Every time I get into a conversation with anyone here in Kigali, I come away saying ‘wow’. I’m pretty sure every person I’ve spoken to so far has been supporting some sort of amazing cause or has started an organization of their own or are working in a job doing positive work for way less than they’d be able to earn at home. I have to say that I always feel a bit awkward when the ‘what are you doing here in Kigali?’ question comes up. My reply ‘um, I’m travelling in Africa and I stopped to, uh, work on my business building websites’ always sounds really lame in comparison.

One American girl I met is due to finish up her one year placement with World Teach in October and has decided to stick around afterward to work towards raising $60,000 to build a library in the rural community she had been working in. Another has started her own scholarship fund for Rwandan girls who otherwise couldn’t have afforded to go to school, raising money in her hometown in the US and also here in Kigali through some creative means. Then there’s the lady who works for As We Forgive (an NGO working towards reconciliation among victims and perpetrators of the genocide) seemingly in every possible role from public speaking to fund raising to training to organizing reconciliation workshops in the countryside. Or Meg, the Brit who started a school on her own that is currently educating 200 students who might otherwise not be able to go to school. Even my housemate, a former lawyer in the UK, is working as the manager of a school build for a non-profit agency when he could likely be back at home earning ten times the wage he’s currently on.

Then of course there are the countless Rwandans working hard at helping their own country. Jeanne (herself a victim of the genocide) started the Tubahumurize Association (I’m working on building them a website now) after a friend of hers was murdered by her husband. The centre holds counseling sessions for 300 women who are victims of domestic abuse, the genocide, rape, or have HIV (many suffer from more than one of these issues). It has grown to include classes on various subjects from economics to English to general health, a co-op producing quilts and necklaces, a sewing class for children who are heads of their household, a lunch program, and a community garden. This is a great cause aimed at helping some of the most vulnerable women in Rwanda (possibly the world) and I’m inspired by her efforts, despite all of the obstacles she faces in raising funds for her program.

Coming in direct contact with people working for so many great causes got me thinking about the way people donate money. I like to think that lots of people give to charity but I wonder how many put much thought into which charity they choose. My hunch is that most people give their money to the biggest players who probably pop into their head first when the time comes to make a donation. Often people are compelled to make charitable donations after major natural disasters and the Red Cross is where most of these funds go.

There are so many small organizations all over the world in desperate need of funds to run their programs. Donations to small organizations, I feel, go a lot farther with fewer admin fees and zero marketing budget to fund. I feel like if donors took some time to research where they spend their money, they could have more of an impact and could also even develop a personal relationship with the people running the program. Instead of your money going into a black hole of admin fees, your donation (or funds you raise) could feed 20 kids for a week, expand a micro-lending program to include more people, or even buy a new NGO a website. Spending your money on smaller-scale operations is more likely to result in tangible ‘this is where your money went’ results.

I’m curious about how you guys give. Do you research places to donate money or give to the major aid groups? Most of my charitable donations go either to friends doing fund raising (often running marathons for cancer charities although the charity is less important than supporting my friends) or to HODR because I know first-hand how the money is spent and how far it’ll go. So I’ve never taken an active role in searching out places to donate my money but I think I will in the future.

I’ve been here for about five weeks and I’m slowly getting involved in a few projects. I’m asked almost every day for advice on web stuff and I’ve been offered jobs weekly. I wish I could pop out Wordpress sites without wanting to pull my hair out and chuck my computer in the toilet but, unfortunately, I find tweaking themes to be one of the most frustrating things of all time. I have, however, become a bit of a Wordpress evangelist because of the ease of updating the site by people who might not know a thing about websites. I’m working at learning more about Wordpress (at the risk of a wet laptop) but it’s a slow process. At any rate, it’s opened my eyes to how valuable Wordpress design skills are and I want to keep learning. It also makes a great way to engage in a bit of location independent volunteering!

