May 25 2010
Reflections on my Time in Leogane, Haiti
I left Haiti on Friday, spent a night in New York and have been home in Canada for a couple of days. I’m sitting at my kitchen table, listening to the radio, typing away on my computer, sipping on a fruit smoothie and thinking about the nine weeks I spent volunteering in Leogane, the epicentre of the Haitian earthquake. I’ve had a hot shower, my clothes have been washed and my sore bones and wounds are starting to recover. I’ve unpacked my backpack, visited wit family and friends, eaten copious amounts of ice cream, watched some bad TV, relaxed with a book in the sun in the back yard and have just been generally unwinding and decompressing from what was a pretty intense couple of months in Haiti.
The funny thing is, though, that all I really want to do is ge on a plane and head straight back there.
Destruction
I read somewhere that Leogane has had 90 percent of its buildings damaged or completely destroyed due to the earthquake and this number seems believable as you walk down the city’s streets. I arrived about a month after the quake and while the initial chaos had subsided, the collapsed building, streets filled with rubble and people with lost looks on their faces served as a daily reminder to what had happened. The mayor’s office is still standing but the huge cracks in the walls make it uninhabitable and serve as a reminder of the devastation. Everything from small family homes to huge buildings seem to have been damaged in some way… most seriously. The earthquake only lasted 37 seconds and it’s amazing to me the destruction it caused.
Clean Up
In the nine weeks I was there from March 16th to May 21st I saw and participated in the clean up operation. HODR have cleared over 70 foundations of rubble, giving those families an opportunity to move out of camps and back to a space of their own. Some super scary buildings that I have used as landmarks since my arrival have been cleared up by Haitian cash-for-work teams at a slow, but steady pace. The UN and an NGO called CHF have huge trucks and diggers and have been hauling rubble from the streets out to a flood plane on the edge of town. Progress is being made and it’s encouraging to see the changes in the landscape after two months but with the scale of this disaster, there will be rubble and damaged buildings in Leogane for a long time to come.
Shelter
Probably the most depressing part of this whole thing is seeing the camps many people are still living in. Some people have Shelterbox or other high quality tents but many are still living in shacks made of old, rusty corrugated tin roofing or, worse still, bed sheets and tarps. I can’t imagine how people in these structures deal with the oppressive heat and the sometimes torrential rains and I don’t even want to think about what will happen as hurricane season approaches. With the amount of money that has been donated to Haiti it seems unfathomable that everyone doesn’t have at least a decent tent or a set of tarps to make a shelter.
I don’t know how the Red Cross works but the only thing I’ve seen with their logo on it in Leogane is their SUVs as they drive through town. I’ve seen a few tarps around with US AID on them, some Samaritan’s Purse tarps over schools, and the Canadian military had a bit of a presence here early on. CHF, who are operating out of our backyard, have been prefabricating and distributing transitional steel houses to people and it’s encouraging to see them popping up around town.
Rebuilding
Very little rebuilding has begun. I’ve seen a few giant houses being reconstructed but my guess is their owned by some of the few but super wealthy people that live in Haiti. Some cinder block factories have been pumping out more bricks but who knows if the standard is any higher than before the earthquake. My guess is not.
A few transitional schools have been popping up made of plywood with a corrugated iron roof. HODR have just completed their first school and there are a bunch more in the pipeline. The schools are similar to the house design used in Indonesia and with thin concrete walls, the structure looks like a regular building from the outside, is sturdy, and doesn’t have heavy bricks that could fall in an earthquake.
Work
Clearing rubble is hard work but it’s something I’ve done before so I knew what I was in for. What took me by surprise was the crazy hot days. The weather was hot but bearable when I arrived in March but by the time I left in May, the humidity combined with the relentless sun made Haiti the hottest place I’ve ever been. Throw in some seriously physical work and I’m amazed I survived!
We often had four or five teams of people out clearing rubble each day. The basic idea is to clear the foundation so that rebuilding can begin or, more likely, so that families can return to their own space and set up a tent outside of a camp. It’s really tough work, especially since almost all of the buildings are huge, concrete beasts, usually with their roof intact and the walls collapsed. Teams descend on the building with sledge hammers to break up the roof and then need to pull out the reinforcement bar (rebar) that’s threaded through the roof like a puzzle. This is slow work but once the rebar is taken out (to be used again), the rubble removal pace picks up and the rest of the house is sledged, shovelled and taken by wheelbarrow out to the streets.
