So the heavens have opened and all our systems are down as this storm rages over head. This is the first time it has rained in the middle of the day this season, which would suggest we are in for a very wet few months! It is nice being under proper roofing this year compared to the tents we were living in this time last year. It is quite incredible just how much water is produced from these downpours and another good reason why we have installed rainwater harvesting across our Uplands site.
I have just returned from a three day break in Turks & Caicos. It was the first opportunity I have had to explore Caribbean Islands other than Haiti – the contrast was inevitably extreme. Provo is like something out of the Truman Show, you are not convinced it is entirely real. Incredibly beautiful but also massively under-developed; there were large open spaces which had been snapped up by real estate groups but nothing then been built on them. What struck me most was how clean it was. The beaches were spotless – bar the seaweed! The ocean was an incredible turquoise blue; the kind you only imagine exists. Beautiful.
Haiti was once described as the pearl of the Antilles. There is so much potential for it to be beautiful, but it’s been scrapped, clawed at, and then shaken to rubble. There are certain stretches of the river bed in PaP which have become oceans of plastic. Waves upon waves of rubbish, you can’t quite believe your eyes. It has become a landmark – ‘the place where plastic goes to die’. Although it never actually does die, it gets burnt and the toxic fumes spread over the nearby market stalls and cramped camps. My friends and I were trying to figure out why is Haiti so different to other Caribbean islands – what is it that has meant the land is so degraded and the oceans, beaches and roads so littered with waste. There is a INGO hang out along the coast in Petit Goave called Tiano beach, it is relatively clean in comparison to the other stretches of coastline. But even there, local people eat food from their take away meal trays and toss the plastic into the ocean. I saw a man finish his bottle of beer and hurl it out into sea. When asked why they do it, they shrug and say well there is already so much rubbish … it is pretty disheartening. We are hoping to do some training on the environment and also try and introduce the concept of recycling. Waste management as a whole needs some serious donor funding if there is any chance of cleaning up the big cities.
So, it’s a Saturday evening in Leogane and life is carrying on as ‘normal’ here in Haiti. The pace of work has increased over the last month as we head towards the final quarter of our annual programme activities. It’s also proposal writing time where we try and source funding for the next project cycle from 1st August. Add onto this … the second round election results are being announced on Monday after being postponed from Thursday.
Having spoken to various Haitian colleagues, pretty much everyone has voted for Manigat, the ‘grandmother of Haiti’; once a First Lady, she is the credible choice for the role and would be a key player in the rebuilding of this Country. Her rival, Sweet Mickey, is a well known singer in Haiti, perhaps better known for his song lyrics and trouser dropping antics; there is a genuine belief that somehow, he will win the election. If Manigat wins, it is likely the Country will shut down due to rioting. So we will wait and see. (We seem to do that a lot in Haiti!)
This week for me was one of firsts. One of the schools we built in the remote Mountain area in Cormier was officially opened on Tuesday. I was asked to attend as a special guest (my boss was unable to attend). The inauguration actually turned into a ‘we love Tearfund’ three hour epic presentation. It’s always worrying when you arrive somewhere and there are three throne like chairs at the front and pews all around it … I had to sit in front of about 200 community members and be applauded and shake peoples hands for the entire morning. The deputy mayor was there and then there was me. The finale was a procession of dancing women with baskets of fruit and a live chicken on their heads. I was trying to imagine what the opening of a school in England would be like … I think the Haitian’s have got it nailed. I then had to make a speech … in stilted French and with lots of arm waving I think they got the general gist!
I was reflecting on the strange-ness of our current existence yesterday with a colleague … we agreed, it could never be described as boring! I wouldn’t trade this with my old job for a million years!
So here I am again. I realise this blog entry is painfully overdue … to summarise events since my last entry … em, cholera’s rapid spread across the whole Country; political rioting suspending our programme activities; getting trapped in our Mountain field site due to road blocks and manifestations … getting smuggled down in a banana truck … and then the whole team being pulled out of the Country a week early for Christmas.
So it was an eventful couple of months. BUT we are now all back and looking forward to the year ahead.
I am currently writing this from one of our log cabins up in our aforementioned Mountain field site. The temperature has dropped to almost goose-bump levels and I am inwardly cursing myself for wearing sandals and not bringing a nice woolly jumper.
Tomorrow is another big day in the Haitian election calendar, the final candidates for the second round of the presidential election are being announced. Last year the first round announcements led to a general frenzy of rioting and brought much of the urban spaces to a stand still. Good thing I brought spare clothes this time, at least I learn from my experiences 
So we will see what happens. We have so many things to do over the next few weeks and months, all of us are just hoping tomorrow goes well and the right people are put forward for the second phase of the election process. Fingers crossed!
Cholera. My blog entries seem to all be a bit serious at the moment. I think it fair to say this last week has had most of the team wondering if we are mad staying in Haiti. Over 11,000 cases of Cholera have now been reported, 2 confirmed cases today in Leogane. This epidemic is likely to be around for the next few years, it’s highly contagious and exacerbated by the unsanitary conditions most are living in.
