A US sailor's connection to Haiti's tragedy (News Feature)

By Mike McCarthy Jan 23, 2010, 7:06 GMT

Aboard the USS Carl Vinson - Unlike the thousands of US soldiers, sailors and marines participating in the relief mission, the tragedy that has been unleashed on Haiti has touched Natalia Maxius where it hurts most - right at home.

Maxius, 21, spent most of her childhood on the streets of Port-au-Prince, attending school and spending time with her family. She was still a young girl when her father died in 1996.

Her mother lived in Miami, so her mother's best friend Ninive Desir helped raise Maxius until she moved to Florida at the age of 15. The two remained close throughout the years.

Maxius was deployed on the USS Carl Vinson when she learned of the January 12 earthquake that ripped through the impoverished country. The aircraft carrier was heading out for routine exercises when it was redirected to spearhead US relief operations off Haiti's shores.

She then got a call from her mother informing her that Desir, in her 60s, was among the tens of thousands of dead.

'My mom hurt. She didn't want to tell me at first,' Maxius said. 'When my dad died, she was always there for my mom.'

Maxius said her family did not know the location, only that like nearly all of the earthquake's victims, she was buried in a mass grave. 'Dumped in a hole,' Maxius said.

Maxius was born to Haitian parents in New York City's burrough of Brooklyn. Two months later, they took her to Haiti, wanting her to grow up acquainted with her family's origins.

'They wanted me to learn the language and culture,' she said.

After moving back to the United States, she eventually decided to join the Navy at the urging of her two brothers. Her eldest one, now 37, had also served in the Navy. Her 19-year-old brother is a marine deployed in Afghanistan.

Now, as a sailor, Maxius has returned to within eyeshot of her homeland. From the carrier, she can see Haiti's dry, mountainous landscape, which was once flush with trees before falling victim to deforestation.

She fled Haiti in 2004 as the political unrest that would oust then-president Jean Bertrand Aristide was heating up. She and her brother felt their lives were at stake because militias loyal to Aristide made it clear they did not like the siblings' school uniforms.

'They wanted to kill us because we were in private schools,' she said.

As soon as she gets a break from the Navy, probably sometime this summer, she and her brothers plan to return to Port-au-Prince to have a look at their family's home. She said they are not optimistic it survived.

In the Navy, Maxius serves as a culinary specialist, cooking up meals for the ship's senior officers. Navy chefs don't have much room to get creative as the service maintains strict dietary policies, but she does have a little leeway to toss in some spices to give the food a little Haitian flavor.

'If you're from Haiti you have to know how to cook,' she said.