Sous les belles Etoiles

Port a Piment

2010-04-10T12:45:00.001-05:00

Last weekend I ventured briefly down to the South Western area of Haiti.

Apart from working and doing some relaxing as well, we walked up to the fascinating Grotte Marie-Jeanne, a complex system of caves nearby which have some interesting artefacts from early days of Haitian life, some Taino pottery having been found here also. Although not fully mapped yet, it is thought to be probably the longest cave system in the Caribbean at over 1km.

This huoses all sorts of interesting animals, bats, birds and insects of differing classes. There’s just a very few images here but it’s a really fascinating place and it seems there may be some species amongst them which are either not yet recognised by science or not yet fully understood. Apart from several very large & hairy spiders…

most intriguing for me was this blue earthworm. Not sure if this is an unusual variant (perhaps caused by diet?) but it certainly is not something I have ever seen before. Anyone out there who is able to shed light on this, I’d really appreciate the answer!

Floods in refugee camps

2010-04-10T10:22:00.001-05:00

A series of brief rain storms have flooded Haiti's earthquake camps in the past few days, with worrying portents of what promises to be a more-active-than-usual hurricane season.

A 30-minute downpour left 15cm of water inside makeshift tents on the sloping golf course of the Petionville Club, now a tented city of about 45,000 people.

People ran for cover in viscous mud wearing plastic shower caps and towels over their heads. Leaks sprung in emergency tarpaulins given by aid groups after the January 12th earthquake destroyed their homes.

"Of course I am worried about the rain. I have my mother here with high blood pressure and my family lives here," said a 37-year-old woman who gave her name as Ammeni.

Earlier in the week Haitian radio broadcast a forecast from Colorado State University researchers that the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season will be more active than usual because of warm sea temperatures. They said that moderating El Nino conditions in the Pacific were likely to dissipate by summer, creating a likelihood of 15 named storms between June 1 and Nov. 30 — four of those major hurricanes.

That could cause havoc if any strike near the quake-ravaged capital, where NGOs and government officials are racing to improve shelter for over a million people made homeless by the earthquake. Some will be relocated to camps outside the city; others are being encouraged to return to their own neighbourhoods; others still will move out into the countryside; and others will stay put. It is not yet clear how much of the $9.9 billion pledged to Haiti by donors will go toward improving shelter, or how soon the money will materialise. Individuals and governments have been incredibly generous so far, but the scale of the disaster is immense. And of course money being made available is only the start of the gigantic task of clearing land, laying proper drainage & foundations and rebuilding.

Rains are expected to grow more intense as hurricane season approaches. In 2008, nearly 800 people were killed as Haiti was wracked by four named storms in the space of a month.

Dignity not digits

2010-04-10T08:27:00.001-05:00

Haiti is a major challenge for aid workers: vast numbers of people requiring urgent help, a country so damaged even before the earthquake that its people require both emergency relief (food, water, shelter, WASH, medical aid) but also very significant long term economic development to rebuild itself. In this complex context, safeguarding the dignity of those affected by the earthquake requires us all to think beyond mere numerical benchmarks.

Most commonly cited standards are enshrined in the Sphere Project, a collaboration of hundreds of NGOs, UN agencies and academics, which produced a set of guidelines for humanitarian response. Aid agencies measure performance against these guidelines as as they provide water, food, shelter and sanitation facilities to around 1.5m people in the wake of what was described by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) as “the biggest natural disaster in history”.

While aid workers sometimes use the words “standards” and “indicators” interchangeably, in the context of Sphere they have distinct meanings. Standards are qualitative. Of latrines, for example, the handbook says: “People should have adequate numbers of toilets, sufficiently close to their dwellings, to allow them rapid, safe and acceptable access at all times of the day and night.” In principle this sounds like something we could ascribe to – but what does it really mean on the ground, when you’re an NGO worker trying to help a camp of 20,000 homeless people? How many latrines are needed? Where must they be sited? So indicators are more concrete and in many cases purely quantitative. “A maximum of 20 people use each toilet,” for example.

Early in my time here in Haiti, one thing I noticed was that a lot of people were throwing up their hands and saying: ‘We can’t meet Sphere here’. But rather than just thinking of Sphere as numbers and saying ‘we can’t meet these here, full stop’, the approach has to be to look at Sphere overall and at how we can achieve these and what happens if we can’t achieve them.

Conditions here in Port au Prince are difficult. There’s not a lot of space: this is primarily an urban area which was very overcrowded in the first place and suddenly people are all tumbled out of their houses and crammed into tiny squares in city centres. This makes it incredibly difficult to follow Sphere standards and indicators in such an environment. However, we can’t throw it out completely. What is Sphere about? Sphere is about people having rights to a life with dignity, and effective disaster response requires paying attention to Sphere’s common standards which cover such aspects as beneficiary participation, monitoring of response actions and aid worker responsibilities.

People at a water distribution point in a Port-au-Prince neighbourhood

The problem with Sphere as with any standards is that they are not adapted to the particular situation in Haiti. And NGOs can find it difficult to move away from these to adapt their responses to the specific needs at hand. To gauge effectiveness the local context is integral to aid activities in Haiti and the evaluation in terms of adherence to Sphere.

For example, we measure our WASH (water, sanitation, hygiene)achievements not only through records of litres of water supplied to camps and numbers of latrines, but also through water use surveys and sanitation monitoring, which frequently indicate practices of returning to original homes to access alternative water supplies and more familiar toilet facilities. The WASH cluster (comprised of NGOs working together in this sector) here in Haiti has a strategy for gradually improving sanitation by reducing the ratio of people per latrine from 100:1 for the first three months of the crisis to 50:1 for the next three months, and to 20:1 after a year. Obviously we’d like to do this faster if we can.

Whilst NGOs are not yet fully reaching Sphere’s water and sanitation indicators due to the scale of the disaster, the situation is improving. In the beginning of the emergency humanitarian organizations provided five litres of water per person per day. That has now increased to approximately 10 litres.

Reflections from my diary the past few days in Port au Prince

2010-04-03T17:57:00.001-05:00

The last few days I was both ill and then desperately busy, and had little time to update this blog: I did however keep a record in my notebook, and these are a summary of my comments & musings in that time.

Petionville -- Mud invades every inch of the saggy handmade tent Mimose Pierre-Louis now calls home. It spatters the pink bedsheet that serves as her wall, crawls up the acacia branch that plays the role of wobbly tent pole and it forms the floor she lies on. At one end of the tent a steep slope leads several hundred yards up to the Petionville Club, where the Haitian elite once played tennis and drank cocktails by the pool. Immediately at the other, the earth drops 15 feet into a stinking open sewer. This is Port au Prince’s largest encampment, home to 70,000 people jumbled amongst trees and rocks on barren slopes. Now they all live in fear as the ferocious storms Haiti's April-May rainy season approach. To save people from this challenge of destructive rains and floods, NGOs here have launched an ambitious logistical operation aimed at protecting the Mimose’s of this wrecked city. They plan to carve new drainage channels in the most vulnerable of the hundreds of camps in this city by mid-April and to relocate people living in the most precariously perched tents. The consequences of failure would be devastating, Haitian and international officials estimate: another catastrophe – potentially as many as 37,000 dead in floods and mudslides -- in a country still reeling from more than 200,000 earthquake deaths.

So in the next weeks leading up to 15th April when storms are expected to start, relief crews will dredge the sewage & drainage channels and build retaining walls. They will also attempt to find new refuge for the thousands of people whose tents are so imperiled by flash floods that they cannot be saved by the engineering work.

But that's just the beginning. Over the next few months we need to relocate at least 150,000 people living in unacceptably muddy camps wedged into ravines and on steep hillsides that could become breeding grounds for disease. Several hundred thousand more are expected to find shelter on their own outside the camps, in the homes of friends and relatives or in semi-permanent structures near their homes.

Even calculating how many people in the camps legitimately need to be relocated has become a complex exercise. Thousands have set up tents in camps to collect food and water during the day, even though their homes are habitable. And some quake victims have set up multiple tents - a husband in one, a wife in another, and their children in a third - in order to collect more supplies: we’ve seen it and so have other agencies.

Hillsides made bald by years of deforestation in Port-au-Prince and other parts of the country act as giant sluices, funneling torrents of water in even the smallest storms. On the steep hillsides yesterday's mud becomes today's hard-packed claylike surface, perfect to channel water next time it tains.

In post-earthquake Port-au-Prince, rainstorms - including several brief ones over the past week - lift refuse from the ordered piles workers have carefully brought together to await collection and spread it across streets and camps. With this ooze -- an awful melange of rotting fruit, rotting animal flesh and human waste -- comes a smell that brings to mind spoiled milk and gangrenous wounds. Yesterday a child slipped and drowned in this mire, one more victim of the January 12th earthquake.

On Tuesday we got a preview of what's to come when a short downpour collapsed a school tent, streets became rivers with floating garbage islands, and water rose to knee-level in many camps. Mimose managed to save her tent, but the coursing water swept away everything else: her charcoal stove, 12 spoons, two pots, a couple of buckets and a bag of clothes. She sank to her knees and "asked God to change my life."

Before the quake Mimose earned the equivalent of $1.50 a day making shirts but is jobless now: but she has come emotional comfort despite the grim conditions. Her friend Carline Calipso - whose 2-year-old daughter died in the quake - occupies the next tent, and two tents along lives another friend from her Delmas home district, Louidie Desauguste along with his his wife and 10 children.

The three friends reflect the conflicting emotions of the moment. Desauguste would move if offered a safe place, he said, but "I survived the earthquake; I'm not going to some new place to die." Calipso dreams of escaping the camp before the water "takes me away," but worries that she would struggle to restart her street market business in a place where she doesn't know anyone. In one breath, Mimose said she wants to leave, and soon; in the next, she said she doesn't want to leave her family and friends.

