Thanksgiving and Goodbyes

I leave today.  All my goodbyes have been said - it was really hard to watch as people left to go to their work sites, but it's great to know that the work continues. My shuttle to the airportis in 40 minutes.  The plan was to take public transportation to the airport, but that was squashed by All Hands' new security measures put in place for the elections tomorrow.  Port Au Prince is pretty volatile right now, so we are only allowed to go there by private transport and only for the airport for the next week.  My timing is pretty lousy - if I had left yesterday I would have been able to take the bus and then negotiate for a taxi from the bus station to the airport.  Maybe next time...

This week has been interesting and fun.  We were to have completed the foundation on school 6, but we encountered some problems with the cement mixers - that's right, not just one, but two mixers that died on us and one that never showed up at the site - so the foundation will hopefully be completed Monday or Tuesday.  I'm sad that I'm not able to be there to complete it, but I'm glad that I was able to work on it for a time.  Thursday was spent in the kitchen preparing Thanksgiving dinner for 140 people. :)  We invited all our local volunteers, who were able to bring 2 guests, and some of our neighbors.  It was amazing.  We had turkey (8 of them and 2 in the stuffing), cranberry sauce, garlic mashed potatoes, stuffing (meat and vegetarian), green bean casserole, corn bread, gravy, pumpkin pie, croissants (with chocolate or coconut filling), and some Haitian dishes - rice and beans, vegetable mash, a pasta salad, spicy beet salad, and popcorn.  We had leftovers as well, so they were eaten for breakfast and lunch yesterday.  It was a fabulous Thanksgiving.


I am really sad to go.  I have met some incredible people here and made some wonderful friends.  There is still so much to do as well.  I'm preparing myself for the cold that I will encounter when I get back home - I think it will be a bit of a shock.  This has been an extraordinary month and I am so grateful for all of the support that I received from family, friends, coworkers, and even some complete strangers that made this trip possible for me.  I cannot express my thanks enough.

BUCKETS!

Today I was the team leader for the "bucket" team. We assembled buckets with cleaning supplies that will be distributed to people in the neighborhoods worst hit by the flooding caused by Tomas. The buckets include a mask, two hand scrub brushes, 2 sponges, 2 bars of soap, 2 pairs of gloves, a plastic cup, and directions for how to clean and sanitize using the materials handed out in our distributions. Along with the bucket, people will recieve 2 gallons of bleach, a push broom, and a Haitian broom (think witches broom for a visual). The buckets also have a little blue handprint spray painted on them. We completed 451 buckets today, although 159 of them still need a handprint because we ran out of spray paint and the store wasn't open today.

The next distribution was scheduled to happen tomorrow, but the push brooms we received had different broom heads that didn't work with the broom handles (the heads were wood and the plastic handles didn't fit in the holes) so we had to push the distribution back to Wednesday. Our replacement broom heads (the correct ones) are supposed to come tomorrow, but we'll see if that happens. This is disappointing, but it's not a huge deal - we just hope that people will come back on Wednesday.

All Hands does their distributions differently than most of the other NGOs. Usually we don't do distributions, but we saw a need and applied for grant money to do this and it is great that we are able to help in this way. Our distributions are done in smaller groups and people are invited and get in with a ticket. We have had teams of volunteers going out into the community and assessing houses. Those who most need cleaning supplies are given tickets for a distribution/demonstration slot. At the distribution, some of our local volunteers give a presentation and demonstrate how to use the cleaning supplies and explain the importance of using the supplies correctly. We want to make sure that people not only clean out the mud from their homes, but also sanitize after the mud has been cleared out because of the bacteria and other nastiness that is present in the mud and is left behind if only water is used.

I can't believe I have less than a week left...I don't want to leave...

Schools and stuff

This week I have been working on School 6 (the sixth school that All Hands is building).  All Hands is working on rebuilding schools that were destroyed in the earthquake.  There is a pretty intense assessment process that is done before a school is started.  We need to make sure that the school actually existed before the earthquake (there are a lot of new schools being started and people are looking for funding for those, which is great, but isn't what All Hands does), then we need to make sure that  the school is registered with the Ministry of Education and that they have permission to be on the land on which the school will be built.  In addition, we need to know that they have the resources to run the school once it has been built (we don't provide salaries for teachers or school supplies) and students that will attend.  School 6 got through that process and we started the foundation on Monday.

