MY FINAL POSTING FROM LEOGANE HAITI

WHAT IS REALLY POOR


1. Poor is when your daily work is as a human mule moving materials through town pulling a heavy cart that you have to rent because you don’t even have enough money to buy one.

2. Poor is having a stand on the sidewalk selling any little thing that you were able to buy for slightly less. Soaps, hair extensions, trinkets, sugar cane.

3. Poor is when you can’t even afford to ride in a tap-tap and so hitch ride hanging on to the tailgate of a truck full of sacks of rice. A tap-tap is a small pick-up with benches on the back with as many as 26 people seated and hanging on. The name comes from the signal to stop or start which is literally a tap-tap somewhere on the metal body.

4. Poor is living in a shack made from tarps and pieces of wood and metal scraps in a field full of similar shacks, and not having a home to think about for your foreseeable future.

5. Poor is spending your days washing clothes in a tub so that you can look clean.

6. Poor is bathing with a bucket drawing water from the public gutter, and you are a woman who is topless even though you are on the edge of a main roadway.

7. Poor is having a shack down a long trail far away from any road, isolated and totally relying on being able to raise a crop on the terraced hillside from which you stripped all vegetation so you could grow beans.

8. Poor is having to carry on your shoulder ten plastic jugs tied on a rope a one hour walk to get water for the week.

BUT ARE THEY HAPPY?

You know the saying: “but they are such happy people!” Well, these are my observations.

• The young men riding on their Chinese made motorcycles wearing clean clothes seem to act content.

• The women in contrast; I would say look burdened and not so joyous. They after all are the ones washing clothes in tubs, carrying water and supplies, taking care of babies.

• Kids are for the most part open and happy, even though their learned greeting is: “hey you”. They still get excited if they see you pointing a camera in their direction.

CHEAP TOOLS AND EQUIPMENT

How does it make you feel if all you are able to buy are things that don’t last? Wheelbarrows that can’t carry loads, bicycles that break, batteries that last one hour, watches that work for 26 hours. This must instill an attitude of hopelessness and disappointment.

HODR WORK THIS WEEK IN LEOGANE

• On-going rubble removal on three to five locations simultaneously. Average 3 to 5 days per site.

• On-going building fabric tents and schools of plastic with Shelter Quest. Request from UNICEF is currently for 90 structures 15' x 40' used as temporary classrooms. (lasting through the rainy season)

• Transitional Schools: (lasting years until a permanent structure is built)

o Foundation prep to create a proper foundation in which to erect the first  of our many wooden school structures.

o Building pre-fab at the base the wall and roof trusses for the wooden school structures which will be 20’ x 70’ housing three classrooms and an office. It is very rewarding for volunteers who have never built even a doghouse with their hands, to be a part of building walls and trusses for real school buildings.

o Building furniture for the primary schools and an orphanage.

 Bench/desks. Sixteen bench desks to seat 4 kids each.

 28- Small chairs for kindergarten kids.

 4- Small tables for kindergarten class.

• Haitian locals volunteer program. To involve those unemployed Haitians that express desire to work on some of the projects that HODR is performing, such as rubble removal and building. The idea is that this is an opportunity for these locals to learn skills so in future they can go and work for one of the large NGOs that can pay for work.

• Developing plans to install solar panels for electricity for the base. The HODR Leogane program has now been extended through January 15th of 2011 so there will be plenty of benefit compared to the generator now used. There is no central operating system to supply electricity anywhere in Leogane. All power is supplied by independent small generators.

• Composting for all organic waste. Vs. burying it or throwing into piles on every empty space as is the norm in town. This again is an effort to establish an opportunity to teach a process to the locals that should prove beneficial in the long term.