And therein lies the problem: The main new settlement being built is several miles from the city centre in a neighborhood called Tabarre.

Many of the camps are situated on private land - tolerated for now by the owners - or on symbolically important public spaces. Haitian officials want to clear a camp in front of the prime minister's office and another in the city centre along the Champ de Mars, a teeming avenue across from the once-graceful National Palace, which collapsed during the quake. Now semi-permanent structures crafted from scavenged wood line the street, and their owners show little inclination to move. NGO workers are less concerned about this camp because it sits on paved ground, and the U.N. troops have said "no one will be forced out at the point of a gun." But Haitians have begun to issue veiled threats.

"We abide by the law," Charles Clermont, head of the Haitian presidential relocation task force, said in a radio interview. "We know the concept is, you can't force someone to go somewhere. But you can force someone to leave a place." If people refuse to leave the Champ de Mars, Clermont envisions Haitian government officials eventually going in and announcing: "Ladies and gentlemen, in three days we are going to stop providing for you."

In the rush to save lives, it will be almost impossible to achieve international standards of 36 square metres per person for the first group of people targeted for relocation. There is ongoing & furious debate between NGO officials and Haitian government workers. Some advocate building at least one large solid structure of wood or metal in each of the new settlements, where people could cluster if their tents are ripped apart by winds and rain – almost like a medieval fortress. Earth movers now parade across the tract of land on the city's edge where one such edifice will be erected. Two inhabitants were injured there recently during a shootout after someone opened fire at work crews, underlying the tensions associated with almost any major initiative here.

Amongst such chaos there is a real fear that the temporary settlements will become permanent slums and that, in solving one crisis, others will be created. It calls to mind a Haitian saying: "Don't escape from the river and fall into the bottom of the sea."

Diaspora

2010-04-03T16:33:00.001-05:00

The very slow internet link here outside Port au Prince makes it very hard to upload images from the coast, so I will add some more in the next days when I return.

However, I was struck by the way the local villages have taken in so many of the diaspora fleeing their ruined lives in Port au Prince since the earthquake.

Two years ago Port au Piment had an estimated population of around 13,750 people. They had a small medical centre, several churchs and a couple of vodoun shrines, which peacefully coexisted. They also had schools, although these were woefully underfunded so that class sizes were often well over 50 and text books were scarce. Today their population has grown temporarily at least to around 22,000 – and the government is doing all it can to discourage return to Port au Prince, following a strategy to reduce pressure in the capital by encouraging people to stay in the provinces. The people here are warm and generous – they have shared the little they have with the newly arrived, many of whom are relatives or friends of those who remained here. So far however, little additional support has reached places like Port au Piment: a little food for refugees, some water. But what these people want and need is jobs to earn money, land to farm so they do not have to rely on their already impoverished families for support, and the education for their children which they themselves were mostly denied. The medical centre is overburdened and lacks most basic drugs for treating everyday diseases (I have already spoken with an aid organisation to arrange a truckload of essential items to come up in the next few days), the schools cannot cope with the numbers of pupils – it’s mostly the young who went to the city, so mostly the young who have returned home with their children – so school enrollment is doubled: how can they cope? Jobs are few and far between. When I’m back in Port au Prince I will ensure I speak with the NGOs working in this area, because I am sure they will be wanting to help and trying desperately to do so: in the areas we operate we are following Cash for Work programmes to create short term employment, allowing people to earn money to spend on their needs in addition to food & water distribution, and help with shelter & sanitation. We are also developing longer term programmes to help people transition into permanent industries, and giving them the skills to remain employed into the future. We are working across several industries to make this happen, but such profound change takes time. Right now these children need an education, their parents need jobs.

And one small Haitian town needs help to cope with its new residents.

Easter weekend at the beach

2010-04-03T16:04:00.001-05:00

A real change from the images of a broken city, filled with desperate people. This weekend is Easter and in a society which takes the Easter festivities seriously this means a long weekend. Although I have much to do, I’ve taken this opportunity to escape to the southern coast of Haiti, near to Port a Piment, where one of my colleagues has a home. One of the purposes of the trip is to look at local farming and mango production – Haitian mangos are excellent and with proper farming & marketing they could play a role in the economic recovery of the country. But when I saw how beautiful the area is, it seems very plain to me that with stable government and a modest investment in infrastructure, Haiti could have a great future as a tourist destination. And this picture shows why – taken from the terrace of a very run down hotel / restaurant dating from the 1920s, it possesses a faded elegance, but the views, the beaches and the seafood are spectacular………….

Only problem is I have to do some work whilst I’m here as well!

Donors money & Haiti’s future

2010-04-03T15:12:00.001-05:00

Last week in New York, donors were asked to provide $11.5 billion to help Haiti recover from the devastating earthquake which hit on January 12th. Given the huge generosity of governments & individuals to date (the U.S. government has already provided more than $700 million in assistance — a number that continues to rise) — some might ask: why should we give more?

To these people, I have two answers: first, more is getting done than you may think; and second, more needs to be done than you can possibly imagine.

I’ve been Haiti for several very intense weeks now, and compared even to the other emergencies I’ve worked in (Afghanistan, Darfur & Gaza most recently) it is very plain that even with its charming idiosyncracies, Haiti is an extremely challenging place to work. The situation here was disastrous before this disaster ever occurred; the people of Haiti have been exploited and impoverished for the better part of 200 years.

What do you get when you combine that dreadful reality with a powerful earthquake in the country's overcrowded, under-resourced urban core? Logistical chaos. Relief efforts may not have been perfect – despite the genuine efforts of many agencies to coordinate aid effectively to reach the most stricken, it is clear that some have slipped through the cracks - but the obstacles such as a collapsed port, the serious loss of scarce qualified human resources, collapsed centres of government and response, a scattered population still suffering the effects of shock — have been extreme.

Still, great strides have been made. The United Nations and international aid groups are providing more than 1.2 million people in Port-au-Prince with clean water each day. Food is being distributed in massive quantities; the World Food Program estimates it has reached more than 4 million people since Jan. 12. The Haitian government announced that schools will reopen this week.

The donors who met in New York are grappling with how to help Haiti use this very tragic but pivotal moment in history to become something better — a viable state with a viable economy. I would encourage these donors to read the analysis of the quake's impact prepared by the Haitian government, the U.N. and other international organizations, and prepare to act boldly. Haitians know what they need, and I hope we will keep the faith and listen to them, working with them to build a future Haiti they can take pride in being a part of and we can take pride in helping into existence.

Large swaths of the population seek out a subsistence living in the country's vast, informal economy, selling anything they can get their hands on. But almost every Haitian would abandon that hand-to-mouth existence for a real job with a future. They need skills training, jobs and private-sector investment. Their children need education. All of them need affordable healthcare.

Today, Haiti must resurrect a middle economy that was lost many years ago. This would offer hundreds of thousands of decent-paying jobs — transforming a largely unskilled work force stuck at the bottom of the economic pyramid into a skilled work force. But Haitians need international assistance to make this possible. Industries such as clothing production, agriculture and tourism could be nurtured in both the provinces and Port au Prince so that Haitians can participate formally in a growing, vibrant grass-roots economy.

Perhaps the most difficult proposal to donors will be to bolster the Haitian government. Throughout Haitian governance during the last 50 years, many things have gone very wrong. But no country can make meaningful progress without well-resourced and functional government institutions. Next year sees a general election in Haiti, and the recovery effort looks likely to be a significant issue for debate, with competing visions from all sides of the political spectrum. Whoever the people of Haiti choose to lead them forward, it is important that foreign donors maintain faith and not seek to impose their own vision on Haiti. They should only stipulate that continued aid for recovery is dependent on a truly democratic and transparent election process, and on recovery plans delivering benefits accessibly to all Haitians, urban & rural, skilled & unskilled.

Haiti faces huge obstacles and a troubled history, but that should not make the international community shy away. If mold-breaking change is ever going to happen in Haiti, it will happen now, with all of us — Haitians, donors, the business sector, aid groups — focused on the end game of building the future that Haitians envision for themselves and deserve.

Absence…….

2010-04-03T15:03:00.001-05:00

Many apologies to those of you who may have missed an update in the last week or so……

Firstly I got overwhelmed with work – so much to do and urgently pressing deadlines, and naturally working for the beneficiaries here in Haiti far outweighs writing a blog in importance…….

And then I got sick: I went down with Falciparum malaria, which is not particularly pleasant. Although I’ve had malaria before this, having a new strain was worrying, as this form can turn into cerebral malaria quite quickly.

Fortunately I am carrying some strong drugs with me, and as soon as I suspected malaria I commenced treatment even before I confirmed the problem with blood tests. I am now back on my feet and 100% fighting fit again, with only a short break. By contrast, one of my colleagues who relied on local doctors to treat his malaria developed a serious case of pneumonia and we had to arrange a medical evacuation back to the US for treatment. He is fortunately now recovering slowly but was very sick indeed for several days.

Most of all I am conscious that I am a fit, strong & well-nourished adult – which makes it far easier to fight off such problems. With the advent of rains here in Haiti malaria and dengue cases are on the upsurge dramatically, and many of those affected will have been undernourished for all of their lives and be weakened by weeks exposed to poor sanitation and little food. They will suffer far more than I did.

Another quake in Haiti…..

2010-03-21T11:23:00.001-05:00

After a series of minor earthquakes in Cuba yesterday which have caused damage but no reported casualties to date, a small earthquake early today in northern Haiti has collapsed an apartment building and killed two people.

The tremor struck Haiti's second-largest city , Cap-Haitien early Sunday morning, and although five people were pulled from the rubble, two have since died. The other three are in hospital.

Haitian police, civil protection authorities and U.N. peacekeepers are searching for more survivors.

Cap-Haitien was not affected by the 12th January earthquake that struck Port-au-Prince.