I also ended up spending some of my time working on taking photos and sorting and uploading them to the Flickr site which is a lot more time consuming that you would think. I spent three days behind a jigsaw cutting patterns into plywood for the first school and was on the build team for the last three weeks of my time in Haiti. I somehow found myself leading the team putting concrete onto the walls even though I usually avoid leading as much as possible. I really enjoyed it though and was sad to have to leave a few days before we were due to finish. I loved working on the school and can’t wait to see the photos when its done.
Life in Leogane
I love Haiti and the country continues to amaze me on this second visit. Haiti is pretty screwed and earthquakes and hurricanes add to the misery but people here amaze me each day. I’ve picked up a bit of Creole and have been able to have short, simple conversations with people who have lost everything. I am always in awe of the amount of faith people who have been stomped on can have in god and, here in Haiti, they have it in bucketloads. I’m not big into spirituality and religion but there’s got to be a lesson in there somewhere. It’s amazing to me and if that’s what keeps people here smiling and hopeful (and they are) then praise Jesus!
I think it’s the people I meet on each project who keep me coming back to work with HODR. Sure, the whole helping thing is great but it takes a bit more than wanting to help to get most people to fly to the opposite side of the world five times in two years, and I’m no different. I love the HODR atmosphere and the types of people it attracts and that, coupled with my desire to do some hard work and help people, is the reason I’m hooked. I have a lot of good friends through this volunteering thing and continue to meet more amazing people on each project and having a chance to live and work with them each day is pretty great.
Life on base was pretty easy when compared to other HODR projects. This project was pimped out with lots of showers, plenty of meat for lunch and dinner, power tools, sexy wheelbarrows, and all of those little things that add up to make our life here enjoyable. More recently, we even had pizza nights twice a week at the bar next door. The only major difficulty I had was dealing with the heat and having a bunk space without much of a breeze. Overall, life at the HODR base was really enjoyable.
Check out this post written by a visitor from Expedia for an outsider’s view on volunteering with HODR with video. I knew I should have taken more video!
Final Thoughts
I was sad to leave and would have stayed much longer had I not already made plans to go to South Africa for the World Cup. I love Haiti and loved being back there, even if I was there for a terrible reason. I have already found myself looking at flights from South Africa to Haiti via Miami or New York for around October. I want to explore Africa but Haiti seems to have this pull over me and it will always be on my mind.
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Great post Kirsty,
Heard an interesting “This American Life” podcast about Haiti yesterday. Must listen for anyone who wants to TRY and understand what is going on with NGO’s there….
This is the link: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/408/island-time
This one took the cake for me: Adam Davidson and Chana Joffe-Walt from Planet Money follow one Haitian farmer, with the modest crop of two mango trees, through a byzantine system of aid agencies, NGOs, and government bureaucracy as the farmer tries the impossible — to get some plastic milk crates to store and transport her mangoes.
youve taken some excellent photos Kirsty! Thanks for the update about Haiti and your experience there. I hope you enjoy South Africa, wish I could be there too, I miss home sometimes!
Hi. I stumbled onto your site just recently. Unfortunately your computer had just died on you, so your post were infrequent. Of course I totally understand based on your circumstances. So needless to say I am excited that you may start posting a little more.
Welcome home from Haiti. You have done a great service to their people. The world owes you and all of the volunteers there a great big thank you. Thank you.
I find your life fascinating. My wife and I are a couple of years away from kicking our son out of the door to college:) After he has established himself and we a comfortable that he is doing fine, we want to do some traveling. We do not want to be tourist traveling from site to site. We want to go to a region and sort of create our base camp. From there we like to learn the language, mingle with the locals, learn their ways, take classes, and basically get an education instead of just rushing from one site to the next snapping pictures. Well we plan a little of that too, but you get the picture.
We’ll need to build some kind of passive to semi-passive income stream to do this. So reading your blog has given us a lot of hope that it can be done. Your monthly reports are wonderful. It makes our dreams seem more realistic. It will be challenging but hopefully some hard work and a little luck with prevail. Fortunately I have two to three years build it.
I am thankful that you are sharing your journey with us. Your experiences are very helpful and inspiring. I am totally jealous that you are going to the World Cup. Go USA. I have become a big soccer fan in the last couple of years. If you are ever in the Seattle area, shoot me an email and I will take you to a Seattle Sounders game. We have the best fans in MLS. Good luck in your travels. I look forward to a couple of post form SA about your World Cup experiences.