• Leogane water system infrastructure assessment and scope of work. This is important. Leogane has not had an operating water distribution system for many years. Water is supplied to plastic bladders mounted on raised platforms in critical street corners. The UN is currently filling these bladders from tanker trucks. HODR volunteers with GPS units and Water engineers and a translator have almost completed mapping all the existing water piping buried and visible in the vicinity. They are being guided by the town plumber, who is the only one who has the information, none of it is written or recorded, it is all in his head. He says he has stayed with this job for 15 years even though he has apparently endured years of not being paid wages. This mapping will make it possible for future modification and eventual utilization of the infrastructure to provide water to the vicinity. This would be a good use of future Aid Funds employing local workers.

o As expected, the system has problems. Such as a two inch diameter line feeding a 6 inch line which feeds into an 8 inch line, in other words, totally backwards and cannot generate any pressure this way. There are also few valves making it impossible to isolate areas of the system.

• Structural Assessments: This is also a very important service directly affecting families, schools, businesses. Most people are living in makeshift shacks and tents on the street or in camps because they are scared to enter their previous structures, even though they survived the earthquake. Structural engineers sent by the American Society of Civil Engineers are working with translators from HORD systematically inspecting structures.

o The lucky owners are encouraged to go ahead and reoccupy their dwellings because it is deemed structurally sound.

o The not so lucky ones are told that they need to demo the structure or change it substantially before they should venture inside it.

o The ones who are living next to or under unsafe structures and overhangs are encouraged to seek shelter elsewhere quickly.

• Assisting an organization called CORDAID who is also distributing pre-fabed small wood dwellings in other neighboring areas. HORD volunteers are helping in selecting the neediest and deserving persons. The recipients along with CORDAID trained carpenters will assemble them.

• Assisting UNICEF with erecting large open-end tents which they supply for group activities. However one box with critical components of the metal frames is missing, so until located the erection of these fabric structures is on hold.

• Play at orphanage and neighborhood. One of the girls at HODR named KILY has taken on the role of organizing games and art activities and English classes for kids at an orphanage close by. The kids love it. These organized child play activities also take place on Saturday afternoons on the field behind the HODR base site. Surprisingly, even for young kids the classes in English are the most popular.

THE WORLD OF NGOs

I am fascinated by the immensity of the world of NGO organizations, the sheer size of some, and the complex interaction between them. This is what I know so far, and there is much, much more. As you probably have been made aware, there was supposed to be something like 10,000 NGOs operating in Haiti before the earthquake.

As I understand it, the organizational structure is something like this:

1. IOM: International Office of Migration

2. UN OCHA: Office for Coordination of Human Affairs

i. SHELTER CLUSTER: groups that provide shelter

ii. WASH CLUSTER : groups that work on Water, Sanitation, Hygienic

iii. LOGISTICS CLUSTER?

Some of the NGOs I have witnessed working in Leogane:

1. USAID. They seem to have the most money to work with

2. CHF: Cooperative Housing Foundation: They seem to have the new trucks and heavy equipment that has been clearing the rubble of some major sites and off the sides of streets where HODR volunteers have placed it using wheelbarrows.

3. ACTED

4. Tetre Des Hommes

5. Save the Children

6. Red Cross

7. Salvation Army

8. Shelter Box

9. UN of course: they are the ones with the white SUVS and Helicopters.

10. The Yugoslavian Navy; Has 16 ships patrolling the Haitian Coastline with the goals to catch drug runners and to monitor the goings, and (hopefully), returnings of independent fishermen.

11. And of course our HODR: Hands On Disaster Response that I am working with. In my perception so far the most productive NGO for dollar. HODR is currently utilizing an average of 100 volunteers at a time accomplishing many tasks with a budget of $3,000 per day or $1M for the year that is planned for the Haiti effort.

Initiated after the Tsunami in Bang Tao Thailand in 2005, HODR has operated volunteer driven programs to provide aid in: Biloxi Mississippi, Indonesia, Peru, Gonaives Haiti after Hurricane in 2008, Cedar Rapids Iowa; and the biggest to date: here in Leogane Haiti since February. Founder, and main contributor, David Campbell’s goal is to have an ongoing presence in: The US when needed, Caribbean and South America, Asia and also Africa.

TO DONATE GO TO HODR.COM it will be used efficiently with direct results affecting real people and empowering volunteers.