Rural Haiti is struggling to absorb the people displaced by the earthquake

2010-03-16T20:01:00.001-05:00

Before the earthquake that changed everything, Beatrice Poncelet and her husband lived a typically urban existence. A beautician and a mechanic, they both enjoyed a steady clientele and a hectic daily routine, serenaded by the beeping cars and general hubbub of Port-au-Prince

Now, as roosters crow and goats bleat, Beatrice, 31, toils by day on a craggy hillside in the isolated hamlet which she had abandoned at 14 for a life of greater opportunity. At night, she, her husband and their two children sleep cheek-to-jowl with a dozen relatives in the small mud house where she grew up.

“With everything destroyed, what could I do but come back?” said Beatrice, wearing a floral skirt as she poked corn seeds deep into arid soil unlikely to yield enough food to sustain her rail-thin parents, much less those who fled the shattered capital city to rejoin them.

Beatrice Poncelet working the fields near her new home

Life has come full circle for many Haitians who originally migrated to escape the grinding poverty of the countryside. Since the early 1980s, rural Haitians have moved steadily towards Port-au-Prince in search of schools, jobs and government services. After the earthquake, more than 600,000 returned to the countryside, according to the latest estimates, putting a serious strain on desperately poor communities that have so far received little emergency assistance.

“There has been a mass exodus to places like Mirbalais,” said Briel Leveillé , a former mayor and founder of the leading peasant cooperative in this region. “But the misery of the countryside is compounding the effects of the disaster. I’ve heard people say it would be better to risk another earthquake in Port-au-Prince than to stay in this rural poverty without any help from the government.”

Indeed, some have already returned to the capital seeking the international aid that is concentrated there. But if the reverse flow continues, it could undermine a primary goal of the Haitian government and the international community: to use the earthquake as a catalyst to decentralize Haiti and resuscitate its near dormant agricultural economy.

“If we really mean what we say about decentralization, then we have to think fast about a more robust distribution of food to the countryside, cash-to-work programs there, and assistance to agriculture,” said Nancy Dorsinville this week, an adviser to Bill Clinton who is the UN Special Envoy to Haiti.

Decentralization has long been championed by many advocates for Haiti because the countryside endured decades of neglect while the Port-au-Prince area gained dysfunctional congestion. Now, with the capital city battered, it has become a policy buzzword, even as food is growing ever scarcer in the countryside.

“It is only a matter of time before we start seeing severe malnutrition in the countryside,” said Conor Shapiro, director of the small 60-bed hospital and community development organization.

So far, returnees have been welcomed as the prodigal family members they are: Jacqueline Jerome, Beatrice’s elderly mother, said, shrugging: “They don’t have anything now, so it’s up to me to take care of them. Like if God gives you a good harvest, you share with those who were not so blessed.”

The growth in these communities is hard to measure, but the community leaders point to a few indicators. Some 300 needy families surveyed reported taking in an average of five earthquake victims each. St. Francois Xavier, a secondary school, has seen its student body increase by half with 150 displaced teenagers. And another 500 to 600 earthquake refugees are seeking to resume their studies although the area has only two government schools and this increases the roster by over 80% in an already underfunded system.

The hospital has taken in severely injured refugees who need treatment – and their families have come with them, swelling the numbers still further.

one of the lucky few who have a hospital bed: but what world will he emerge to once he has recovered his health?

In the center of town, the influx from Port-au-Prince has created a night life where none existed before. The sole lamppost draws an evening crowd, and earthquake refugees jokingly call the dusty gathering place the Champ de Mars after the bustling plaza in the Haitian capital.

Near to that lamppost, Ronange Buissereth has set up a small open-air restaurant, trying to mimic the busy one she had in Port-au-Prince prior to the earthquake. But, she said sighing, her small hometown cannot produce a steady clientele for her fried bananas, potatoes & pork, so her efforts are really just a way to pass the time.

Several dozen members of her extended family have returned to a scrubby plot of land that her generation abandoned decades ago. Some, like her sister Rosemen are happy to be back, if anxious about making ends meet.

“It’s like you become a Communist here because you never touch money,” she said. “But it’s not so bad. Even though I left 25 years ago, this is still the place that I call home.”

Her cousin, Monique Alexandre, 45, is already laying down new roots. Last weekend, with rainbow-colored rollers in her hair and pigs rooting through the dirt at her feet, she oversaw the laying of a foundation for a new house — “with a tin roof that cannot crush us!” she said.

Monique Alexandre and the beginnings of her new home

“If I somehow scratch together some money, I’ll go back to Port-au-Prince and rebuild my business,” a food store, she said. “If not, I’ll stay here and work the land. You have to adapt.”

Missoule Alexandre Pierre, 54, was not so sanguine. As her listless daughters leafed through magazines and stared at their nails, she expressed considerable frustration that her children’s education had been interrupted.

“These three girls were all university students, and now their future is uncertain,” she said. “They don’t know what to do with themselves here. Every morning they wake up and say, “Mama, take us back. We’d rather sleep on the street.’ ”

Mirbalais has a long history of migration, with residents fleeing to Cuba, New York and French Guiana even in the best of times.

“Until 1963, it was beautiful country with all kinds of birds, plentiful rainfall, big old trees and coffee plantations,” said Mr. Leveillé , 62. “But that year, Hurricane Flora devastated our environment in a day. International companies like Dupont began replacing sisal, which we grow, with synthetic fibers. And people started cutting down trees to make charcoal.”

By 1982, Mirbalais, increasingly deforested, was at its nadir and the exodus to Port-au-Prince got under way. At the same time, help began arriving: a relatively successful reforestation program and a health clinic started by a Catholic parish which became the St. Boniface Hospital. But the area still struggles.

a community meeting in rural Haiti discusses the influx of displaced people

Worried about the impact of the returnees, local leaders have decided to unite their myriad community groups to decide how to absorb the newcomers while using the earthquake to draw attention to the plight of rural areas. At a recent town meeting, they summed up their resources succinctly on a blackboard: “Public health: nonexistent; electricity: nonexistent; water: insufficient.”

The former mayor, Mr. Leveillé, his face weathered under a straw hat, told the crowd, “It is time to force the international community and our own government to focus on us, too.” And heads nodded.

More kidnappings……….and another shooting

2010-03-16T18:55:00.001-05:00

The US embassy here has confirmed today that 4 US nationals have been kidnapped since the earthquake on 12th January. Of these one has been sexually assaulted prior to release and one of them has been shot & killed. The details have not been released.

This confirms rumours which have been around for a few days, that the kidnappings and violent crime so far made public are only the tip of the iceberg. We also have reports of an attempt by armed intruders to break into an NGO compound as well.

In addition, a senior member of the Haitian National Police was shot and killed in his car, with the motive unclear.

Needless to say we are all very aware of the situation and have taken every precaution we can to minimise the risk to our staff – both expatriate and national – and to ensure that we present as small a target as we are able to do.

We hope that our efforts will keep our staff safe.

Waiting for the hurricane?

2010-03-16T18:42:00.001-05:00

There is a shortage of hurricane-proof shelters here in Haiti, and the storm season is approaching fast.

So far, only about half of the 1.3 million Haitians left homeless by the Jan. 12 magnitude-7.0 earthquake have received emergency shelters, according to the latest estimates. However, many of these shelters — which include tents, tarpaulins and wood — won't be able to resist hurricanes. Some aid agencies are planning to build storm-resistant common shelters for people to take refuge, but shelter provision is running behind schedule in Haiti, despite out best efforts.

We need to do more before the storm season begins in earnest

a little boy stands on a stepping stone amongst his tented village after a rainfall – when the storms come this community will be under water!

Planning for the future: starting small

2010-03-15T06:40:00.001-05:00

I met 62-year-old Rosemarie Joseph at the Lycée Jean-Marie Vincent, a spontaneous camp for displaced families on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital. Rosemarie resettled on the high school grounds with 80 other earthquake affected families with the six youngest of her eight children on January 25. Now they're living in a tiny tent made of a collection of personal and borrowed bed linens, because her house was severely damaged in the January earthquake.

Like many others, Rosemarie lost all her possessions in the quake, but she’s just happy she and her family survived. Her oldest son is 36 and her youngest only nine years old. Her husband died a long time ago — she cannot quite recollect the year.

“We were never wealthy people," Rosemarie comments. "Before the quake, I used to run a small petty trading business selling bread, charcoal and little things that people would need. And with that, we could to get by, even if we didn’t always manage to eat more than one good meal a day. But now, we go hungry for days running. When we’re lucky enough to find something to eat, we have to borrow cooking utensils from another family in the camp, because we’ve lost everything.”

It only takes one glance around to see the level of destitution that is now Rosemarie’s everyday reality. As we sit together in what the place she must now call home, there are only torn pieces of cardboard for them to sleep on. There is one pillow, a small desk and a few empty plastic water bottles. The “tent” is exposed to the heavy sunshine and the rain. With rainy season on its way, it’s easy to imagine how much worse things will get.

Unlike others, Rosemarie has no family abroad who can send remittances to help her. The camp at Lycée Jean-Marie Vincent wasn’t mapped out by the United Nations (it was an unofficial camp) and so no humanitarian aid reached the families settled here at first. Luckily, a Mercy Corps team spotted the camp and we’ve now started two programs: water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and cash-for-work programmes, which work hand in hand. So, in addition to cash-for-work, we are already providing access to clean water and latrines, because the original facilities are now massively overstretched with the displaced population.

One of Rosemarie’s sons was selected to take part in the cash-for-work programme, which is aimed at supporting the immediate needs of earthquake-affected populations through community work such as rubble clearing and digging of drainage canals. Participants are enlisted in the program for 20 days and paid at the UN-endorsed daily rate of 180 Haitian Gourdes — about US $4.50 — for six hours of work.

