Of routines and challenges...

It’s all becoming a little eerie.  I get picked up for work by the team carpool at 7.45, start work at 8.00. I prepare for and attend some meetings during the day, often eating lunch at my desk.  I leave work at 6.00. Sometimes Tania and I eat at home (in our newly found studio-apartment) and sometimes we eat at a restaurant with friends. It seems a work day routine is pretty familiar anywhere in the world.

The work itself is far from familiar though. I’m working with the government to implement a health plan with the help of foreign aid partners and NGOs. It’s a tricky business. Most of the ministries here lost many staff the earthquake, not to mention the ministry buildings themselves (see photo of temporary Health Ministry building funded by Canada). The foreign aid donors now have more money to spend and the NGOs are providing more services. Under these conditions, it’s tough to see how the government can hold the little ground it had gained in terms of leadership. So even though everybody will say they’re committed to seeing the state succeed, nobody can really afford to let it run the show with so much at stake.

I have to say that I’m impressed with many of the Haitians I work with in the government. Much of the staff is young, computer literate and eloquent. They are eager to be heard by their weary superiors and determined to be taken seriously by the ever-changing foreign faces of aid agencies (anything more than a 4 month stay seems to be considered “long term”). It's quite a complex web of interests...

From the Classroom to the Field

As expected, most people in Graham’s Masters program decided to do an internship for the summer. Some are working with NGOs, others with government agencies and grass roots organizations. These are bits and pieces from emails coming from different corners of the world wiht comments on living conditions and resource management:

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"The security situation is a little overwhelming. We have a body guard and driver at all times.... in theory, we're not allowed to walk on the road. So far, this means no walking at all!

Up until now, I've been sitting in on meetings... The goal is to improve the planning process... hopefully by coordinating the IOs and NGOs which don't talk to each other as much as they should...."

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“I am finding the vehicle dependence here hard enough.[This city] is pretty sprawling and most people seem to get around in cars. So far the driver from work has been picking me up but I don't really want to rely on that for too long so will have to figure out minibuses and taxis. So I sympathize at the moment with feeling housebound.

...There is really no communication whatsoever between actors in the field. They all seem to work away in their little bubbles... the main bilateral and multilateral donors here have signed up to a joint assistance strategy which envisages a division of labour system where they allocate lead / active and background roles in different sectors to try to avoid overlap and increase coordination...It is actually very difficult to get NGO data because there is no oversight / international body that collates it.

The internet is painfully slow here. It has literally taken all day to download some antivirus software onto my computer. It keeps cutting out so I have to start again. We also had a country wide power outage for most of yesterday...."

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"I am still in [my home country]. On Wednesday I will fly to [my summer destination] - si Dios quiere... Or better: if the government allows it. I still don't have my visa. At the embassy they say that there was a computer issue, so the authorization from the capital did not arrive in time. Now I am supposed to enter the country on a tourist visa and apply again once I’m there.

...Keeping track of resources is not easy. That's why many donors prefer to do projects instead of general budget support or sector-wide approaches (SWAps). In one case, all the big bilateral and multilateral donors (except the U.S.) got together under a so-called joint assistance strategy. Through this umbrella, they are trying to work out mechanisms to track their resources...”

Finally in Port-au-Prince!

For those of you have asked Graham has been in Haiti since mid-June but I just arrived this weekend.

The flights from Vancouver and Dallas were rather uneventful. Then I made it to Miami where I had to wait for 4 hours for my connecting flight to Port-au-Prince. Slowly but surely fellow passengers started arriving to the lounge. First, a couple of Haitian families, then some very young looking girls and last but not least four groups in colour coordinated t-shirts.

The Haitians were all very well dressed so I assumed they were part of Haiti's minuscule wealthy class. A few moments later, I realized the man sitting next to me on the plane was having trouble filling out his immigration form. The other passenger on my row showed him the other side of the form written in French and Creole but he still seemed very perplexed. Then it dawned on me that he could not read or write. I asked for his passport information and filled it out for him, then turned around to realize the flight attendants were doing the same all over the plane. According to UNICEF about 45% of Haiti’s population is illiterate.