Kirsty,
Thanks for the update on this project, I learned about HODR through this blog last year. I just got the good news that I have a spot reserved for this Haiti project starting in the fall for a month. Bummed I did not get to Padang since I speak Indonesian, but my employer shamefully would not let me have time off. So I am now down one employer and couldn’t be happier!
Morgan
Kirsty,
Saw you on CH this morning, you are so inspiring!! Thank you for all of you hard work. Wonder if you are on FB?
Happy trails!
Andrea
Wow - what a story! Thanks for sharing. The heat, the sad sights… I can imagine this really has changed you (and for the better).
Thanks for doing your little bit to make the world a better place. We salute you.
Nice post and happy to hear ou’re playing catch up at home, have fun. Really enjoying the blog
Nice report - thanks for the pictures. I can’t imagine the hardships the people of Haiti have to endure. You deserve our thanks for helping them. Good luck on your next adventure! And keep us posted!
Thanks for the honest reflections and reports on what you saw on the ground in Haiti. I have to admit I was wondering what was going on with all the aid money that flowed in and whether things had come to a sort of halt once the immediate emergency was over. It’s sad to hear that even with all the money that came in, there are some basic needs that could be dealt with inexpensively that still haven’t been resolved. I’d love to sit down with you over a beer and hear more.
I’ve always admired your dedication to volunteering and it seems like this latest experience has helped you grow even more. Enjoy the World Cup and good luck figuring out your next plans!
Hi Kirsty!
Welcome Home! Sounds like a good mix of helping, making new friends, and progress. Do you think you’ll go back?
Great post, thanks for sharing. I loved the photos
Thanks all for your replies and the nice comments. Sorry I am taking forever to respond! It seems like a lot of you like the photos. I didn’t take all of them but I really should try to make an effort to make this blog more photo-friendly.
@frank Thanks so much for that link. I will have a listen soon. I am amazed at your story but not surprised at all.
@thedame I’m looking forward to SA. If you have any tips or must-dos I would love to hear them.
@don Thanks for the message! Two years is plenty of time to get things up and running. Just keep at it… slow and steady. I’m glad my earnings reports have motivated you. That’s the effect they had on my a few years ago so it’s nice to hear people getting inspired by them.
@morgan That’s awesome! I’ve always wanted to send some people their way so that’s really cool. If you have any questions drop me an email.
@andrea Glad you liked the interview. It was a bit awkward at parts because of some oddly timed questions but overall it was fun. I’m on Facebook but I don’t really use it much. You can get me on Twitter @travoholic if you want to see what I’m up to. Or this blog, of course.
@audrey Seeing people still living under sheets is sad, of course. It becomes infuriating knowing how much money has been pledged to help Haiti. I would love to know more about how the disaster relief and foreign aid machines work. I want to know more before I get too opinionated but things do seem to go really slow in their world. Lets have that beer somewhere in Africa!
@brooke I would like to think logic will prevail and that I will stay in Africa and explore and maybe to some volunteering there because heading back to Haiti doesn’t make financial or travel sense. But the reality is that I will be looking for some excuse to head back there and it won’t take much to get me on a plane. So far I have no plans to go back but we’ll see how things go.
Hi Kristy!
Such a terrible tragedy and i am happy you came back home….and you have taken good photographs..
Sounds to me like you have formed a great bond with the Hands On org - have you considered working for them or working in the volunteer sector?
You are obviously cut out for this type of work.
Enjoy your break at home before heading off to South Africa. As usual it sounds like you really earned your rest & relaxation. It is definitely interesting to hear about the work going on in Haiti. I admit that I would probably not last in those conditions, especially the excessive heat. With work from people like you that country should be able to recover to somewhat normal life eventually. It is sad to hear that all the donations may not have been going to the people who need it the most.
I applaud your efforts and think that you are doing a great thing. May you be blessed in all that you do!
I’m sure after 9 weeks that ice cream felt real good…. you deserve it
We seen in pics buildings completely destroyed due to the earthquake. We can’t forget these scenes in life.
wow its just amazing what you did out there, well done for taking the steps to help
It’s sounds grueling but lovely to serve humanity in such a fashion. I wish that I could go.
Nice post and happy to hear ou’re playing catch up at home, have fun. Really enjoying the blog
Hi I went to Haiti in Feb through April and volunteered. I will return in
Sept for 3 months a least. I am looking to do some work in Leogone. Can you give me some suggestions where I can be the best utilized?
I am a Teacher and also can do Social Work
Yvette
I personally donated in Haiti funds…Good pictures there Kirsty….
It takes tears to take these all.