Rosemarie and her family urgently need food and improved shelter but, when asked what her household would do with their first cash-for-work payment, Rosemarie immediately replied, “We'll start back my old trading business. We need to get back on our feet you know!”

Ansamm nap rive…….

2010-03-12T22:09:00.001-05:00

After a few weeks in Haiti I’m beginning to understand a little Kreyol: it’s quite a difficult language in some ways but I’ve found the way to deal with it is to pronounce it phonetically. Then think what is close to this in French…..so “ansamm nap rive” is “together we’ll make it”, which is a great way of looking at the spirit of community in Haiti and the way that we are trying to work with the Haitian communities: together we will make it.

These pictures come from today's distribution of food aid in Tabarre: a week ago we had some significant problems in the very same area, but today we worked closely with community leaders to ensure a smooth process, and the results were outstanding – happy people receiving rice, flour, oil, beans and sugar

these residents of the camps in Tabarre wait patiently in line for their parcels. Knowing there was plenty for all the atmosphere was happy and chatty

Even with a huge bag of rice on their heads, they wait in line for beans & flour – by the time they finish they are carring nearly 100lbs of food stuffs, enough to feed their family for quite a while

The delighted smile says it all.

2 months since the earthquake

2010-03-12T21:52:00.002-05:00

On the two-month anniversary of Haiti's massive earthquake, I wanted to reflect on what we have achieved here in the past few weeks. It has been an extraordinary period.

The impact of the Haiti earthquake - one of the largest disasters in recent history - has been exacerbated by the pre-existing poverty of Haiti coupled with the near total incapacitation of Haiti's capital city, government, financial center, the Haiti offices of the UN and the humanitarian community. Above-and-beyond this, the operational challenges have been substantial: amidst the disorder of shattered infrastructure and disintegrating security we needed to build a foothold among the rubble and chaos. In spite of this we have been able to put an experienced team on the ground, contributed significantly to the delivery of food, water, shelter and sanitation to those most in need, and at the same time established a long term strategy around youth, water/sanitation and economic recovery. We’ve developed an operational and programme platform to move into a broader long term strategy aimed at long term recovery and reconstruction. We are now expanding our operation to fulfill the early commitment we made to provide WASH, Comfort for kids and cash-for-work programming to thousands of families in the Petionville and Tabarre sections of Port au Prince, while at the same time carrying out the early assessments and initiating the activities that will be necessary to open programmes in the Central Plateau and beyond. These will reach tens of thousand more people. We have established a firm programme footing.

Funding has also come together remarkably well. Emergency funds were quickly allocated to ensure a rapid deployment and response. We raised over 10 million dollars in net private funds funds for programming, and to provide core funding for our recovery / reconstruction strategy. This has bought us time to develop proposals for our longer term institutional partners: we have secured significant funding already with more in the pipelines from OFDA, Gates, American Red Cross the UN and others. More will follow in the next week or so from ECHO, the UK & Scottish Governments.

From not being present in Haiti at all we have built an organization employing over 70 national staff and many expats with a huge range of skills, crisis tested in some of the worst humanitarian crises around the world. This team will take forward a strategy which we believe offers hope to the people of Haiti, and which will allow the people in our sectors employment, training, medical care, education for their children and a future they can believe in.

There are challenges here in Haiti, and sometimes the scale of the task ahead can be daunting, but looking back at where we were and seeing just what has been achieved gives me real confidence that we can achieve even the difficult targets we have set ourselves.

Good news!

2010-03-11T22:19:00.001-05:00

Just a very quick update to share with you all the wonderful news that the two MSF nurses kidnapped last Saturday have now been released.

I’m just so very relieved for them and delighted for their families, and I hope they get left in peace to recover from their ordeal.

Personal Grooming in a crisis zone

2010-03-10T23:56:00.001-05:00

A couple of days ago I decided that my hair needed trimming – it was just too long for comfort in the hot conditions here. The problem was, how to get it cut in a city where security is now a major threat, and at a time when I am working 16 hours a day minimum……

The solution is my colleague Su’ad: Su’ad is a Palestinian lady who grew up in Ramallah in recent years when confrontation with Israeli troops was almost a daily occurrence, and so she is well equipped for the stresses of Haiti. She’s very competent at many things – but I was still very nervous when she proposed to cut my hair.

She produced clippers and a head lamp to ensure she could see what she was doing, then set to work. My worries were allayed with a simple comment that if it went badly, she would simply cut it a little shorter and it would re-grow anyway. Easy for her to say!

I should have had more faith of course. The next imagine shows my clear relief that this had all worked out.

Even in a situation where most things become difficult, it’s possible to maintain some standards :-)

Training to help children heal – a healing process in itself

2010-03-10T22:46:00.001-05:00

Today I was speaking to one of our national staff, Fabiola, who is part of our communications team here in Port au Prince, helping us to get our message through to the people who need to hear it.

I asked her to write a few words about her experiences recently, and I’m sharing those words with you now.

“I’m Fabiola, a part of Mercy Corps Haiti’s staff of nationals, hired as the communication officer about three weeks ago. Needless to say, keeping up with Mercy Corps’ energy and momentum has been challenging but mostly fun and almost always rewarding.

Today, I’m attending a Comfort for Kids training that is taking place in the heart of Port-au-Prince, near Champs de Mars where a large number of my displaced countrymen have been living since the earthquake struck on January 12. On this rather cold Tuesday morning, 19 participants — mostly pediatricians, a few nurses and even an anesthesiologist — have gathered to hear what Griff Samples’ (our psycho-social super-hero) team has prepared for them.

For the first time, I’m learning about the four pillars of human existence: people, places, routines and traditions. Clearly these are all concepts we are familiar with, factors we deal with daily.

Today, our Comfort for Kids trainers are using these factors in an interesting metaphor: imagine these pillars as four legs holding up the table of life. If this is the case, on January 12, the table of Haitian life collapsed and the four pillars of our existence were shaken to their core. The people, places, routines and rituals that made life-life have been thrown up in the air — and picking up the pieces among the debris has turned out to be a challenging process for many.

I was in Pétion Ville on January 12, and although my family and I are extremely blessed to be alive and well, somehow we are all still traumatized by the whole experience. My mom was under the rubble of her massive three-story office building in Delmas where she has worked for 35 years — PLACES. She finally found an exit point after digging through for two hours without the help of rescuers.

She’s since been evacuated outside the country for medical care and rehabilitation — PEOPLE. My dad is doing OK but is a little bit of a mess without her by his side. He is also physically exhausted as he hasn’t slept in a proper bed for more then one night at a time since the 12th — ROUTINES.

My brother has had to postpone his wedding until further notice — TRADITIONS. Our normal day-to-day lives have been rocked and changed forever…and that’s just my family’s story. Like I said, we are part of the fortunate ones.

I see the trauma everywhere I go, in my own friends who still can’t manage to sleep inside their homes, in their children, in my colleagues who ask about exit drills in case of aftershocks. Truly, anyone who was in Haiti on January 12 has been and still is affected by this catastrophe.

Psycho-social programs such as Mercy Corps’ Comfort for Kids train parents, teachers, caregivers, doctors and other medical staff to understand normal reactions to crisis for adults and children of all ages. Participants also learn how to support children more effectively and how to answer their questions with age-appropriate honesty. Programs like these are crucial to the rehabilitation of our nation, our people, and most importantly the innocent children who will inherit this land.

I came to this training to observe, photograph and document, but even I am walking away with something else: a bigger picture, an objective perspective of what happened to me and millions of my fellow Haitians on January 12th, 2010.

Let the healing begin.”

Thank you to the children of Plymouth

2010-03-10T21:06:00.001-05:00

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about some amazing children at a school in Plymouth: at an age when most of us thought of nothing beyond our friends, our families and our school, these wonderful children had decided to raise money for the people of Haiti. I was massively touched by their gesture, and so were all the people in Haiti who heard the story.

Today I can update that story to show some of the Shelter Boxes their money raised, now delivered and in use here in Haiti.

If those children are reading this, a huge thank you from Haiti, and all of you, your teachers and your parents really should be very proud of what you have done.

Nine weeks in – what happens next

2010-03-09T19:24:00.001-05:00

Week 9 post-earthquake: Mercy Corps, like our partners and peers, has been focused on emergency response. We’ve been busy with distributions, Comfort for Kids, water and sanitation provision, and more.

But what should we do now that contributes to long-term recovery? The context is challenging at best. Consider these statistics:

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere
It is ranked 146th out of 177 countries in terms of human development
80 percent of Haiti's people live in abject poverty
Unemployment here is somewhere between 70 and 80 percent
Literacy is only 62 percent
About 96 percent of the land is deforested and its soils and slopes eroding — which makes it more vulnerable to hurricanes and other storms

Then, of course, there's the impact of the earthquake. There’s a lot to do and time is pressing before problems become entrenched. And so the Mercy Corps Haiti team took a pause last Sunday to prioritize focus and direction, to consolidate thinking and strategy. Programme managers who'd helped direct emergency responses in places like Darfur, Iraq , Indonesia's Aceh Province and Sri Lanka shared their experience in moving from disaster to long-term recovery.

The strategy that arose — which reflects what we've been planning since shortly after the earthquake — is that we’re going to roll out a recovery strategy based on job creation through urban regeneration and resilience, rural infrastructure development, and business development focused through small and medium enterprises. All of these things are interlinked and will integrate issues surrounding youth, education and vocational training, environmental responsibility and disaster risk reduction (DRR).

It's a complex but complementary strategy to address a wide range of challenges, many of which existed well before the earthquake struck.

In the short-term, we’ll still need to focus on emergency recovery, but we want to start targeting activities in ways that will blossom into long-term revitalization. In rural areas — where we're focusing on places hosting displaced people from earthquake-shattered cities — this will likely include working on improving feeder roads to help deliver produce to markets; improving irrigation; and recovering degraded land for tree planting for cash crops and fuel wood.