The second group in the plane turned out to be nurses who were coming to Haiti for a one-week volunteering program. The two nurses that I talked to were from Ohio and Tennessee. They were both in their early 20s and had never left the United States before. I asked if the volunteering program was part of their degree and they said it wasn’t. They had some time off and decided to get some field experience. They didn’t know exactly where in Haiti they were going or what type of facility they were helping at. They were unsure their program was at all connected to the local governments or any official health care program. There were another 22 nurses on the same plane. They brought lots of supplies and a lot of goodwill. The country needs all the help it can get, particularly in the health care area. But how much can they change in less than 7 days?

The third group was made of four small sub-groups. They were easy to tell apart due to their brightly coloured t-shirts in neon blue, pink, orange and yellow. Most groups had about 15 people. There were some very young boys, some older, they seemed fairly equally divided between men and women, there were also children with special needs, and a couple of mothers with their very young babies. So who were these people? After lining up to buy some coffee before boarding our 6:30am flight, I was finally able to read the t-shirts up close one by one: Methodist Relief Mission, then Haiti Adventist Group, then the Haitian Christian mission, and finally the Evangelical Mission.

To my very opinionated/ agnostic/ atheist friends out there...Any comments?

(*We also welcome comments from the rest of you!)

A view into tent city

"A Service Economy in Haiti’s Tent Cities" - An interesting clip from NPR

Smoke signals from a little island in the Caribbean...

This afternoon we went up the mountain to a hotel... As we were leaving, we noticed a wall of rain coming towards us, slowly erasing the view ahead of us. The wind picked up quickly and the rain started pouring down. By the time we got back it was already dark, but I took a picture of the sky as the rain lifted. The lights you see are downtown Port au Prince - the ocean is beyond. I hope to take my camera around with me more this week to take pictures.

* Sent By Graham on June 19.

First stop. Finding an apartment.

As we had expected, post-earthquake Port-au-Prince does not have a huge number of places available for rent. Graham and I have exchanged a few emails to discuss our choices and we seem to be caught up between a) renting a semi-modern unit in a very expensive area and b) smaller apartments that might not be as safe. The latter ones are of course cheaper but they are still more expensive than our place in Italy! It is hard because we can’t tell what a “safe” area really entails but also because we don’t want to be totally isolated from Haitians. Wherever we have traveled we have tried our best to learn a least a little bit of the local language, eat where and what locals do and experience the local culture first hand. That is not to say that we are not looking forward to meeting fellow expats. Both in Colombia and in Italy we were lucky enough to meet and have the support of an amazing network of mostly English speakers that happened to be living there. So as always, we want the best of both worlds... Let’s hope we can do just that this time around!

Making sense out of Port-au-Prince

As Tania mentioned, I made it safely to Haiti and am slowly figuring out how things work here. I was picked up from the airport and spent the whole ride staring out the window. But from the comfort of the air-conditioned new SUV, I was in fact staring into the window of the reality of Port-au-Prince. On the streets, the locals were bustling around street vendors selling fruits, water and clothing. On the roads there was an endless parade of horn-honking vehicles in grid-lock traffic. The new cars all bore decals of the international effort. UN, Red Cross, Care, UNICEF, World Food Program – you name it, they are all here. The other cars were old brightly coloured pickup trucks (“tap-taps”) which are the main local transport. At first, all the commotion hid the signs of the earthquake. But then, it began to reveal itself. From behind walls there spilled tree-sized piles of rubble. Some small buildings looked like they had been split down the middle by a giant axe. In cleared areas, a mosaic of tarps was the tell-tale signs of cramped camps. We kept moving towards the hills and away from the epicentre, where the wealthy neighbourhoods escaped the worst of the damage. Many of the NGOs and embassies are based there, where it is considered safer and more “foreigner friendly”. At one point we even passed the freshly painted yellow gate of the Scientology office (click here for an interesting firsthand account of the Volunteer Ministers). After almost an hour, we made it to a gated complex that will be my home until the end of the month. After that, Tania and I will be living in a studio in the suburb of Petion Ville.