A friend called me from a morgue this morning, the outlook is bleak. Hospitals are overflowing, people are being treated in the streets. ‘This thing is headed your way, you guys better get ready.’ Mmm not entirely sure what that actually means. It is inevitable, I think we all recognise it. But how on earth do you respond to an epidemic whilst also responding to an earthquake as well as the remanants of a hurricane? I am not sure how much one Country can take.
A colleague compared it to foot and mouth disease. The precautions being taken by agencies include buckets of chlorinated water at building entrances … reminiscent of parts of England several years ago.
The elections are coming up on the 28th November. We are making contingency plans upon contingency plans. Security levels are at an all time high, a UN report circulated this week shows record levels of violence and crimes in Port au Prince. We are expecting to have manifestations over the next six weeks. Most people are stocking up on emergency hibernation supplies.
Add into the mix two tremors this week within 48 hours of each other. One had staff running from the building before I even registered what was going on.
This Country feels like it is being shaken from head to toe.
So, Tomas. I think he is worthy of a blog entry. The most bizarre thing about this week is the length of lead in time we have had regarding his arrival. I found out about this tropical depression forming over the Caribbean back on Saturday. The amount of energy, contingency planning, endless trips securing construction sites and then the tonne of emails regarding Tomas have been astounding. On average I have had about three emails a day from the UN regarding the hurricane this week. Websites tracking his progress across the Atlantic have been shared and ogled over on an hourly basis.
Evacuation plans were put in place in case it ended up coming directly over us; we were to move with a much larger American agency into a state of the art hurricane shelter. (Didn’t happen – they went, we didn’t … we are a British organisation after all
The UN finally kicked into gear and tried to initiate a coordinated rapid response over the coming weekend – it was evident the pressure had been put on from on high to get on the ground straight after the storm and have detailed analysis. Trying to coordinate a 72 hour assessment of a mountainous region roughly the size of the New Forest, which had taken us two months to conduct an on foot house to house survey post earthquake, was laughable. Both my boss and I attended these meetings on consecutive days … I think both of us came out of them shaking our heads with incredulity, we had been given an impossible task and everyone knew it. It is a horrible feeling knowing you are being set up to fail. To add onto that, WFP requested we do an emergency food distribution in the same remote locations we work in. Access to this site is by a single mountain pass road which has landslides daily, with Tomas hitting, it would be impassable. We were willing and preparations have taken place the last couple of days in mobilising local communities to assist. But we have been told we need a list of beneficiary names prior to the distribution! There is clearly a complete lack of understanding of the region we are working in. People don’t live in a ‘town’ on the mountains; they are sprawled out across endless mountain ridges and remote locations which take hours on foot to reach. I think it fair to say we are all a little frustrated by the lack of understanding. It also highlights again why we happen to be the only agency working in some of these places … logistically it is a nightmare to get to!
Anyway, Tomas came … and he went. We got wet. That was about it. I am sure for those in lowland tented dwellings it was a thoroughly unpleasant event, however, it was not the nightmare it could have been. Thank God.
So now what … well we are all breathing a massive sigh of relief, and cracking open the vodka. Tomorrow, small assessment teams made up of local national staff will try and reach what places they can in their local community and identify what affect the rains had on their areas. We wait for MINUSTAH to clear the landslides which have taken place all along the single road up to Tom Gato and then we get back to work.
This week has been one of extremes and polar opposites. Right now I am lying on a deck chair by a pool in Port au Prince, summarising our hurricane contingency plan in preparation for Hurricane Tomas heading our way with alarming intensity. I have spent the last three hours ordering emergency supplies of soap, water purification tablets, chlorine, bin liners, rope … racking my brain trying to think of every last thing we may need.
I have been in Port au Prince for the last three days, I was in desperate need of a couple of days out of Leogane. General team dynamics and the pressures of work meant many of us were at the end of our coping limits. Four weeks in the field meant I arrived back exhausted and in need of a change of scene. So I was taken to the Latin Quarter … you need to try and picture the scene. On one side there is a major tent city built up on parkland in the middle of the city, directly opposite is an exclusive Latin nightclub which you enter by walking through high steel gates into an oasis of jazz music and rum induced hedonism. I stood at the bar just watching for about thirty minutes. How is this contrast possible? Women were wearing heels and posh frocks! I didn’t pack a single pair of ‘normal’ shoes, I don’t have a single item of clothing for a ‘night out on the town’. I just couldn’t register what I was seeing. But, that didn’t stop me from having an exorbitantly priced rum punch and a couple of cheeky cigarettes. Literally two days before I had been lying on a camp bed in a cabin at the top of the mountains, at our Tom Gato site. I had been awoken by the sounds of noisy children running around the camp site at the orphanage and I had used a bucket of freezing water to wash in.
It’s now a day later and I am back in Leogane, and it is hard to know what to be doing. Hurricane Tomas is now likely to hit Thursday or Friday so it literally is the calm before the storm. The panicked procurement yesterday seems to have been premature; there is gorgeous blue sky outside with not a single sign of rain. So now we wait.
