Suddenly I'm awake and its 4am. I was dreaming about somewhere pleasant that I can't remember now. My eyes slowly adjust. Through the open window three beams of moonlight draw bars along the wall. A dog sounds lonely in the distance, its not an angry bark. There's an unusual breeze and I shiver for the first time since arriving. My bed sheet is thin and still creased from the packaging, where did toss my shirt? I try to lie still while anxious thoughts creep around me. My roommates snore loudly and I envy them; I want to be asleep too.
Tomorrow we begin the first of many massive distributions. In terms of distributions past, this one is substantial—but not my biggest. Yet somehow it owns me. The staff is not strong, and the rest of my team have their own responsibilities. I am utterly reliant on a Haitian woman I met by sheer providence. Before the earthquake she was a journalist. Now she is the strongest community leader I've met—and her responsibility is great. By speaking directly to her over the course of the planning phase all the other community leaders have naturally started to recognize her as their boss. Yesterday I met her and another young man (who took it upon himself to be my translator) at the office to review our plan. After we finished she began to narrate pictures she was showing on her laptop of the moments following the earthquake. My mind was still on the distribution plan and I wasn't really listening. Then she showed a picture of her colleagues: she's dead now, and him too, they didn't make it out... she was our secretary, my best friend. I looked at her and realized it was important for her that I know this. Quel est son nom? Genevievre.
Distributions are like pick-up trucks. Work around them long enough and you become familiar with the makes and models. Each one is different, but each one is the same. Trucks breakdown when they aren't maintained properly and the same is true with distributions. Before you load everyone into the back and punch it, you'd better make sure you know how to drive. The staff need to have a strong will, be innovative and take the initiative. Usually you find your future leaders in a distribution—they're the ones really sweating. Once you start, you had better finish or have a damn obvious reason why you can't. Speeding down the highway you cannot waver. Massive populations crowded around means you are constantly being watched, your every action is being interpreted as a sign of fortune or doom. If the the mass perceives there is a problem—true or not—they begin to panic. Then the wheels come off.
The translator looks like Puff Daddy and speaks English with a Brooklyn accent. I wondered why until I told him he had the job: Ok sir, but you gotta know I done some bad things back in New York. All I mean to say is that if you check my history, then you gonna see I was in prison for some time and then the judge sent me back here. But I ain't that kid no more. My Dad's the president of a bank here. I was supposed to be the family doctor, you know? I'm changed, so I'm be honest with you. I smile. Ok, bon vivant, redeem yourself.
All that shaking and yet this dark old house doesn't have a crack in it. Its filthy, but well built. I'm really thirsty but my water bottle's empty. My stomach is churning and I'm not sure if its something I ate or the reality of dawn on the horizon. The roosters are already crowing. Soon the hard-working no-nonsense mamma that cooks for us will arrive and light the burners on her stove to prepare banana porridge. Its delicious and so is her coffee, but something's wrong with the burner. Every morning the house fills with the acrid smell of burnt fuel. Another thing to fix. So get up you lazy butt. Splash water on your face and slick back your dirty hair, then get in that truck and punch it.
But I can't move, not yet. A memory of my first food distribution, in east Sudan, comes to mind. Everything was prepared but me. I was unsure of myself—probably because I hadn't a clue what to do. I had a strong national staff though, and I relied on their ability. Half-way through things got bad, then very bad. I became anxious and my staff sensed it. This caused them to loose confidence and in a rapidly short span of time we were staring into the brink. I called my boss to ask for help and I'll never forget what he said: Joel, you've just got to wade in there, pick the whole thing up and smash it through. I did, and it worked.
I run through a mental checklist for the umpteenth time. Waybills, release notes, beneficiary lists, ration cards. We will feed nearly 25,000 people so (the illusion of) control is critical. My drivers are prepped. We don't use UN transport—its slow and cumbersome and attracts too much attention. Instead I use ugly looking office warehouse type trucks. I'll even use dump trucks to fool everyone in thinking that we're not worth following. Its covert, and so far its been effective. The distribution site will be ringed by the best paid soldiers in the Nepalese Army. The Captain is professional and calm and smiles with his eyes.