We dug trenches for the foundation yesterday and today we graded the ground for the foundation and started putting up the forms.  Tomorrow the rest of the forms will go up and gravel will be added to the  foundation and leveled.  I will miss that step because I have housekeeping chores tomorrow (the volunteers clean the base and do the dishes after meals and I volunteered for housekeeping because no one else was). The project is on track to have concrete poured on Monday.


On a different note, we are hearing about some unrest in the northern part of the country, where Nepalese UN troops and their base were firebombed and attacked.  People are blaming the Nepalese for bringing cholera to Haiti.  So far, the unrest seems to be localized and the violence appears to be focused on the UN and not NGOs in general.  We haven't had any issues here in Leogane (even at the UN base). 

The cholera epidemic has spread and we have a number of confirmed cases in Leogane.  We are taking extreme precautions to prevent any cholera on base.  With our access to clean water, soap, hand sanitizer, and loads of bleach, we are extremely unlikely to have any issues with cholera at the base.  I have also stopped mudding because I started feeling unwell, so my exposure had been drastically reduced.  Muddng will likely end soon (probably this week), so the risk will lower even further, since most of the houses in the neighborhoods directly affected by the flooding are clean.  We have cleared mud and cleaned over 30 houses and have now distributed almost 300 kits to community members to properly clean and sanitize their houses after the flood.  It's been a great week!

Flood SWAT and Hospitals

This week has been a muddy one for me.  I have spent the past three days and today cleaning out toxic mud from buildings. 

The past three days, I was on the Hopital Saint Croix (the Episcopalian hospital that just reopened recently after 4 or 5 years of being closed).  We cleaned the entire first floor of the hospital - one wing a day.  It was actually very frustrating, because we had to clear out all sorts of materials and surgical tools and ended up trashing thousands of dollars worth of medical materials.  We also had to move large medical equipment in order to clean.  Most of the machines will probably be trashed as well (they likely don't work any more after having sat in 6-8 inches of flood water and mud).  The saddest part is that none of these items were even being used.  They were all shoved in some back rooms that are not in use and left on the floor. 

Even with some major advanced notice that the hurricane was coming and with past experience of flooding (apparently the hospital floods every time a hurricane or major rainstorm comes), the hospital did nothing to prepare - they didn't put sandbags down to try and keep the flood waters out and they didn't pick things up off the floor.  Even doing just one of those two things would have saved thousands of dollars and hours of work.  It also would have meant that the hospital would not have had to be closed for so long.  If the storm had been worse, the hospital being closed would have been disastrous.  We are hoping to convince the hospital administration to use a disaster preparedness plan that we will put together for them (sandbags will go a long way), but we will have to wait and see if it is received at all.

Today I am on the flood SWAT team.  We are going around the neighborhoods that were affected the most by the floods and are cleaning out homes of the mud.  The mud is toxic.  There is human and animal waste and who knows what else in the muck and people are walking and living in it.  We have a ton of procedures in place to clean ourselves when we get back to base to keep us clean and to keep any nastiness from getting into the base.  These precautions are also to help prevent cholera (there have been some suspected cases in Leogane since the hurricane and flooding).  We bleach everything. :)  That includes ourselves - we have shower stalls set up where we shower with bleach water before going into base.  I will likely burn my clothes or leave them here for other volunteers to use...although I haven't yet decided what I will do with my boots (they're nice boots). :)

It is really great to be able to help out right away.  We were able to get the hospital open and are lending a hand to community members who are unable to clean out their houses completely for one reason or another.  Today we cleared out a 6 room house where there were two women and some kids - one older lady and a pregnant woman.  There is no way that they would have been able to get out all of the mud in their house - it was ankle deep and the entire house is surrounded by ankle deep mud as well.  It looks as though they were right in the main flow of the mud and flooding.


While it has been great working on the mud teams, I think that I will switch tomorrow.  I want to change things up and take a break from exposing myself to the toxic mud.  I might do rubbling, or I might do something a bit less physical...we shall see.  Just to reassure everyone, I am healthy (no sickness at all yet - fingers crossed) and well and am loving every moment down here.  I'm already trying to figure out how I can get back down here...

