Haiti has been awash in visitors for the last two months. The relief effort after the earthquake brought thousands of people to the country that had never been there before. Few had any understanding of Haitian traditions, Haitian customs and the way things were done in Haiti up until January 12, 2010. That was both a good thing and a bad thing.

On January 11, 2010, Haiti was a cesspool. Its people were among the poorest on the planet and its government was dysfunctional in all of the traditional ways of a third world country. It had no army, and its police were supported and supervised by United Nations military forces.

Tabitha Hale is a twenty-something conservative activist. She is well known in political social media circles and is considered by many to be an up and comer.

Tabitha spent six days in early March, 2010, in Haiti working with groups associated with her church. She worked in the southern coastal community of Jacmel and in the surrounding region. I was fortunate to interview her on March 17 about her experiences.

Jacmel was in the part of the earthquake damage zone that did not receive immediate assistance. The Canadian military eventually moved in, took control of the city’s small airport and began relief efforts. Hale had nothing but praise for their efforts.

As a city, Jacmel had a tourist “zone” where the businesses and buildings were oriented to tourists, many of whom arrived by cruise ship. She found this area to be virtually leveled. The remainder of the city had a great deal of damage, but Miss Hale sometimes could not tell whether the damage was from the earthquake or was from before the quake.

The local soccer field is now a tent city, filled with refugees from the quake.

The hospital in Jacmel was damaged. The Canadian military were operating a clinic in tents on the grounds of the hospital. Across the street is an orphanage run by the Sisters of Charity.

The orphanage is spartan. The Sisters follow Mother Teresa’s rule, to take the sickest of the sick and the poorest of the poor. Hale writes:

The Sisters that run the orphanage are clearly good women. They did their job well – they kept the place pretty clean, and I think the kids were fed enough. They clearly made most of the clothes – most of the babies wore matching checked shirts, all sewn from the same fabric.

I tried for a minute to put myself in their position. They clearly didn’t have the resources or the knowledge to give extensive medical treatment. They treated for Scabies and did what they could. Babies still die all the time. There aren’t enough of them to give the babies the attention they need. The babies are mostly two to a crib, and like the little girl, there is little attention paid to anything but keeping them alive. After all, what else can you do? When you’re charged with keeping that many children alive, how can you really do anything else?

Hale did not see any large aid agencies at work during her visit. She saw, and writes about a number of small NGOs, mostly faith based, doing what they can with limited resources. She saw little sign of a Haitian government.

Roads, as we know them, were nearly non-existent. Some were, as she describes them, trails. She saw survivors living in the rubble of their homes. No one was able to remove the rubble because there was no equipment, no plan. She believes that recovery can begin only if the rubble is cleared and people have to rebuild.

Tabitha Hale’s experiences in Haiti can be found at this link. Here is her Facebook page.

Andrew Lubin is a noted journalist and writer, covering military affairs and the United States Marine Corps. He spent ten days in Haiti, from January 24 to February 2, 2010, embedded with the 22^nd MEU.

The Marines are providing earthquake relief west of Port-au-Prince along Haiti’s norther shore. Their coverage ranges for 60 kilometers from Carrefour through Leogane to Grand Goave and about 8 km. inland. The Marines have spread out into several encampments to better cover their assigned locations.

I interviewed Prof. Lubin on March 16. While his stay in Haiti was some time ago, he has kept in touch with the Marines in Haiti.

Port-au-Prince from the air on Jan 24. Photo by Andrew Lubin

Port-au-Prince from the air on Jan 24. Photo by Andrew Lubin

Lubin described the scene as “complete destruction”. Haitian authorities were either killed in the earthquake or abandoned their posts. The Marines are working with local community leaders, such as teachers, and small NGOs that have operated in the region for some time.

Earthquake damage to haitian church. Photo by Andrew Lubin

One of the NGOs that the Marines have worked with is the Star of Hope.

Prof. Lubin talked about the grassroots efforts at recovery that the Haitians are making. He found the Haitian people to be very entrepreneurial, and spoke with admiration of the various enterprises he saw being set up in the disaster zone.

He saw no sign of any Haitian government presence in the region. He saw no signs, at that time, of any of the larger aid agencies working in the region. Lubin specifically mentioned the Red Cross as having raised a lot of money but not being visible on the ground in the Leogane area.

Little or no recovery efforts had been made during his stay. The Marines used their equipment to establish bases and make necessary improvements to roads but they were not there for recovery.

Both interviewees were emphatic that Port-au-Prince is in terrible shape. Hale and Lubin were able to see the city from the air during their stays. Hale described it as a sea of blue, the tarps being distributed for temporary shelter.