Still in bed. Perhaps I just need to remind myself of what will come next, just psych myself up for what will be a very long week. Yes. Pick it up and swoop in with a bit of bravado and a whole lot of energy; not the person I think I am but the person I will be. Part commando, part accountant. My eyes are closed, I'm dozing off again—just a couple more minutes. Then I hear a creak in the kitchen, the clink of a pot. Aaahh, there she is—the burners are lit. I'm sitting up to take a big breath: I love the smell of napalm in the morning...
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Build it and they will come...
In the coming week this story will appear on CNN: "Earthquake victims relocated to camps". Obviously the press will love the story because the optics will be dramatic: buses! police! tents! and! poor! desperate! people! Agencies like Shelter-In-Box will dash about here and there gathering more tags, more tents, more tarps. Here's a side story you won't hear...
Four days ago I was standing outside a meeting tent with a colleague. We were chatting about something and she mentioned the word 'engineer'. IOM guy overhears her: you're engineers? No, we just live with some. Next thing you know our engineers are designing an IDP camp for IOM. Its a rather short chain of causation: Gov't squeezes UN, UN squeezes IOM, IOM squeezes as many NGOs as needed (most of whom know better, but... whatever). The Haitian gov't wants to (finally) appear to be doing something (anything!), and camps provide a great distraction. From a humanitarian standpoint, camps are the worst choice they could have made. Almost anything else would have been better.
Studies show IDP camps, on average, last 4-5 years (unless you're Palestinian, of course!). They are overwhelmingly composed of the very poor and rarely are they accompanied by prudent forethought (consider the trailer camps still existing post-Katrina) in terms of livelihoods and recovery. Now, our engineers are no dummies. They immediately realized the site was too far from the city--impossible for the displaced people from the camp to trade or continue livelihoods. Even if they leave room for spontaneous markets, etc., what they're essentially creating is an interment camp (their words, not mine). The sad truth is that there will be one class of people in these camps: the very poor. Anyone else will avoid them like the plague (likely because at some point the camps may, indeed, contain the plague).
So the engineers set to it, bearing in mind the only parameter they were given: cram as many people in the space as possible (no, I'm not kidding). However, thank goodness for minimum standards to prevent overcrowding, right? SPHERE calls for 45 meters squared per person, including tents and public/communal spaces, etc. According to my colleague: 'this guy comes over and literally picks the SPHERE book out of my hands and tossed it onto the ground'. And there go the minimum standards in disaster response. Tossed into the dirt.
The total space can accommodate 600 people according to SPHERE. Even I will admit that in 10 years I have yet to see a camp built to those standards. But they're guidelines for best practices--the intention is to aim for them. Yet guess what number of people will soon be packed into that same space? Double? Triple? No, the engineers tell me they were able to maximize the space available and accommodate 5000 people.
Bear this in mind when CNN arrives to film it all.
PS - Waiting for my driver to arrive and I take a seat next to a Haitian guy about my age. He asks me about Vancouver and I ask him about Jacal. Then families: neither of us married, no kids, but both siblings with children. Are they ok? Yes, we are all ok. Where are you staying? Dans le cimetière. Excuse me? Oui. And, you sleep there? Sur les tombes. So, there his family, along with many families, sleep on the mostly flat tombs (that, I'm told, have already been crammed full of additional corpses). We're quiet for a moment. In a few seconds my air-conditioned SUV will pull up and whisk me home to a warm meal and comfy mattress. I have nothing for him. Is it safe there? He shrugs, then smiles, and punctuated with a loud laugh: dépend des zombies!
Goodnight.
