A glancing blow still stings

A man waits with his belongings in his flooded home during the passing of
Hurricane Tomas in Leogane, Haiti. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

All in all, Haiti was spared the worst of hurricane Tomas over the last 48 hours. The storm took its time in arriving and constantly flip-flopped from being considered a tropical storm or hurricane (though it finally settled on the latter). While the south-west and north were struck with heavy winds and rain, Port-au-Prince was just got rain - and less than expected. Even so, many areas have flooded and six people are reported dead. The country is now trying to coordinate a response to reach those who have been cut off. The UN and government estimate an initial response cost of $14M.

For Tania and I, it was an eerie feeling to experience the anticipation of a hurricane. We both stayed at a house where all of her colleagues live, which is adjacent to a large camp that the NGO serves. Not being able to sleep on Friday night, I spent an hour on the balcony looking up at a thick blanket of shadowy clouds sliding over the city. The rain was light. If my mind hadn't been picturing the internet satellite views that I'd been glued to all day, I would have thought the sky to be a familiar comfort of a Vancouver winter evening. But knowing this was likely just a teasing first view of the storm, I focused on every tree rustle, every rain burst, to try to detect "the real beginning" of the terrible Tomas.

But it didn't come, and I soon went to bed convinced I would hear any significant activity before the worst arrived. When we all got up again at 6am, the rain continued - a bit stronger now - but the wind was silent. By late morning, the sattelite showed that the storm was as close as it would get, about 200km away. Morning turned to afternoon, and still the winds remained calm. By evening the rains picked up again, strengthening to a downpour at about 3am. This was the trailing blow of Tomas, who has since made a slow decline as it heads into open ocean tracking North East.

In the end, the camps in the capital area were spared the tent-shredding winds that were feared. But all that rain amounted to significant flooding in certain coastal areas. Many camps are now filled with mud which will takes days, if not weeks to dry out. And the stagnant water may prove to be an added boost to an already tenacious cholera outbreak that has killed more than 400 people.


It is now Sunday afternoon. The sun is out and music is blaring on the streets of our neighbourhood.
Life goes on. Thanks for all the concerned messages over the last few days!

(Photos from TheJournal.ie)

Rumours and Cholera

A man holds his own IV bag outside of an overcrowded clinic
-Photo from CBC.ca

For a two days now, the death toll has been relatively stable at around 300 with well over 4,000 infections. It seems that Haiti has been given a little bit of time (or breathing space) to prepare for what the experts are predicting will be a large second wave. Actions on the ground have been frantic - NGOs have leapt into action setting up medical sites, the government has been pushing public messages out to radio, and the UN agencies have attempted to consolidate needs lists to appeal to international donors.

All the while Haitians are legitimately wondering where the cholera came from - after all, this is an island that hasn't had a case in over 200 years (or maybe ever). So eyes are turning to the foreigners. And who is easier to blame than those who are resented by many Haitians? The Peacekeepers. The current rumour spreading is that Nepalese troops must have brought the bacteria, based on the logic that they are stationed near the outbreak area.... and the fact that their country occasionally has cases of cholera. One of my drivers, who a few days ago surely had never heard of the country of Nepal, is now an expert on the country's previous cholera epidemics.

The worst part about the rumour is it can't be completely ruled out since there isn't a better (or more popular) theory right now. If it proves to be true, it will be another paragraph in multichapter tomb on foreign-caused problems in Haiti.

For now the country is coping with the outbreak. Though the cholera will almost certainly breach Port au Prince in the coming days, the health and sanitation (government and non-government) agencies are preparing quickly to lessen the effects. With a quick mobilization, the epidemic will hopefully end after a couple of months. But long after the NGO emergency tents are taken down, the bacteria will remain lurking on the island for generations.

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...

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!)