So, I was kind of awake at about 6.10am this morning when an incredible rumbling noise started and my entire room began to shake. Initially I could not work out what was going on, I thought a giant truck had hit our house. Then it started to make sense, particularly when I could hear my colleague yelling for me to get out of the house!
There were general shouts and screams as we raced outside. The tremor had lasted no more than 10 secs but it was enough to leave all of us physically shocked. Our guard who had come screaming around to our guesthouse was visibly shaken and upset by the event and it was pretty sobering to see. Once the tremor ceased you could hear whoops of nervous laughter from the community all around – it was a close call. We all walked back into the house after a while and were left to reflect on our early morning wake up call. I found my hands were shaking for a good ten minutes after the tremor had ceased.
It left me thinking throughout the morning – that was 10 seconds, that’s it. On the 12th January it lasted over a minute. Enough to leave over a million people homeless and hundreds of thousands dead. The fear is never that far from the surface for many of our national colleagues. Many will opt to sleep outside tonight for fear of buildings collapsing on them.
Later in the day I was up in the Mountains, and the heavens opened – a relentless torrential downpour which halted our big community event for over 40 minutes. The rains caused significant landslides all along the main road back to Leogane, prompting UN troops to assist in clearing roads with diggers and trucks.
The vulnerability I saw today was startling. I probably should have been more aware of it but complacency sets in so quickly and things become familiar and normal. Today I realised these things are completely outside of our control, and nothing should be taken for granted.
Today I found out that Leogane (where I am currently residing) is the capital of voodoo not only in Haiti but also in the world. Interesting fact. I also found out that on the 1st & 2nd November there is a national holiday also known as ‘the night of the dead’. Excellent. Pretty great national holiday name I think! Although rather grim, I think the general idea is to go and hang out on the graves of your loved ones … but mixed in with that is some pretty ropey behaviour in the form of ritual sacrifice and body disection. Needless to say we have decided as a team to not leave the house for those couple of days!! Someone jokingly said at a meeting today that they have a donor visit from Japan over those two days and they were pretty happy to let it go ahead…ha ha. (We all love donors really!)
On an entirely different note, I heard about the death of my old car today. My brother got in a bit of a car sandwich on the M3 and poor old Clio is no more. (My bro is fine which is a relief). But my Clio and I have been through some interesting times together and I have to say, I am a little sad. I was also known as the ‘Clio killer’ in my family because it had a tendancy to keel over on me regularly … I feel slightly vindicated in that I didn’t cause her eventual death. I think I now hand that title over to my brother.
So I am back. I think it is a bit of a relief actually, Wales was hellish. Save the Children did a really good job of making it as ‘realistic’ as possible to the extent of feeding us dry rations and possibly (although not confirmed) releasing a nasty virus which laid us all out in the first week with diarrhoea and vomiting. Really nice when you are camping! The scenarios were pretty realistic, people got shot and fake blood spurted out everywhere; we had to escape ambushes in 4×4’s and then were woken at 2am with explosions around the tents. I think the facilitators loved it anyway! Some of them got a bit too over excited and actually threw a small grenade-like explosive which bounced off one of the participant’s backs! There was some nervous giggling after that!
So after all that, I managed to get a few days off in Dorset … walked along the Lulworth Cove path down to Durdle Door and now I am back in the Caribbean. It has all been a bit of a whirl wind.
Coming back after a month, I have to say there does seem to be some gradual improvements in Haiti. Some the collapsed buildings have been completely cleared, some new roads built … it is encouraging to see. And shelters are going up! It was so great to drive back to Leogane and start to see sturdy wooden shelters replacing torn tents. It’s been a slow, slow process but finally I think we are turning a corner.
There has just been one tropical storm so far, and it was Port au Prince which was largely affected. Every time we get a warning about a possible storm it does set your nerves on edge. The communities are still so vulnerable around us; there simply isn’t adequate shelter for them all. So keep on praying we will see out this year without any further natural disasters!
I had the joy of sitting in a THREE HOUR Shelter Cluster meeting today … the agony. To be fair, the mission lies in having to translate everything into both French and English. I really do admire these bilingual speakers, three hours of translation was a pretty impressive feat.
The pace of work still is relentless … I feel like I am starting from scratch all over again. I saw a bottle of wine though earlier today so I may now head back to the guesthouse and chill out.
The meeting on Monday went well. There were moments when it spilled over into frustrated rants in Creole, but on the whole we were able to find some common ground. The four men that met with us were local merchants, we are the main INGO on the road they all work on so we were their first point of call to ask for help. Their attempts at securing resources from local authorities had fallen on deaf ears and seven months on they were getting desperate. It wasn’t so much that we could give them anything specific but we listened and talked for nearly two hours and hopefully we can continue to engage with them as we conduct project activities in the area.
I am now getting ready to head back to the UK tomorrow. Not the best timing as I have only been here four weeks, but I am booked on the final phase of a course with Save the Children. It seems slightly ironic that I am trading living conditions in a post disaster environment with camping in Wales. Not sure which is worse?! The course is designed to create realistic scenario conditions of a post disaster zone … rumours are spreading that we have to live on plumpynut for two weeks but I am hoping that is a complete fabrication.
Signing off for a couple of weeks! Bye.