In urban areas, we’re looking at DRR measures in anticipation of coming rains and the hurricane season; waste management measures — particularly those focusing on income generation such as organic waste composting; and critical upgrades to water and sanitation service delivery.

For the long-term — through approaches including small business development, community associations, microfinance and related services — we intend to build on current activities to create sustainable jobs in agricultural markets and urban recovery.

In a post-disaster environment clear goals are needed, but plans need to flexible to make sure we achieve them on a road that’s bound to be full of surprises. We have those goals now, and hope to be on the road to achieving them.

Security concerns

2010-03-09T00:35:00.001-05:00

Although we are heavily focused on achieving our humanitarian goals in Haiti, the entire NGO community takes the security of our staff very seriously, and we do all we can to minimise those risks whether to expatriate or national staff.

At the moment the situation in Port au Prince is quite volatile – there has been persistent unrest in various areas of the city, a UN aid convoy was attacked and some vehicles ransacked a little further North near to Gonaives, on Saturday a distribution in Tabarre (a poor area of Port au Prince) ended in a near riot – despite the presence of UN troops - and the forced rapid withdrawal of NGO staff and abandonment of the remaining distribution goods to the crowd, and then Saturday night this all culminated in the kidnap of two NGO workers in Petionville. They are still not safely returned and negotiations continue, but all our thoughts are with them at this time, and will be until they are safely released. The international NGO community is close knit, many people have met each other before in countries stricken by famine, drought war or other disaster, and we all want to see our colleagues released safely. And we all know if we are not vigilant it could be us next.

We have of course thoroughly reviewed our own security arrangements and are doing everything we can to reassure our staff and still maintain our role of providing aid and succour to those most in need.

Hopefully the situation will calm down in the coming days but with US troops now leaving the island the security situation is likely to deteriorate before it gets better. We have good procedures in place and experienced staff, but it is still a tense situation.

How an aid distribution should work – and how things can go wrong…….

2010-03-09T00:28:00.001-05:00

On Saturday we ran a medium sized distribution in an area of Port au Prince called Tabarre. It’s home to a sizeable number of people who have lost their homes & livelihoods, but also has a reputation for being the home area of a number of the local criminal element – some of those who escaped from jail during the earthquake. The distribution itself was of hygiene equipment – soap, laundry materials, cleaning brushes etc. Not the sort of thing to inspire trouble you would think………but then during the uncertain days we are experiencing in Haiti right now,it can flare at any time.

For those who have never seen an aid distribution, let me explain briefly how it normally works. When aid is to be distributed, we ascertain the quantities available and how it is to be divided up into parcels, and who are the target recipients. This varies according to the different donors, who set differing priorities. Not all households have the same needs, so of course they receive differing support from NGOs. Once this strategy has been decided, work goes on to prepare aid packages for the lucky recipients, and to plan logistics of ensuring they are delivered to the appointed distribution site. This work includes close liaison with security – both our own and the UN – to ensure it is planned carefully, and that a proper security plan is in place in case of problems. This includes a secure alternative exit route. At the same time NGO staff meet with community leaders and together we work through lists to identify those eligible for the distribution and to rank them in order of need. Normally we then distribute coupons to the recipients, so that they can be identified when they come for their aid. On the appointed day an orderly line forms and people come forward with their coupons, their identities are verified and they take away their aid parcel.

On Saturday we had one major problem. The community leader in the local mairie had decided to take a short-cut in distributing the coupons. Instead of carefully giving them to the selected people, they basically threw the coupons into the crowd like confetti, with the effect that many in possession of coupons really should have been nowhere in sight on Saturday morning. This was compounded in our case by the UN commander present not really understanding his role or the process (despite numerous explanations!) and letting this happen. So on Saturday morning we were faced with a line roughly 5 times the number of people who should have been recipients – made up of genuine claimants, individuals who had grabbed a coupon in the melee the evening before, and a good many who simply wanted to get what they could and enjoy the show. Once we realised the mairie’s error in distributing the coupons we rapidly remodelled our operation. The crowd was milling and surging and the UN troops pushed them into a line, although not without much muttering and discontent. We went back to our original list and decided to distribute against that, not the coupons. This was now going to be a much slower exercise. As people came forward, ID was verified and if they were on a list they received aid, and if not they were advised that they would receive nothing that day. It’s hard to be the one passing such messages, because many are simply desperate people eager for anything to alleviate the grind of their situation in some way, but we cannot simply give everyone everything they ask for at all times. We don’t have the resources! Anyway, the crowd was still surging and we were moving through the distribution, but it was apparent that many were being turned away, and the tension in the crowd rose higher. Slowly we edged through our lists and reached a point where we had distributed around 90% of our material to the correct recipients – and then the reality dawned on the remainder that they would leave empty handed. The remaining crowd – still around 4,000 people – surged forward towards the distribution site. The UN troops looked to their officer for guidance, their officer didn’t act and soon we had a major crowd rapidly getting out of control. Luckily we have several very experienced people on our team and we rapidly got the more vulnerable targets (mainly women and inexperienced staff) out of the picture and into vehicles, whilst more experienced hands waded into the crowd and engaged them, buying valuable time. At this point a megaphone rose above the crowd, the UN officer telling us all that he was going to determine himself who would get any aid: the crowd bayed in derision and surged again, this time moving from having fun and seeing what they could get into a mood of sullen anger. Luckily the UN officer’s sergeant removed him rapidly – almost physically putting him in a vehicle and moving off – before he could inflame things further. We got the last of our staff into vehicles, the more experienced of us backing up slowly and calmly (well outwardly calmly anyway!) to allow them time, and then into vehicles ourselves. The last remaining aid was soon snaffled by the crowd as we made an inglorious departure.

It’s not often that things like this go wrong – most armies these days are very used to their role in such environments and some are excellent at it, and work well with their NGO counterparts. However, small things can rapidly lead matters to spiral out of control: a lazy official from the mairie, an inexperienced UN officer overseeing order. Ultimately no one got hurt apart from a few bruises and some shredded nerves, but without the experience of a handful of NGO workers things could have been very ugly indeed.

One NGO worker from another agency was with us – a new arrival in country begging a lift from the airport and caught up in this. From the look on her face afterwards she may soon be an imminent departure – such days are not for the faint-hearted!

Pictures from Port au Prince – the scale of the devastation

2010-03-05T17:15:00.001-05:00

These pictures give some sense of the scale of the devastation which has hit Port au Prince. Not all were taken on the same day, but they do give a very real impression of how large the devastation is in the formerly crowded centre of the city

It’s also appropriate to include some statistics on the scale of the damage:

Latest reports are now very close to 300,000 confirmed dead
300,000 seriously injured
Over 1,000,000 homeless
A diaspora of at least 500,000 into the areas outside Port au Prince, where there is no housing, no medical support and no jobs
So far over 70 aftershocks above 4.5 on the Richter scale

On every level Haiti has been destroyed by the earthquake, and we really need all the support we can get from the international community to resolve this

Moving to the country…….

2010-03-03T22:23:00.001-05:00

One big problem facing Haiti is that for generations people have moved from the countryside to Port au Prince in search of jobs for themselves and education for their children. It has rarely worked, the public schools are massively underfunded and there are few jobs, leaving many still enmeshed in poverty. It’s still worse in many rural areas and in the few towns of any size outside Port au Prince.

All of which makes the government’s hope of persuading the Haitians who fled the capital to remain in their new temporary homes a challenging task. The key to this has to be providing a combination of the well paid work they desire for themselves, decent housing and access to a level of education and medical services not often experienced in Haiti.

Mercy Corps is working with the Prime Minister of Haiti, Jean-Max Bellerive, to try and address this conundrum. Our vision is to provide sustainable and affordable housing for the people of Haiti, and to help develop opportunities for work and education in the vicinity of these new communities. We are looking into design utilising the containers which brought in aid recently, with good sanitation, cooking facilities etc, as well as on site medical centres and schools within easy distance. To go alongside this Mercy Corps is developing programmes to stimulate economic growth, creating jobs and opportunity. This would be a huge step for Haiti.

But I would like to see this go further. If we can resolve the issue of land titles and give Haitians ownership of their own homes, they can then in turn use them as collateral to raise credit from banks, to develop small businesses and invest further in the economy of their own country. I’ve no idea as yet how to solve the conundrum but the vision is compelling to me. And if we can find the right answers to the questions raised then one day soon Haiti may have some new towns…….

A pathway to the future for Haiti……

2010-03-02T19:33:00.001-05:00

In the devastated but proud neighbourhoods of Port-au-Prince, thousands of people have organized into local committees to help manage, guide and pitch in for what needs to be done in their communities. They have become Mercy Corps' partners in the critical work of recovery and rebuilding – and the best partners we can have because they have a real stake in the future of their communities. In several places, the work includes building community latrines, installing supply tanks and — most importantly — creating a drainage plan and digging ditches to prevent flooding during the oncoming rainy season. This will be a key to minimising the spread of disease.

Rubble remains, but the pulse of life in Haiti's capital is quickening. Our cash-for-work programs are helping hard-working people restore beauty and order to their communities, while earning money to buy food for their families. This in turn helps put cash in the pockets of industrious food sellers in hundreds of food stalls. And so a day’s honest toil benefits many more people than just the one with the shovel — it helps to restore dignity to thousands of earthquake survivors.