*posted from Vancouver by Tania on behalf of Graham

T- 8... counting the days until I fly to Port-au-Prince

Quick update: Due to security/accommodation issues we decided to fly separately. Graham left on June 15th and I will fly in a few days.

First things first. Graham has reported back from Port-au-Prince. He is doing well. As expected the heat (38 C today) and the language have been challenging. He has spent the last couple of days looking for an apartment for us, getting to know the people in his team and trying to establish what his tasks will be during the next little bit.

I am currently in Vancouver, BC , a city which is possibly the exact opposite of what I expect Port-au-Prince looks like. It is summer time in this part of the world but it has been cold and rainy. Weather aside, this is probably the most organized, clean, and efficient place I have ever lived in. “Experts” often rank it as one of the best places to live in the world, and it only takes a short stroll through one of the many parks or beaches to understand why. I will try to post some pictures so I don’t bore you with endless descriptions... My point is that it is pretty hard to pack for post-earthquake Haiti while being here. Everything seems so easy and reachable when you’re in Canada. Huge stores everywhere, drinkable tap water, you can do anything online... So what to pack aside from the obvious? I feel very silly thinking about things like shoes considering the dire situation of so many Haitians. However, we are planning to be there for several months and anything that could make our experience a bit easier it’s probably not a bad idea. So, big French dictionary? Extra mosquito repellent? Food? Books? I’ll keep thinking about it while I take advantage of the peace and quiet of this city for a few more days.

Disclaimers

“Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it to recount it.”
-Gabriel Garcia Marquez

This quote from my favourite author really speaks to what Graham and I are trying to do with this blog. We are aware that when you retell a story to a very diverse audience it often seems like you are only showing one side, one perspective. That is what you will find here, private opinions and biased recollections that other people might disagree with. These are our very own personal impressions shaped by who, how and where we are. It doesn't reflect the opinions of the institutions or companies we work for.

And last but not least....

Due to confidentiality reasons we might not be able to post certain details about our work but we are pretty confident there will still be plenty of content to write about.

Also, this blog is our way of keeping in touch with our friends and family scattered all over the world. For that reason, you'll notice some posts will be in Español. If you are not fluent in Colombian, please excuse us and keep scrolling to the next entry!

Next stop Port-au-Prince

The (next) adventure is about to begin. Tomorrow I fly via Montreal to Port-au-Prince, Haiti to begin a year's work with an NGO. Want to know more details about the role? Join the club. For now, I know that I will be supporting the Health Ministry, as they implement a complex plan to improve their services via the coordination between government and NGO resources.

The reactions of friends and family have spanned the whole spectrum. Tania and I have received vigorous handshakes of appreciation, astounded looks of confusion and confident nods of approval. All have acted surprised, but most are not. After all, we've been bouncing around the world for several years now (like "pingpong balls" as Tania's mother would say) and to many, Haiti is just the next stop. But it's actually quite different.

Our experience in Haiti will define whether we orient our careers towards development work. We've both had enough academic exposure to be healthily skeptical about not only the effectiveness of NGOs and multi-lateral organizations, but also the "strategy" of development itself. After all, despite the work of legions of NGOs and billions of development assistance, Haiti is neither wealthier not healthier than it was 50 years ago. But we are still believers in the ability - and duty - of the developed world to improve living standards in countries like Haiti. There is no excuse for development academics and practitioners but to improve their methods. Status quo is too often woefully inadequate.

Though important, these thoughts have long given way to more pressing concerns. My mind is now swirling with thoughts of finding a place to live, learning Creole, adjusting to the humidity, and surviving hurricane season. Ci siamo? Yes, as ready as I'll ever be.