(For those of you on LinkedIn, here's a good discussion on camps: http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers&discussionID=10803977&gid=1887804&commentID=9574329&trk=view_disc)
Four days ago I was standing outside a meeting tent with a colleague. We were chatting about something and she mentioned the word 'engineer'. IOM guy overhears her: you're engineers? No, we just live with some. Next thing you know our engineers are designing an IDP camp for IOM. Its a rather short chain of causation: Gov't squeezes UN, UN squeezes IOM, IOM squeezes as many NGOs as needed (most of whom know better, but... whatever). The Haitian gov't wants to (finally) appear to be doing something (anything!), and camps provide a great distraction. From a humanitarian standpoint, camps are the worst choice they could have made. Almost anything else would have been better.
Studies show IDP camps, on average, last 4-5 years (unless you're Palestinian, of course!). They are overwhelmingly composed of the very poor and rarely are they accompanied by prudent forethought (consider the trailer camps still existing post-Katrina) in terms of livelihoods and recovery. Now, our engineers are no dummies. They immediately realized the site was too far from the city--impossible for the displaced people from the camp to trade or continue livelihoods. Even if they leave room for spontaneous markets, etc., what they're essentially creating is an interment camp (their words, not mine). The sad truth is that there will be one class of people in these camps: the very poor. Anyone else will avoid them like the plague (likely because at some point the camps may, indeed, contain the plague).
So the engineers set to it, bearing in mind the only parameter they were given: cram as many people in the space as possible (no, I'm not kidding). However, thank goodness for minimum standards to prevent overcrowding, right? SPHERE calls for 45 meters squared per person, including tents and public/communal spaces, etc. According to my colleague: 'this guy comes over and literally picks the SPHERE book out of my hands and tossed it onto the ground'. And there go the minimum standards in disaster response. Tossed into the dirt.
The total space can accommodate 600 people according to SPHERE. Even I will admit that in 10 years I have yet to see a camp built to those standards. But they're guidelines for best practices--the intention is to aim for them. Yet guess what number of people will soon be packed into that same space? Double? Triple? No, the engineers tell me they were able to maximize the space available and accommodate 5000 people.
Bear this in mind when CNN arrives to film it all.
PS - Waiting for my driver to arrive and I take a seat next to a Haitian guy about my age. He asks me about Vancouver and I ask him about Jacal. Then families: neither of us married, no kids, but both siblings with children. Are they ok? Yes, we are all ok. Where are you staying? Dans le cimetière. Excuse me? Oui. And, you sleep there? Sur les tombes. So, there his family, along with many families, sleep on the mostly flat tombs (that, I'm told, have already been crammed full of additional corpses). We're quiet for a moment. In a few seconds my air-conditioned SUV will pull up and whisk me home to a warm meal and comfy mattress. I have nothing for him. Is it safe there? He shrugs, then smiles, and punctuated with a loud laugh: dépend des zombies!
Goodnight.
(For those of you on LinkedIn, here's a good discussion on camps: http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers&discussionID=10803977&gid=1887804&commentID=9574329&trk=view_disc)
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Thought this story was relevant. (I'll leave it at that)
| Exodus as Haiti toll passes 150,000 copied from here: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/01/20101250950705108.html | |||||||||||
The death toll given by Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue on Sunday comes amid an exodus of residents from the shattered capital Port-au-Prince. Lassegue said that the 150,000 figure was compiled by CNE, a state company that has been collecting corpses from around the capital and burying them in a mass grave north of the capital. But many thousands more people could be dead in the rest of the country while others have been buried or cremated by relatives or remain trapped under collapsed buildings, she said. "Nobody knows how many bodies are buried in the rubble; 200,000 ... 300,000?" she said. "Who knows the overall death toll?" Aftershock Nearly two weeks after the 7.0 magnitude quake on January 12, survivors are still being hit by aftershocks.
Meanwhile, the international aid agency leading efforts to provide shelter for the hundreds of thousands of survivors appealed for thousands more tents and other forms of shelter. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said it had 10,000 family-sized tents in a warehouse in Port-au-Prince, but that "estimated needs stand at 100,000 to assist 500,000 persons". Haiti's government estimated on Friday that around 609,000 people were without shelter in the Port-au-Prince area, according to the IOM. Exodus Ten of thousands of people, many tired of living on the streets for so many nights, have begun pouring out of the city's crowded camps to find refuge elsewhere. The United Nations says more than 130,000 people have already left the destroyed capital, and the Haitian authorities are encouraging the exodus, offering free bus rides to take them to the southwestern and northern parts of the country.