These are the stories of just three such people:

Adrèna Marc, 26, lives in the Impasse Corail tent camp. She and her extended family ran a small shop on a side street and lived above the shop. When the earthquake hit, Adrèna was in a different area visiting friends. She immediately thought of her family and her home and ran for 20 minutes through the crowded streets to get back home. Her home collapsed and only the first floor room that housed the shop remains intact, although no engineers or officials have been out to check that it is structurally sound. When the house fell down, three of her cousins were inside and were injured but, fortunately, all of them survived. Adrèna is now employed by Mercy Corps' cash-for-work program, and says that if she can save up enough money, she will try to reopen her store

Carl Robert is nine years old and lives in the Impasse Corail tent camp with his parents. He has no brothers or sisters, but plays with the other kids in the camp. He told me that a friend had taught him how to fly a kite and they had made a new one together out of string and a torn plastic bag. Our Comfort for Kids program is helping children like Carl recover from the trauma of the earthquake so they can resume childhood pursuits like flying kites with friends.

Quindra Céléstin, 28, was fortunate to escape her home when another house fell on it. Although she got out, she was not able to pull out any of her possessions. So today, she has only a small stove and a bucket in the tent where she's living. At night, she lays out a bed sheet on the gravel so she and her eight-year-old daughter can sleep on the ground. Mercy Corps' cash-for-work program is helping her cope for now, while making money for a day when they will have a roof over their heads once again.

Helping rebuild Haiti is not just about helping nameless people as a mass – it’s about helping communities, and helping individuals. Adrèna & Quindra are proud to be able to work to provide for their families – Carl is recovering and enjoying his new friends. Haiti’s infrastructure may be fractured but her pride & her soul are still intact.

Floods in Haiti

2010-02-28T02:04:00.001-05:00

We’ve had torrential rain all afternoon and this evening in Haiti, and this has caused serious flooding in some areas. The worst affected seems to be the south of the country, around Les Cayes where at least 8 people are reported killed by floods over 5ft deep.

SO many people are vulnerable as over a million people are still homeless. Witnesses said some homes had collapsed and people were fleeing for safer areas.

Worryingly the rainy season has not yet officially started, and it seems that Haiti’s long suffering people are set for further problems in the days to come.

Chile Earthquake

2010-02-27T15:15:00.001-05:00

Sadly there’s been another major earthquake – this time in Chile.

The quake, rating 8.8 on the scale, has killed at least 147 people and caused immense structural damage.

picture from BBC website

One things which has struck me though is the huge difference in loss of life compared to the earthquake which hit Haiti on January 12th. Geography has some part in this for sure, but perhaps the greatest difference comes from the fact that Haiti has suffered with minimal construction standards accepted as normal, and poor quality control. Effectively, over 200,000 people died in Haiti who would probably have survived in Chile.

It’s a sobering thought.

Protecting survivors from the rain

2010-02-26T21:15:00.001-05:00

Last Thursday in the early morning hours it rained heavily here in Port-au-Prince. I slept right through it, but later when in conversation with a local Mercy Corps staff member, she told me the rain woke her up. “My heart fell at the sound of it”, she said. She knew the rain meant serious problems for many of the earthquake survivors who still lack adequate shelter from the rain.

That same Mercy Corps distributed plastic sheeting in the Truitier neighborhood in Tabarre to protect families from the rain. This week we went back to Truitier to revisit people who had set up their sheets. Amongst others We spoke with 28 year-old Marie Ginette Fils Aimee. Marie Ginette, a certified nurse, watched her house crumble following the earthquake. Now she’s participating in Mercy Corps’ cash-for-work program, and as a participant she automatically received one of the plastic sheets. Photo: Miguel Samper for Mercy Corps

Marie Ginette, a certified nurse, watched her house crumble following the earthquake. Now she’s participating in Mercy Corps’ cash-for-work program, and as a participant she automatically received one of the plastic sheets.

Marie Ginette and her good friend Darline, also a cash-for-work participant and plastic sheeting recipient, collaborated together and set up their houses directly next to each other, sharing one support wall. With the help of her brother and father, Marie Ginette was able to get her sheet up in one day. She says there is great comfort in knowing that her family, including her mother, father, and brother, can now sleep under the sheeting and will be sheltered from the rain.

Most of us are fortunate enough to be able to take shelter and a dry bed for the night for granted. Spare a thought for the many people in Haiti suddenly left homeless through no fault of their own.

How we’ll help transform Haiti

2010-02-25T20:50:00.001-05:00

Today I wanted to share the thoughts of my boss here in Haiti, Bill Holbrook. Bill is an outstanding choice to be Mercy Corps Country Director – he has worked in Haiti for over six years previously, and his wife is Haitian. His love of the country motivates him, and his tremendous experience and key contacts across Haiti make him ideally suited to lead is a major long term commitment from Mercy Corps.

Bill Holbrook examines some of the damage in Port au Prince shortly after January 12. Photo Cassandra Nelson for Mercy Corps

“In the late afternoon of January 12, 2010, Haiti had a heart attack when an earthquake struck Port-au-Prince — the country’s political, cultural and financial capital.

It’s a devastating piece of history for Haiti, a place that had already suffered more than 200 years of governments that not only failed to serve the Haitian people, but also exploited them. Exploited the land. Drove more than eight million people into abject poverty.

Haiti was as close to a failed state as a country could possibly be. It was a disaster even before this disaster. Very few here would argue against that.

But the world has also failed Haiti. Many of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful countries have also exploited the country and its people. Too often, our leaders have either backed corrupt and dangerous Haitian governments, or else ignored the plight of the country — and its people — altogether.

Today, of course the world is focused on Haiti as never before. But there will soon come a time when the reporters leave, the cameras switch off and the headlines fade. And, when that time comes, we will not only stay to help the Haitian people, but we will work harder than ever.

I am personally committed to helping Haiti. My own ties to this country run deep. My wife is Haitian, and my in-laws are dealing with the chaos, uncertainty and shock of the earthquake’s aftermath. Many of our friends have lost nearly everything and are dealing with profound grief.

I’ve lived in Haiti for six years of my life — including more than four years managing humanitarian assistance and development programs. I care deeply about Haiti and its people. You can’t help but love the people here. And, as Mercy Corps’ country director here, I want to do anything I can to help them.

Mercy Corps, working alongside local partners and colleague agencies, is committed to helping Haitian families and communities not only emerge from the rubble and rebuild their homes, but also rebuild their country. In the long term, we will accomplish this through thoughtful and well-planned economic development programs.

The Haitian economy was already in a shambles before last month’s earthquake: at least 54 percent of the population lived on less than a dollar a day. The unemployment rate was crippling, somewhere between 70 and 80 percent.

Yet Haiti’s economic situation is even more desperate and disastrous than these staggering numbers imply: the vast majority of Haitians are not only unemployed, but also unemployable. Decades of corruption and exploitation have left most Haitians without marketable job skills, unable to fill good-paying, technical jobs even if they were available.

Mercy Corps is launching job skills training as part of our long-term economic recovery and development programs. We will help Haitian communities build a skilled workforce that can perform and lift families out of poverty. By investing in small and medium enterprises across key business sectors, we will create lasting, meaningful, good-paying jobs all over the country.

The key to transforming Haiti’s economy — and therefore the future of its people — depends not only on creating opportunities in Port-au-Prince, but also in other cities and rural areas. At last count, at least 236,000 people fled the capital in the aftermath of the earthquake. They will need jobs, too.

The history of Haiti has largely been a history of neglect. This time, we can’t let that happen. We have to prove that we’re not going away. We have to prove that, alongside the hard-working Haitian people, we’ll make something great happen.

This time, we’ll transform Haiti — together.”

An unscheduled school holiday

2010-02-24T22:08:00.001-05:00

The government of Haiti is trying to get it’s children back to school at the moment – and hitting problems. Not only are many children spread far & wide to escape their devastated homes, but the open areas around schools have become the site of many IDP camps where people are living at the moment. This means that the long term future of some of Haiti’s children is threatened further by the reduced opportunity for education – this little girl would rather be in school than living as she does today.

But she’s one of the lucky ones, at least her family has received shelter. These two young girls were less fortunate and appear to have been living without any real support since they lost their family. They have now been taken to shelter and fed properly.

The message seems clear – right now these children are facing a fight for their survival which must take priority. But at the same time if they do not manage to get their schools back open soon and begin to progress through their education, then their future may prove to be as bleak as their present.

Beauty amongst the dust

2010-02-24T21:51:00.001-05:00

Haitian art is justly famous for its vibrancy and often very original designs & motifs, rooted in the African part of many of it’s peoples but infused with a very real sense of Haiti’s own place in the world.

Jacques-Jean & Andre Francois are both artists, and have sold their own art for over ten years. Their shop was buried in the earthquake, and they both lost immediate family members. However they still have families to feed so they have rescued what they could from the devastation, and were open for business again less than two weeks after the earthquake first struck.

Another disturbed night

2010-02-23T21:55:00.002-05:00

At around 1.30 this morning another sizeable aftershock hit Port-au-Prince: according to the USGA it measured only 4.7 on the scale, but it was only around 10 miles offshore, so the effect was very noticeable in the city. Our guesthouse was immediately awake, and we switched off all electricity in case of gas leaks which might have caused a hazard, until we could evaluate in daylight. We were considering whether to move into a more open area (safe from falling buildings) when another shock hit around 10 minutes later. Three of my colleagues chose to move into tents in the garden of our guesthouse, I and another stayed in the house: I felt that if this building had withstood the initial earthquake and several aftershocks already (we had a thorough inspection before we moved in), it would be safe to remain.

Driving around this morning to make a very quick inspection it is clear that some additional damage has been done, but the building most vulnerable already collapsed in the initial wave, so most damage now was to buildings already compromised. The bigger worry is the mood of the people who are swinging between great fear and anger at the government, who are blamed for not achieving more to date. Of course miracles do not happen, and much has been achieved to date, but for people who have suffered so much the need to blame someone is huge. Yesterday there was a near riot when some US aid workers tried to take 6 Haitian children out of the country - legitimately and with papers signed by President Preval himself: the crowd went wild and assaulted the group, accusing them of stealing Haitian children. The children were kept "safely" by the Haitian government and the aid workers taken into protective custody, although released later. I understand they were able to leave today with the children, but the incident highlights the fragile peace which exists at present. During a meeting today one of our Haitian staff started screaming, panicked by the close passing of a very heavy truck. Perhaps not so surprising given all she has lived through.