The Mangine family is part of the group that Tabitha Hale worked with. They have a blog about their life in Haiti here. From March 9:

So much is broken; there seems no way to move forward. When such a huge percentage of a country’s population is now displaced, it’s as if, in spite of the already widespread death and destruction, we are tiptoeing on the edge of a cliff—or on the edge of a cracked and slanting building and we’re all just crossing our fingers that nothing else bad is going to happen. But without doubt, rainy season is coming to Haiti. With little doubt, tropical storms and hurricanes are headed to Haiti within the next few months. The misery. The disease. The landslides. The hopelessness. The mud. The death. We’ve just hit the tip of the proverbial iceberg. I don’t think that ANYONE has a plan for what’s going to happen when these inevitabilities arrive. What the heck are these people living in tents (literally, a million or more of them) going to do when the rains come? It’s a question I hear pondered often, but never answered. Because no one knows WHERE all these people—my neighbors—will go when the rains come. My faith has been stretched a lot lately. I find myself with more questions for God and less peace because I don’t have any answers.

The Catholic Church in Haiti suffered a massive blow. While I do not have numbers on the diocesan clergy, I do have information on the deaths, injuries and damages to religious orders. At least 36 priests, sisters and brothers were killed, and hundreds of students in schools.

The Livesay family work in haiti and are also blogging. March 8 post:

I wish I knew how to explain the insane number of “tent cities” there are popping up all over Port au Prince and surrounding areas. Everywhere you turn there is another large area of tents packed wall to wall. Some areas have all matching tents, you can sort of tell that the distribution happened all at once because everyone has blue or everyone has white or everyone has the same usaid tarps. On the edge of these little cities the people who did not get a tent or a nice tarp have made little make-shift tents with sheets and sticks and thin plastic bags. It is completely mind-numbing to think about these people in this housing during rainy season. I don’t know how they can possibly live like this.

Jessica Leeder is writing a blog from haiti for the Canadian paper The Globe and Mail. It’s focused on the Jacmel region. A March 15 post:

Port-au-Prince has the feel of a desperate, dangerous place that is growing steadily worse. While Jacmel has been improving by small but significant leaps, in my two visits to Port-au-Prince I’ve seen little change. While small businesses are starting to open their doors again in Jacmel – soft-drink wholesalers, a few clothiers and auto parts and grocery vendors – Port-au-Prince remains wholly destroyed. The place looks, as the Governor-General pointed out, as if it has been bombed. A persistent cloud of dust hangs over the city, and its particles get everywhere – into your eyes, your nose, your ears, your mouth.

Both times I’ve come from the place, I leave it feeling filthy and spent. It is draining to see all the destruction, the utter lack of hope. I feel sorrow for the people who remain there.

Arriving back in Jacmel after more than a month of living here, feels like coming home. Opening the car window to breathe in the air reminds me of the year I lived in New York City. I lived in an apartment on Central Park West, right next to the park (although we couldn’t afford a view!) and when I would come up out of the subway after traipsing around the projects in Brooklyn all day, the air was clean and distinctive. The same is true in Jacmel.

The fact that there’s no large industry here is bad for the economy but wonderful for the environment. The sea air is lovely and welcoming after the pollution of Port-au-Prince. And even though the streets can feel packed and frenzied – and full of rubble these days – compared with the capital city, Jacmel is a mellow little town where nobody moves too quickly and nobody ever really gets upset.

Haiti Epidemic Advisory System (HEAS) SitRep: UPDATED 13 MAR

Formal medical surveillance efforts remain operationally nascent. Informal surveillance and ground ops expanding quickly in Port-au-Prince. The ad hoc medical infrastructure largely supported by rotating medical responders (who are typically rotating every 1 to 2 weeks) and NGOs is contracting over time as international interest in Haiti declines. Forty-six NGOs have departed since the earthquake according to the UN Health Cluster. This likely represents the first responder community providing immediate trauma and recovery support. We have further identified a critical problem with logistics, where responders are unsure of where supplies are located. This is compounded by lack of efficient resource tracking at the hospitals and clinics. The implication is the medical infrastructure in Port-au-Prince is becoming more sensitive to abrupt changes in patient flow, and it portends a high probability of losing control in the context of an outbreak response during the coming rainy season.

In summary, recovery is a long way off for Haiti. It is unclear if any real efforts are being made and the utter lack of Haitian governance tells the story of the last three generations. Haiti is not a country so much as it is a place where people need our help.

Over 60 articles about the Haitian earthquake, U.S. military assistance to Haiti after the quake, American giving to earthquake relief and other related topics can be found at the link Haiti Quake 2010.

the attachments to this post:

Lubin-church damage from quake

Lubin-PaP from the air-2

Lubin-PaP from the air

Lubin

Tabitha Hale

Tags: Haiti, haiti disaster, Haiti earthquake, Haiti earthquake damage, Haiti relief, situation in Haiti

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 18th, 2010 at 9:00 am and is filed under Charity, Disasters, Original writing, Original writing, Reporting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.