Reporting from Port-au-Prince, Al Jazeera's Teresa Bo said people were leaving "because they have nothing here, no food, no water, nothing". Most of the villages outside the capital are very poor, with almost no infrastructure, houses made of palm trees and subsistence agriculture. But people were tired of living on the streets in the city and seeking temporary shelter elsewhere, she said. "We'll have to see if the government will put a plan in place to help these people leaving," our correspondent said, adding that with fewer people in the capital, it would make the task of reconstructing the capital much easier. Hundreds of Haitians gathered in the capital for a mass near the capital's Roman Catholic cathedral on Sunday, while others lined up to receive food packs, water and crackers from US and Brazilian troops in Cite du Soleil, a Port-au-Prince slum. Lieutenant-General Ken Keen, the commander of the US military's operations in the capital, said: "We are at the beginning of the massive effort to sustain providing food, water and medical assistance throughout the city. "What we have been doing thus far is in a crisis reaction, obviously, to the situation, pushing out as much as we can to address the immediate needs, but we are entering a phase where have to be able to sustain it takes estimated one million rations a day in order to sustain it." Aid effort 'pathetic' But the overall aid effort was criticised by Italy's top disaster official on Sunday.
"Unfortunately there's this need to make a 'bella figura' before the TV cameras rather than focus on what's under the debris,'' said Bertolaso, who won praise for his handling of Italy's 2009 quake in Abruzzo. In particular, he criticised what he called the well-meaning but ineffective US-run military operation. Last week, respected medical journal The Lancet blamed the chaotic aid effort in Haiti on the corporate posturing and self-interest of major aid organisations. Aid groups and governments were "rightly mobilising, but also jostling for position, each claiming that they are doing the best for earthquake survivors", the British journal said in an editorial on Friday. "Perhaps worse of all, relief efforts in the field are sometimes competitive with little collaboration between agencies, including smaller, grass-roots charities that may have better networks in affected countries and so are well placed to immediately implement disaster relief." | |||||||||||
The Weekend
It's Sunday so we gave the staff a day off. I suppose they needed it. They live in PaP and are suffering just the same as the rest of the city. (That's a lie, rich and poor never "suffer" natural disasters alike--plus, studies show that the rich rebuild sooner and the gap widens).
Yesterday, on Saturday afternoon, almost all of them spent time with a disaster trauma counselor who works for our agency. He met with them in groups of five and went through a system by which he helps them work through their experience, etc. They sprang it on me, but I suppose I should have guessed that's what he was here for. Still, I was a bit annoyed. I needed those teams in the field. I protested to our CD and he was sympathetic but said projects would be put on hold. I bit my tongue from saying more--and I'm sure glad I did. Afterwards the atmosphere in the office changed. Their faces were all red from crying and I could see they really benefited from the sessions. There was a togetherness about them. Still, if I'm honest I admit that's my right brain talking. My left brain is still sore over losing a day and a half.
However, the distribution Saturday morning did not go well. Our security was not compromised--I count that as a success. We met with the first community leader early Saturday morning. I assessed his preparedness and felt that he and his committee were somewhat prepared. He had a perfect storage space available too. The distribution point was less than ideal, but if he was a strong leader he would be able to pull it off. I told them that even if we delivered to them today, they should wait and do the distribution when they were ready. I made them agree to tell no one--secrecy was key.
The second leader we met with was exceptional. He and his committee were the best organized I've seen in a long time, going all the way back to El Salvador in 2000. He also had a gated compound that would serve well for corralling people. In my head I instantly started to make plans for distributions at that place. Afterwads my team didn't agree. For reasons I could not extract from them they wanted to begin at the first place. I tried to convince them otherwise but they were firm. What else could I do? This is their show, and technically I'm just an adviser. We arranged to have our transport deliver at 10AM. I smiled and held my breath.