How the internet has changed our response to emergencies

2010-02-23T18:46:00.002-05:00

The release of several fundraising singles (my own favourite is the Shane MacGowan/Nick Cave version of Screaming Jay Hawkins hit "I put a spell on you") to raise money for survivors of the Haiti earthquake has made me think about when poverty, hunger and the need for international humanitarian assistance really entered my consciousness.

When "Do they know it's Christmas Time (Feed the World!)" first came out 25 years ago to help alleviate famine in Ethiopia, I was a teenager in the UK, and if I'm honest, partly through my youth and lack of worldly experience, I didn’t know anything about suffering in other parts of the world. I helped out with occasional local charity events but generally the world of need was far away. It was not only far out of sight, it never came to mind.

Then came that song, and the accompanying images of starving Ethiopian children. In a pre-internet world these were truly shocking, and although I’ve since become a little more cynical of the "shock" approach to gaining public sympathy, it really struck me then. All of a sudden, I was not only seeing the people in need, but the world in which they lived. Tiny huts woven from sticks and straw. Landscapes of dust and withered grass. And children in the most appalling need.

I wonder how many other people were woken up to the plight of the world’s poorest with that song and those photographs. There have always been visionary humanitarians but for the rest of us, what are the events and circumstances that bring the hurting world to our attention?

Maybe it’s because, 25 years ago, we were governed by the limited worldview that newspapers and television gave us. And so, when crises like the Ethiopian famine faded from the airwaves and headlines, they largely disappeared from our consciences. But today, with the ubiquity of information that the Internet helps provide, we’re better able to choose what we read, connect with the people and places we most care about. And then, if we choose, to take action.

Or maybe this is just an era of greater consciousness. Maybe the world is truly a smaller, more intimate place and our fortunes more intertwined than ever before. I'd like to think so, but I am not always sure.

But then I hear of ex-colleagues back in the UK who've raised $10,000 for Haiti, I hear of children as young as 6 & 7 running a sponsored mile to raise funds for a country few had even heard of a few short weeks ago. And I wonder when did they make that connection?

I am of course each day grateful for the governments & adults around the world who are giving so generously to protect Haiti's present and preserve it's chances for the future, but the children really give me hope for the future and fill me with wonder.

It's both intrinsically sad and at the same time truly uplifting that children are already so aware of the world of need.

Payday!

2010-02-22T18:38:00.004-05:00

Last Friday was pay day. After putting in five days of work clearing debris and repairing basic infrastructure, 119 participants in Mercy Corps’ cash-for-work program here in Port-au-Prince patiently lined up at Impasse Dorcé and waited their turn to get paid.

Mercy Corps’ local microfinance partner, FONKOZE, helped with the money distribution. The 119 workers are divided into seven teams, each with a team leader, and they approached the FONKOZE staff one team at a time. The leader handed over a sheet of paper with all the team members’ names on it, and then one by one names were called out and the workers stepped forward.

Because many people lost their national ID cards in the earthquake, Mercy Corps distributes vouchers to the workers the day before as a way of keeping track of who is being paid. The vouchers look a bit like a credit card and have a unique number that corresponds to each worker. They also have a small hologram on them to prevent replication. The worker hands in this voucher, sign their name and then they are handed an envelope with their money.

The workers are paid 180 Gourdes, or roughly US $4.50, a day. This figure is the standard minimum wage set by the Haitian government.

Admittedly this doesn't sound like very much, but it seems important to let people have the dignity of earning a living rather than simply accepting hand outs. We will be extending the project in much larger scale outwards and beyond Port-au-Prince in the coming months.

Aftershock.......

2010-02-22T08:49:00.003-05:00

Well the honeymoon in our new office & staff accommodation didn't last too long.

This morning we were woken early by an aftershock - really another small earthquake which was reported as being 4.7. Not too sure at what point these stop being "aftershocks" and become classified independently.....any seismologists out there able to shed light on this?

One consequence of the shake has been a disruption to our water supply in one guest house. Not a major problem when so many are without water at all in this city, but it underlined for me just how fragile these things can be and how soon they can disappear.

More worryingly, the many thousands still living rough are naturally frightened by any further seismic activity. There was palpable unrest as we came to work this morning, although I'm sure it will soon settle down again.

Some of the IDP camps in other areas are more unsettled still - there are reports of gang attacks, violent muggings and at least one gang rape - and in counterpart there have been a few lynchings of suspected criminals. People are on edge and that always means things could flare up at any time.

Home sweet home!

2010-02-21T23:44:00.003-05:00

It's been a frantically busy last few days, with all the team working long hours. However it's paid dividends and this weekend we've moved into new offices (with our own generator to provide electricity and a newly installed internet connection). It needs some work doing before it's finalised but well on the way. To complete a good couple of days for the team on a personal level, we've now secured leases on two guesthouses, so that all of us will be living under solid roofs. A far cry from the first days of the emergency when the first arrivals camped out on the streets. I must admit it feels a little strange being in housing when so many are not, but the reality is quite simply that with Mercy Corps and other NGO staff working 15 hour days plus, we do need to make sure the team are fit enough to do this for a long time to come - and if they were sleeping rough it would be harder.

We've also been continuing work at the weekend on our programme activities - more WATSAN work, planning a major distribution for early this week of non-food aid for families (tarpaulins, kitchen equipment, bedding etc), and a big focus on recruiting local staff to help us in our work. With so many NGOs now active in Haiti good staff are in short supply, and so they are able to demand a premium. Those few young Haitians with strong experience, who also speak good English & French in addition to Creole can earn as much or more as for similar positions in the US. It's amazing to me how such a post-disaster situation can so massively distort the economy, but of course most such people share their good fortune with an extended family

Comfort for Kids

2010-02-18T22:45:00.003-05:00

This is only a very short piece, and I hope to be able to add more images very soon. Today I watched a clip from one of Mercy Corps "Comfort for Kids" programmes, which has now been uploaded onto youtube. In many ways it's a very normal clip - just a group of happy, seemingly carefree children, enjoying an experience together and clearly having a great time. For me the wonderful thing is that these kids have all gone through dreadful experiences, seeing their whole world turned upside down, losing family, friends and homes, and all of this just a few short weeks ago. It's a great testament to the human spirit that these kids are bouncing back, and Comfort for Kids is a wonderful programme that helps the healing process.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmopMUt3thc

Thanks to Miguel Samper / Mercy Corps for the clip.

Economic recovery - how we hope to help

2010-02-18T20:31:00.003-05:00

My previous post about the remarkable Joseph Moise made me realise that the Cash-for-Work concept may not be clear to all. So I thought I'd try and explain it.

Cash-for-work (c4w) has a variety of definitions ranging from cash provided for work during an emergency instead of goods to badly affected people, to income earned for irregular employment. In Haiti as part of the earthquake response, Mercy Corps is using c4w to provide income to those most in need through employment for labour intensive and important tasks like rubble cleanup and recovering useful material from the devastation. The assumption is that c4w could be an intensively used short-term programming tool to get communities back on their feet, by providing a cash injection, and allowing people to work rather than become dependent on aid.
There is of course a risk that over-usage of this approach could pervert the labour market, and MC needs to monitor its usage carefully to ensure this is not the case, and to move away from this when it is not longer appropriate.

Although useful in the short term, c4w has a limited value as a tool in emergency programming. Instead, once past the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, short-term but labour intensive needs are required, labour will hired at locally acceptable rates and recompensed based on performance. Longer term, a better contribution to the Haitian economy will come from supporting agricultural and small business projects, although we need to look to ensure that unless there is immediate and critical need Mercy Corps avoids provision of fishing boats a\or farming machinery unless it contributes to an equitable distribution of revenue with an improved market chain with increased efficiency. These are early days in this policy, and given the need for correction of past assumptions, will remain flexible and open to change.

Basically we want to encourage the Haitian people to once more stand proudly on their own two feet, and to equip them to do so. Right now, whilst longer term funding and planning is secured, c4w allows money to circulate and essential works to be completed - but in the coming months it is more important that Haiti is allowed to develop into a more broad-based economy, not one distorted by the short term imperatives of providing food and shelter.

Haiti's answer to Mr Bean!

2010-02-18T20:19:00.003-05:00

This is Joseph Moїse. He’s 34 years old and a native of Pétionville, just near to where Mercy Corps new office will be from the weekend . Before the earthquake he was a teacher and now he participates in a cash-for-work programme with Mercy Corps — but what he really wants to do is make a movie.

One of my Mercy Corps colleagues named Rinn Self met Joseph today in a displacement camp and Mercy Corps work site called Impasse Corail. He quickly volunteered to speak with the team and let Miguel, our photographer, take some pictures. He told MC that, before the earthquake, he lived on the second floor of a house nearby — a house that completely collapsed when the quake struck.

He and his extended family escaped the crumbling building and are now living in temporary shelter in the Impasse Corail camp. When Rinn & Miguel came along, he was in the process of rebuilding his tent with the plastic sheeting Mercy Corps had delivered earlier in the week.

During the day, Joseph and his neighbors in the camp are part of a work crew — removing rubble, clearing out drainage ditches and earning a daily wage from Mercy Corps. When asked what he planned to do with his wages, he said his first priority was taking care of the woman in his life: his mother. Rinn asked if he planned to return to teaching when he gets back on his feet and his school reopens.

That was when he really opened up.

He enjoyed teaching — the classes he taught were an unusual combination of physical education and penmanship — but what he really wants to do, he told Rinn, is to make a film. What kind of film? A documentary perhaps? A moving story about his community’s struggle in the weeks after the earthquake?

