Host Intro: The world is shrinking for all of us. Thanks to social media, we can live thousands of miles from our families and still stumble on what our cousin had for breakfast or a live stream of a graduation party. For refugees, a social media feed can be a mix of the mundane and the harrowing. Radio Rookie Thaina Rezil came to New York from Haiti in 2016. She immediately started high school and began learning English, but sometimes it’s been hard to stay focused on her life here, especially when the news from Haiti has her worried about her friends and family.

Thaina: I live with my uncle in Brooklyn. On Sundays we watch television. We’re so happy just laughing together. After God, my uncle makes me feel safe and secure in the United States. My uncle has been here in the US for 39 years. I came from Haiti on Christmas in 2016 and we both still miss Haiti. 

Uncle: You want to go back to your childhood, this is you, this is part of your makeup, but yet still due to the crisis, the instability, the unrest that exists in the country. You get caught up between two feelings. Sometimes your soul is asking you to go home.

Thaina: But now we’re in New York City. I still see my friends back home enjoying themselves, posting on Facebook or Whatsapp. I see the life I used to have. 

Manolia Charlotin: We will always used technology to connect to home.

Thaina: That’s Manolia Charlotin, a journalist who helped me with my story. She was born in the U.S. but she lived in Haiti as a child.

Manolia: I can’t think of any Haitian person I know who are not tapped into some social technology. If they don’t have Facebook, they have Whatsapp, or they are on Twitter. It’s your life-line, it’s your connection to home.

Thaina: My friends cook, they put it on social media.They go to a party, they put it on Snapchat. Or they’ll post a picture and say “I’m on the beach!” I say, “Oh! It’s cold here!”

Last Februrary, my social media got way more scary. On Facebook, I saw lots of things.

News Announcer: The State Department has raised the travel warning to advise all US citizens to leave the country.

Thaina: Some of the Haitian people want the president to leave. They think he’s been irresponsible with money and he’s a bad leader. Everything was shut down in the country, there was no school, no food. I called my friend Yvelande Bien Aimie to ask her what’s going on. 

Yvelande: The protesters can do whatever they want. I just hope that a bullet does not enter my house. When people are shooting it is best to lay down on the floor, lay down on the floor. Cover yourself up.

Thaina: It was difficult to focus in school. I was distracted thinking about people in my country dying, people losing their businesses, not able to leave their houses. Manolia told me Haitian immigrants often feel guilty they’re safe in the US.

Manolia: You feel ashamed of what’s happening in the news. What people are seeing.  And then you are traumatized by it because, this is, this isn’t the first time. It’s almost as if you’re living the violence vicariously because you can’t go to school like nothing happened.  

Thaina: I went to school and I did try to forget home for one second. But I’d end of just talking with my Haitian friends about the violence. This is my friend Widnie.

Widnie: The situation is freaking me out and I’ve been thinking about those young people who don’t get the same opportunities.

Thaina: I feel the same way, guilty about some of the friends I left behind.

Widnie: I know the future of Haiti is in young people. All I can do is pray for them.  

Thaina: The violent protests did calm down. And, my social media was back to normal. But there is still a crisis. I try to focus on school and exams and graudation, so some day maybe I can go back to my country to help. My uncle tells me all the time to focus on my life here. 

Uncle: I can consider myself to be very well assimilated in American culture. I remember vividly when I first come here, I could not put milk in my tea, or eat potato salad or a tuna fish sandwich. And now I’m an expert in tuna fish sandwich!  

Thaina: But even he longs for home.  

Thaina: If Haiti were stable, would you go back?
Uncle: What? Are you kidding? Of course I would go back. I would go back in a heartbeat. 

For WNYC, I'm Thaina Rezil.