The trucks got lost in the maze of dirt alleys. To my eyes every street looks the same--dirt track, sometimes concrete, bordered by rubble and trash. I got the first pang in my stomach when I overheard that they had been waiting for us at an intersection for over 20 minutes. That means for 20 minutes every curious Haitian in the vicinity had time to put 2 and 2 together. Over a couple of more hills and around a corner and there I saw a crowd of about 300 gathered around the distribution site. I cursed, knowing that our options were starting to drop off.
We arrived at the site and were surrounded. The crowd wasn't upset or agitated--worse, they were happy and excited. I'd rather have stones thrown at me (a solid excuse to abort). People yanked on my arms shouting what sounded like "deeree". I asked what it meant: "they think we have rice!" I pushed through the crowed to find the leader and his team. It took 10 minutes just to clear the place for the truck to back-up. I found them and asked what happened. They shrugged their shoulders. It was stupid, I shouldn't have asked. They weren't ready at all. I was wrong. At least we agreed there would be no distribution. "We finish offloading and shut the doors", they took the words out of my mouth. When they finished they asked where the rice was. No food, I said. When is it coming? When it comes, I said. They weren't happy with those answers, but you know how it goes, "fool me once..."
Mind you, my assesments revealed that food isn't a physical issue, its a psychological one. That is to say, the people aren't going hungry, but they are homeless.
PS - I spent Sunday morning at a UNDP early recovery meeting. It was more to my taste: cash for work rubble removal. It went well. In the afternoon I met with a very nice guy from Spain who taught me how to overlay PaP data into MapInfo (GIS software, similar to GoogleMaps). Then I grovelled at WFP to get food for Monday: No, no, you're scheduled to get it on Tuesday, I think. Oh, AM or PM? Actually, my mistake--its neither, Wednesday at noon.
I stopped asking questions.
Yesterday, on Saturday afternoon, almost all of them spent time with a disaster trauma counselor who works for our agency. He met with them in groups of five and went through a system by which he helps them work through their experience, etc. They sprang it on me, but I suppose I should have guessed that's what he was here for. Still, I was a bit annoyed. I needed those teams in the field. I protested to our CD and he was sympathetic but said projects would be put on hold. I bit my tongue from saying more--and I'm sure glad I did. Afterwards the atmosphere in the office changed. Their faces were all red from crying and I could see they really benefited from the sessions. There was a togetherness about them. Still, if I'm honest I admit that's my right brain talking. My left brain is still sore over losing a day and a half.
However, the distribution Saturday morning did not go well. Our security was not compromised--I count that as a success. We met with the first community leader early Saturday morning. I assessed his preparedness and felt that he and his committee were somewhat prepared. He had a perfect storage space available too. The distribution point was less than ideal, but if he was a strong leader he would be able to pull it off. I told them that even if we delivered to them today, they should wait and do the distribution when they were ready. I made them agree to tell no one--secrecy was key.
The second leader we met with was exceptional. He and his committee were the best organized I've seen in a long time, going all the way back to El Salvador in 2000. He also had a gated compound that would serve well for corralling people. In my head I instantly started to make plans for distributions at that place. Afterwads my team didn't agree. For reasons I could not extract from them they wanted to begin at the first place. I tried to convince them otherwise but they were firm. What else could I do? This is their show, and technically I'm just an adviser. We arranged to have our transport deliver at 10AM. I smiled and held my breath.
The trucks got lost in the maze of dirt alleys. To my eyes every street looks the same--dirt track, sometimes concrete, bordered by rubble and trash. I got the first pang in my stomach when I overheard that they had been waiting for us at an intersection for over 20 minutes. That means for 20 minutes every curious Haitian in the vicinity had time to put 2 and 2 together. Over a couple of more hills and around a corner and there I saw a crowd of about 300 gathered around the distribution site. I cursed, knowing that our options were starting to drop off.