No — a comedy. “You know Mr. Bean?” he asked. “That’s like what I’m making. But funnier! I’m much funnier than Mr. Bean,” he assured Rinn & Miguel seriously.

Joseph took them up the steep hillside to show them his new tent site and the huge bamboo poles he would use to hold up the plastic sheeting. The bamboo grows just a few hundred feet away from the camp.

“It’s amazing that after all this, the earth still gives back,” he said. As he gathered up the poles, he showed off the new work gloves he’d been given when he started the cash-for-work job. He is deliberate and serious as he describes his plans and cuts the support polls for his tent.

But he’s also written his stage name in marker on both gloves.

He’s ready to give back — through the heavy lifting required to rebuild his neighborhood and the longer-term need for some comedy to lift its spirits.

Thanks to Rinn Self for many of the words and Miguel Samper for Mercy Corps for use of the photo

Signs of hope

2010-02-16T23:05:00.002-05:00

It's easy to focus on the negative in the midst of such chaos, when so many are dead, and the survivors are suffering hardship. Yet in spite of all that has happened, the streets of Port au Prince are not sombre, but are in fact lively. Small market stalls sell fruit & vegetables from the countryside, or whatever they have to sell - clothing or kitchen equipment. The walls still standing are often covered with fragrant bougainvillea, young couples walk hand in hand, engrossed in each other. Children run and play in the streets. Haitians are resilient people and they are fighting back from their awful experiences with dignity and humour. Many in our own pampered societies could learn much from their grace in such trying times. It's an honour to be able to help them.

Sanitation

2010-02-16T23:01:00.001-05:00

It's extraordinary to me how few people I spoke to about Haiti in the UK before I left, or on the plane to the US before reaching Haiti, have any clear grasp of the awful and back-breaking poverty which the people of Haiti endure. Even before this latest disaster struck many of them lived without running water or electricity, or without regular access to medical assistance or education. Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere, yet there are many countries even more poor scattered across Africa.

Perhaps the worst problem caused by this horrendous poverty, and about to be exacerbated by the consequences of the earthquake, is the community-wide susceptibility to disease. With poverty comes poor nourishment, as so many scrape a meagre existence on the little they have or can get from aid agencies. This means that when disease strikes immunity is low and the physical strength to fight the ravages of diseases such as malaria and dengue is simply not there. Which is why the impending rainy season in Haiti is such a frightening prospect. Hundreds of thousands of people, already weakened by years of poor nourishment, reduced to homelessness and a minimal level of food for several weeks in a world suddenly shorn of what little sanitation had been present previously. There is a massive effort underway to provide adequate public sanitation but the scale of the task is immense. Combine this with the fact that there are still bodies as yet unrecovered in the rubble of this once vibrant city, and the combination of rainy season and tropical heat turns Port au Prince into a giant petri dish where diseases such as cholera and typhoid can flourish. Malaria & dengue will find more victims than usual this year, and the net effect is that Haiti is facing a public health catastrophe on a massive scale.

Simple humanity has led many individuals around the world to donate generously to Haiti, and brought many governments to open their treasuries to help, despite the economic problems confronting the world. We need to ensure that the money raised is spent quickly, spent wisely, and spent effectively if we are to minimise the consequence of this impending public health catastrophe. MercyCorps are about to start a push to provide clean water and latrines for around 45-50,000 people, and other NGOs are doing similar work in other sectors, but the urgency can hardly be overstated. Good sanitation saves lives.

Children

2010-02-15T22:42:00.004-05:00

In any humanitarian emergency it is always the most vulnerable of all - the children - who suffer the most. Sadly, there are those out there who would exploit even this appalling human tragedy, and seek to traffic in children already traumatised beyond belief by their experiences. Fortunately such people are few in number, but there are many more who would act with good intentions but a naive understanding of the situation: the world press has reported in recent days on the US church group who were caught taking a busload of Haitian children out of the country. I believe these people were acting from genuine intent and desired only to help, but it cannot possibly help these children - even those who were genuine orphans - to be taken so far from their communities at such a time. There are several excellent NGOs working specifically with children active in Haiti - Save the Children for example - who have real expertise in helping children through such circumstances. It is better to allow professionals to deal with these issues than to dive in and make matters worse.
One of the reasons I chose to work for Mercy Corps was their excellent record in this area - they have a fantastic programme called Comfort for Kids, which originated in the US in the aftermath of 9/11 but has been used in Peru & China following earthquakes there. Mercy Corps recently announced a partnership with Haiti's First Lady, Elisabeth Delacourt Préval, to implement Comfort for Kids trainings for adult caregivers. The First Lady and UNICEF will organize “safe spaces” in camps to run arts, sports and music activities for children, while Mercy Corps will run simultaneous sessions — in French and Creole — to educate parents and caregivers about child symptoms of trauma and how they can be addressed. If you want to help the children of Haiti I would urge anyone to support this or similar programmes, rather than seeking to take children away from all they know. I hope to be able to tell you more about this programme in the coming weeks. The image for this piece is from a Mercy Corps colleague, Cassandra Nelson

Logistics & propaganda

2010-02-15T22:28:00.002-05:00

I was reading an American newspaper on the way across here - it was praising America's response to the earthquake and the way they took control of the logistics immediately in the aftermath. This struck me as entirely at odds with the view presented in many European newspapers and on the international news (BBC, Al-Jazeera etc) which suggested that the US did take control of logistics, but then blocked some urgently needed supplies in favour of their own requirements. The most damning of these reports came from the Medecins sans Frontiers team, who could not bring in urgently needed equipment in the first days and were instead reduced to buying hacksaw blades in the market place to be able to conduct essential and life-saving operations such as amputations. It seems almost as if the two organisations (MSF & the US military) were focusing on scoring points from each other through their public utterances, which seems to me to be a sad waste of the genuine goodwill each has brought to the crisis.
Clearly the two stories don't match up completely, and it does seem that those who have been running logistics have at times made poor decisions: however, given the chaotic nature of Port au Prince in the first days after the earthquake, it cannot have been easy to plan well or meet all needs. As the official government of Haiti was seemingly all but invisible at times, it is probably a good thing that the US did step in, or the chaos may have been even worse. The important thing - and the heartening thing - is that now many aid agencies are on the ground, all seeking to work together effectively to help rebuild a society and a country that has had it's infrastructure shattered and devastated, even whilst its soul has remained intact. If the international community is to genuinely help Haiti recover, then all agencies here on the ground must work together effectively and without ego, agreeing priorities and linking as well as possible for the enormous task ahead.

POZ and fundraising back in the UK

2010-02-15T22:04:00.002-05:00

The organisation I was working for before I came to Haiti - HIV/Aids Alliance (based in Brighton, UK) - is an international organisation dedicated to the fight against HIV. Haiti has been ravaged by HIV in the past, and as a consequence HIV / Aids Alliance had an excellent working partnership in Port au Prince with a local NGO called Fondation Promoteurs Objectifs Zerosida (www.pozsida.org). POZ, as we call them for short, were particularly badly struck by this tragedy, losing 4 staff to the earthquake, and seeing their offices reduced to rubble. One thing which struck me was the response in the UK to the tragedy, many individuals willingly gave money to the Haiti appeals, many donated time & effort to help with fundraising. The picture attached to this blog is of a quilt made by various attendees at a workshop held in Port au Prince before the earthquake - the quilt itself is now buried under the rubble of the Centre d'Espoir, but the image of the quilt (thanks to Ken Morrison of HCP/Aids Alliance for use) was used to raise money in the UK. Last I heard this and other efforts just from the HIV Aids Alliance family in Brighton had raised approaching $10,000 for the families of those POZ employees who died and those who lost their homes. Until I make time to take some images myself this will be the face of this blog - and if you haven't given already, I would encourage you to look at the justgiving.com/poz site and donate whatever you can afford. Despite the horrors they have endured on a personal level, these wonderful people were within days open for business again, operating from tented offices and seeking still to provide support in all forms for those suffering from HIV & Aids within Haiti. They truly deserve all the support we can give them.

Les Belles Etoiles

2010-02-14T16:20:00.001-05:00

I have just accepted a new job in Haiti to help with the reconstruction effort after the huge and catastrophic earthquake which struck on 12th January 2010. It registered 7 on the Richter scale, by far the worst in nearly 200 years, and has been followed by many aftershocks. Around 3 million people have been affected across a country already blighted by misfortune for many years. As at 27th January according to President Rene Preval nearly 170,000 bodies have been recovered. This number is rising still, and for the estimated 1.2 million homeless there is little respite in sight. The devastated infrastructure & numerous bodies yet to be recovered are likely to lead to a major outbreak of disease in the near future. Some of the homeless are being moved into tented cities, but with a hurricane season expected in June the situation will be precarious for months to come.
So I am going to play my own small part in helping to bring some order to the chaos and some relief to this wounded land. I will be establishing the finance function for a major US based humanitarian NGO named Mercy Corps, based in Port au Prince.

So why the blog title? Why "Sous les belles etoiles"? In the days before I accepted the job I watched some TV coverage of the aftermath - a very ill young girl in hospital, one of the fortunate few to be treated and who was receiving only her second hot meal in nearly 3 weeks, after surviving on crackers. Her mother was simply grateful that her beloved daughter was alive and was being cared for. The journalist asked her about her own circumstances - what she would eat & where she would sleep: her response was simply - she had no food and like so many others she was now homeless. When the reporter pressed her on where she would sleep she smiled gently and said "Sous les belles etoiles". (for those who don't speak French this means "under the beautiful stars"). I was so touched by the simple dignity of this woman, and dumbstruck that in such harrowing circumstances she was able to discern beauty in the midst of the horror around her. For me this typifies the wonderful spirit of the Haitian people - they deserve far better than history has given them: they deserve a genuine, whole-hearted & sustained response from the international community. For me "sous les belles etoiles" celebrates this unbreakable spirit of survival and grace in the Haitian people