weapon in the fight against social inequalities, exploitation, and all kinds of violence.