We arrived at the site and were surrounded. The crowd wasn't upset or agitated--worse, they were happy and excited. I'd rather have stones thrown at me (a solid excuse to abort). People yanked on my arms shouting what sounded like "deeree". I asked what it meant: "they think we have rice!" I pushed through the crowed to find the leader and his team. It took 10 minutes just to clear the place for the truck to back-up. I found them and asked what happened. They shrugged their shoulders. It was stupid, I shouldn't have asked. They weren't ready at all. I was wrong. At least we agreed there would be no distribution. "We finish offloading and shut the doors", they took the words out of my mouth. When they finished they asked where the rice was. No food, I said. When is it coming? When it comes, I said. They weren't happy with those answers, but you know how it goes, "fool me once..."
Mind you, my assesments revealed that food isn't a physical issue, its a psychological one. That is to say, the people aren't going hungry, but they are homeless.
PS - I spent Sunday morning at a UNDP early recovery meeting. It was more to my taste: cash for work rubble removal. It went well. In the afternoon I met with a very nice guy from Spain who taught me how to overlay PaP data into MapInfo (GIS software, similar to GoogleMaps). Then I grovelled at WFP to get food for Monday: No, no, you're scheduled to get it on Tuesday, I think. Oh, AM or PM? Actually, my mistake--its neither, Wednesday at noon.
I stopped asking questions.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Mountains Beyond Mountains
Have you ever read the book Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder? Its an account of Paul Farmer's work in Haiti. Its a good story and short primer on Haiti.
Spent the early AM putting the finishing touches on the distribution training I held at 9AM. Started the training by debriefing (used SWOT which worked okay) the national staff on the previous days distribution (the day I flew in). That distribution got ugly because... well, it wasn't planned. The team literally showed up with a truck full of food in an urban neighborhood. I was sympathetic of the national staff when I heard that their participation was minimal. They were likely afraid for their lives.
Nothing surprised me in debriefing: no plan, no uniforms, no security. I listened to them for a half hour and then gave them a pep talk on the mentality we needed to adopt in order to safeguard our work. I promised some uniforms and then set to work training them in roles and responsibilities. Security begins with the right mentality. Its hard to tell whether our staff is suffering from PTSD or whether they are just pissed off about one thing or another. Check that--they're all sleeping under tarps (if they're lucky) in the street. Given that they show up for work is remarkable.
Spent the afternoon performing assesments in the mountains overlooking PaP. Beautiful area. Mountains beyond mountains for sure. Lots of nice villas built by rich families perch over the edge of cliffs. Most seemed intact, though structurally they might have problems. Beyond the nice villas the paved road ends and you go up higher, into a region called Bellevue La Montagne. There we pulled over and walked.
Local community leader took me on a tour of his village. Small 12 by 12 houses built by cinder block cost a family around 6k to build. Almost all are destroyed. The families are farmers. Their wives sell the produce in the city. They all smiled and offered me some coffee.
I didn't stay long--just enough to get some data on the area. I was back at the office by sundown. After dinner we had a marathon meeting regarding our program proposals to the powers that be. I have fears that too much emphasis is being placed on relief. This is a common mistake post-earthquake. The emphasis needs to be on recovery. Its a tough sell though--people want to respond to what they see right now, not what the situation will be in x amount of weeks out. That and the fact that what you see on CNN is not what you see here. Markets are open, food is available. Assist people in recovery--that's what they're already doing.
Anyways, near the end it bogged down into smaller issues. I faked a phone call and snuck away to type this. Its midnight. I'm going to bed.
Spent the early AM putting the finishing touches on the distribution training I held at 9AM. Started the training by debriefing (used SWOT which worked okay) the national staff on the previous days distribution (the day I flew in). That distribution got ugly because... well, it wasn't planned. The team literally showed up with a truck full of food in an urban neighborhood. I was sympathetic of the national staff when I heard that their participation was minimal. They were likely afraid for their lives.
