Challenging Conditions

It’s been one full week since I arrived as the American Refugee Committee’s Protection Officer in Haiti. Our team is extremely tired, having spent long hours in the sun and eating just one meal a day -- a Meal-Ready-to-Eat (MRE) that we make by pouring hot water into a bag of dried food.


Most of the stores are closed, so it's difficult to buy things and find what you need. Plus, the streets are so congested that it takes an hour or more to get anywhere in the city, making it close to impossible to get much done during the day.


Since it's Sunday and many people are taking the day off to go to church, we are spending our day planning for the rest of the week. We are putting together lists of supplies and liaising with UNICEF on what they can donate to the child-friendly spaces.


The teachers associations submitted informal proposals to us for what they hoped to accomplish in each of their zones. We reviewed the proposals and gave feedback to the teachers. We were also able to get some tents from our colleagues working in Fond Parisien, which will greatly help to provide shelter for the children.


There were lots of people going to church today. When driving around the city, you can see services being held outside and many people singing and praying. Most people here are religious and have been praying every night in hope that they will find a way to start over.


Although there are informal markets and shops that are operating, most businesses lost all of their goods and now have to start over from scratch. I am also running into lots of university students who have nothing to do because their schools have been damaged and their papers are lost.


Some people are saying that the earthquake was a message from God who was punishing the people of Haiti for something they have done wrong. I am telling them that is not true and that slowly things will get better.

More Team Members Join Blog

Now that I’m back in Minneapolis, our relief workers on the ground in Haiti will continue to post updates on our response. The first contributor will be Leora Ward, Emergency Protection Officer. Leora is based in Washington, D.C., and has been working in Haiti the past couple weeks. Her job is to ensure that women and children, who are more vulnerable in emergency situations, are protected and their needs are being met. Leora’s posts from the past couple weeks will go up tomorrow.

Thank you for continuing to follow this story. Even though media coverage has decreased, the needs in Haiti are still incredible. And they won’t go away any time soon.

We’re still working in Fond Parisien and Terraine D’Acra — giving medical care, providing clean water, setting up shelters, and managing the settlements. We intend to stay as long as we’re needed.

Last Day in Haiti

Photos: (top to bottom: 1) drilling a well, 2) Fistun, and 3) little girl leaving in the settlement with ARC relief worker Shannon)

Yesterday was my last day in Haiti. I decided that rather than fly out to Santo Domingo, I wanted to see how our team was doing at our settlement in Fond Parisien (an hour's drive east of Port-Au-Prince). I'm glad I did.

When I left our team there, we were putting up the first tents for the settlement and digging the latrines. So much has happened since:
*84 people have moved into the settlement, patients recovering from injuries and their families.
*There is a mobile health clinic that comes to the camp each day to check on patients recovering
*A well was being dug into the aquifer to provide the people with clean water.
*More and more tents were going up all the time.
*Each family had a kit of essentials like soap, diapers, a basin and other items.
*And we distributed food for everyone living in the camp while I was there = beans, sardines, rice, biscuits, Plumpy Nut, and more.

The people living there were all happy that they had the things they needed and a space of their own.

I'm glad, because all of these people have been through terrible things. I met one young man in the camp named Fistun.

Fistun had arrived at the camp the night before. He lost his family to the earthquake. He accompanied his mother, who was injured, to the clinic nearby our settlement. His mother wasn't able to recover and she passed away at the clinic. Fistun then came to live at our settlement.

When he came to the settlement, Fistun cried for hours in his tent. The women in the settlement were finally able to calm him.

Fistun has already started to make the settlement more like home. He was fixing up his tent when I met him, and he had hung up some paintings he painted inside. One of the women asked him how he was doing. He said "petit-petit" better.

This is why we're here - to help Haitians like Fistun recover from the earthquake, physically and mentally.

Thanks so much for following me on my first emergency response. I hope my reflections helped give you an idea of the issues Haitians are dealing with. The Haiti recovery effort will last for years. If you'd like to support the American Refugee Committee's efforts, go online to www.ARCrelief.org and click donate.

A Place to Heal

Chris is currently without an internet connection, so he sent this update at 11 p.m. (midnight his time) via text message:

Today at Fond Parisien we hit the ground running on our settlement for patients and families living at clinics in the surrounding area. It's a good thing, too. The clinics are doing incredible work, but they're set up primarily to take care of patients. Children have nothing to keep them busy. Adults have nothing to do. And there's very little privacy for families.

Our settlement is ready to accept patients tomorrow. Today we got 20 large tents up and dug and built latrines. Thanks to many generous donors, we have lots of supplies for the camp, too. And the camp will have spaces for children to play and adults to relax.

New patients continue to arrive at the clinics, and there isn't enough space. We got our settlement up and running in the nick of time. I was glad I got the chance to help set up the tents. I'm back in Port-au-Prince now. I hope to see the settlement again, this time with people there and patients continuing to heal.

At Fond Parisien

Part of our Haiti relief Team has been working near the border with the Dominican Republic at a place called Love the Child. Love the Child is an orphanage that has graciously opened its doors to become a kind of field clinic for people who were injured in the earthquake. There are 130 patients here plus all of their family members.

The clinic is focused mostly on post-operative care, which is a gap in this emergency. Back in Port-Au-Prince, one of the greatest concerns is with follow-up care. There are so many people in need of urgent care and surgeries, that quickly developing a plan for follow-up care has been difficult for organizations providing medical care. As a result, people who've had amputations or other surgeries develop infections and go through trauma all over again.

This clinic has been able to ensure that people are recovering fully.

The care at this compound is very good. And the conditions are good. But it is still a very sad situation. Today, a young girl arrived by ambulance from a different hospital - so that she could receive good after-care here. She had what looked like a broken wrist and her foot had been amputated.

We were discussing the other night how long it will take for Haitians to get over the trauma the country has experienced. As with this little girl, signs of the earthquake will remain for an entire generation.