Missed

So Tomas missed us here, which is really good.  We did get a good amount of rain and flooding, but the hurricane force winds were absent so there wasn't a lot of damage.  Some of the local volunteers' houses were flooded, so one of the teams today went to their houses and helped them to bail out the water and clean out the mud. 

The water had started to recede, but we keep getting showers, so it hasn't completely gone.  Our part of town isn't flooded, but the center of town is.  We went out on Friday to take a look at the damage and ran across a number of international journalists and aid workers who were here to assess and report on the flooding damage.  Leogane was hit the hardest by flooding from what we have heard, although there have also been reports that flooding was very bad in Gonaive (in the north of Haiti).  Since All Hands has worked there in the past, they may be sending out an assessment team this coming week and if the flooding is really bad, they will set up a satellite project there.

Today was the first "normal" day for All Hands since I've been here.  We had multiple teams out in the community doing various jobs this morning and will be going out this afternoon as well (we have a 2 hour lunch break in the middle of the day).  I am working on the "rubbling" team.  We are clearing a housing slab of the wreckage from the earthquake.  We have multiple people taking out the rebar that is used to steady the main pillars that hold the house up - they also appear to be used in the roof.  Another group of people is using sledgehammers to break apart any concrete that is still intact or is attached to rebar.  The third group on our team shovels the rubble into wheelbarrows and takes it to our rubble dump site - the rubble will likely be at least partially used to rebuild.  The rebar is being piled up and will be reused as well (not necessarily the best of ideas, but people do what they have to).


A small group of Haitians stopped by at the rubble site today and asked us what we were doing and how much we were being paid.  They couldn't believe that we were working for free, nor could they believe that the local volunteer on our team was working for free as well.  This is a very common reaction here.  We have so much in the US and volunteering is a normal thing, but in Haiti, many people have nothing and to work all day without compensation sounds crazy.  What I find interesting is that our local volunteers are all younger - upper teens and early twenties - so I wonder if this mindset is beginning to change somewhat.  The local volunteers are working to help their community - that is more important to them than money.


This post has grown to be much longer than I intended - I simply meant to post to tell everyone that I am OK and the hurricane missed us.  :)  Pictures will have to wait until I return to the states.  The bandwidth is too small here to use it up by uploading pictures.

Waiting...

So I have had an interesting first week thus far in Haiti.  Not what I expected, but that's a disaster area for you. :)  I'm disappointed that I have not been able to work out in the community yet, but I also think that this may be good timing, as I will be here to help right away after the storm.  My training and skill set may be needed (here's hoping that it isn't) in the aftermath.  It may come in handy during the storm as well, if the storm ends up being a bad one.  I'm hoping that I can be a calming presence if we end up going into hibernation (locked in our safe spaces).

I have yet to take one picture (not surprising).  Since I did promise to take pictures, I will do my best to take some before I leave.  I'm not promising that there will be many, though.


As a storm update - Tomas has increased back into a hurricane, although it now looks as though it will go further west and will miss us (we'll still get rain).  I'm hoping that it goes even further west - Haiti really doesn't need a hurricane and flooding - they're dealing with enough already.

Tomas

So Tomas has been downgraded to a tropical depression, which is good, but it is still tracking for us and will bring a ton of rain, which is not good.  The volunteers will be fine, but the community is likely to be flooded if the predictions are correct.  We will likely have some strong winds (40 mph), but they won't be the 60 - 100mph winds we were looking at before.  Hopefully, this will minimize the damage done by winds.

So far, I haven't been out of the base much because we have been working on getting things prepped for the storm.  I have been to the market.  Luckily it was a quiet day - it was crowded as it was and it was very difficult to get through (especially being almost 6ft tall, as all of the spaces had tarps strung up to block the sun and they came up to my neck. :)

The trip from Port Au Prince took quite some time.  There were traffic jams where rubble had been dumped in the middle of the road and only one direction of traffic could go at at time.  Also, my driver had to stop to try and fix his car (he thought he needed a new battery - I'm pretty sure it was his starter).  I'll try to write more later about the camps and the UN troops I saw on my way here, but I have to get to work now...