Nothing surprised me in debriefing: no plan, no uniforms, no security. I listened to them for a half hour and then gave them a pep talk on the mentality we needed to adopt in order to safeguard our work. I promised some uniforms and then set to work training them in roles and responsibilities. Security begins with the right mentality. Its hard to tell whether our staff is suffering from PTSD or whether they are just pissed off about one thing or another. Check that--they're all sleeping under tarps (if they're lucky) in the street. Given that they show up for work is remarkable.
Spent the afternoon performing assesments in the mountains overlooking PaP. Beautiful area. Mountains beyond mountains for sure. Lots of nice villas built by rich families perch over the edge of cliffs. Most seemed intact, though structurally they might have problems. Beyond the nice villas the paved road ends and you go up higher, into a region called Bellevue La Montagne. There we pulled over and walked.
Local community leader took me on a tour of his village. Small 12 by 12 houses built by cinder block cost a family around 6k to build. Almost all are destroyed. The families are farmers. Their wives sell the produce in the city. They all smiled and offered me some coffee.
I didn't stay long--just enough to get some data on the area. I was back at the office by sundown. After dinner we had a marathon meeting regarding our program proposals to the powers that be. I have fears that too much emphasis is being placed on relief. This is a common mistake post-earthquake. The emphasis needs to be on recovery. Its a tough sell though--people want to respond to what they see right now, not what the situation will be in x amount of weeks out. That and the fact that what you see on CNN is not what you see here. Markets are open, food is available. Assist people in recovery--that's what they're already doing.
Anyways, near the end it bogged down into smaller issues. I faked a phone call and snuck away to type this. Its midnight. I'm going to bed.
Day 1
UN Humanitarian Air Services operates flights daily from S. Domingo to PaP. We nearly missed ours, arriving just in time to speed out onto the tarmac and climb aboard a Cessna 210 before it took off. Flying into PaP the first thing I noticed was the US navy ships off the coast--one an aircraft carrier. In PaP harbour there are a few large ships capsized, their bulkheads suspended half out of the water. Above, the sky is full of the crisscrossing flight paths of helicopters and planes. To say the airport is busy doesn't quite do it justice. The planes land a couple minutes apart. The majority are UN and US military. Although, it seems every agency you can imagine is here, and each country seems to represented. I even saw an Estonian SAR team.
Outside the airport we were nearly mobbed by young Haitian men, eager to earn a buck by carrying your bag to your car. My colleague ran out of small bills, so one lucky fellow earned a $20 tip--a direct donation, of sorts.
I spent all afternoon trying to get up to speed by talking with random individuals at the giant UN MINUSTAH base. No one seemed to be that far ahead of me. WFP seems well organized--by that I mean their makeshift office is well air-conditioned, with free wifi. In the afternoon I attended a couple coordination meetings and ran into a few old friends from disasters past. Its a small world after all.
In the evening we drew up a plan for the upcoming days. I was irked about a lot of talk concerning food for work--which I disagreed with--but after some discussion it seems the issue is off the table. I stayed up late putting together a training course on food distribution, in anticipation of some hot, sweaty days to come. I got in bed at 1AM--just after typing this.
Outside the airport we were nearly mobbed by young Haitian men, eager to earn a buck by carrying your bag to your car. My colleague ran out of small bills, so one lucky fellow earned a $20 tip--a direct donation, of sorts.
I spent all afternoon trying to get up to speed by talking with random individuals at the giant UN MINUSTAH base. No one seemed to be that far ahead of me. WFP seems well organized--by that I mean their makeshift office is well air-conditioned, with free wifi. In the afternoon I attended a couple coordination meetings and ran into a few old friends from disasters past. Its a small world after all.
In the evening we drew up a plan for the upcoming days. I was irked about a lot of talk concerning food for work--which I disagreed with--but after some discussion it seems the issue is off the table. I stayed up late putting together a training course on food distribution, in anticipation of some hot, sweaty days to come. I got in bed at 1AM--just after typing this.
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