So far I’m really loving it here in Kigali. I admit that I’m trapped in the expat bubble, something I wanted to avoid. But I am getting a load of work done and still managing to get involved in some good causes so, for the moment, I’m ok with that (said as I order another iced mocha).

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

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.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Wow. I’ve been bad with my updates from Haiti even though I know there are a lot of people interested in what’s going on here. Sorry! It’s easy for the days blur into each other and I can’t believe I’ve been here a month. It’s crazy how fast time is flying by.

When I think back to what I’ve done in the past month I think of rubble. Shoveling, wheelbarrowing and sledge hammering endless amounts of rubble. The different sites I’ve worked on blend into one dusty, sweaty, dangerous mess of tangled rebar, toppled walls and smashed up cinder blocks. I wish I could explain how physically demanding the work we do here actually is but it’s impossible. Entire concrete roofs need to be sledge hammered piece by piece. Slabs where houses once stood will be shoveled clear of rubble piled higher than our heads. Then it needs to be put into a wheelbarrow and pushed over rough terrain and up mountains of more rubble over and over again.

The heat is unbearable and there’s no shade or clouds in the sky. People here work harder than any I’ve seen through some pretty gory injuries that never seem to heal and who knows what kind of scary dusty shit we’re breathing in. Ahh… but it’s so great.

I remember how apprehensive I was about returning to Haiti after such a massive disaster. Maybe I was afraid I would find a city without hope, I don’t know. What I have seen is completely the opposite… at least from an outsider with severely limited Creole speaking abilities. One thing I am sure of is how receptive Leogane has been to the work we’ve been doing. People stop me to tell me how appreciative they are and plenty of other volunteers have relayed stories of locals saying thanks with tears in their eyes.

I harp on and on about my experiences volunteering with HODR and especially in Haiti. Today I read a post on their website from a volunteer named Bruce which gives a different sort of take on what volunteering here has meant to him. I wanted to share his thoughts on volunteering in Haiti because he’s really speaking from his heart and I love what he has to say.

I’m having a fantastic time and even though I am due to take my 30-day break, I’m not cranky like I usually am. I’m learning more and more Creole each day and making friends in the community. We even have the guy who wrote the Lonely Planet for Haiti volunteering with us at the moment (follow him on Twitter) so it’ll be great to see what his experience is like and to pick his brain about Haiti.

One more thing! If anyone lives in or around London and wants to meet some great people and support Haiti at the same time, check out HODR’s Cocktails, Canapes and Concert event in Soho.

That’s all from me. I should be spending three days next week on holiday somewhere, hopefully with a net connection, hamburgers and icey cocktails. I will catch up on updates and speak to you all again soon.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

When I decided back in December 2009 that I wanted to write an ebook on volunteering, I really had no idea where to start. I like writing but I’m no professional by any stretch of the imagination and, while I have a few volunteering stints under my belt, I’m no expert on that, either.

The Content

I knew I wanted to write an ebook but I wasn’t even sure of the general topic until I made this post on my blog. Volunteering seems like such an obvious choice that I’m surprised it didn’t pop into my head at the time. Plus, from what I can see, there isn’t really anything like it out there at the moment.

Early on in the process I was lucky to stumble onto this post Thirteen Steps to Write and Publish a Free Ebook in Thirteen Hours over on Problogger. I had a good idea of what sorts of things people wanted to read about but this list gave my efforts a bit of structure and direction. I was full of ideas but I wasn’t really sure how to get started and this post sent me on my way. There’s no way I could have ever done it in thirteen hours (try three months!) but each point is something that I addressed at some point during the process.

Before I started writing the actual content, I wanted to come up with a rough draft for the table of contents. Having things divided into logical sections makes the writing a lot easier for me and helps to prevent overlap. The table of contents evolved over the course of the writing process with entire sections being added, moved or removed completely as I continued to write. To get some initial ideas, I looked up volunteering books on Amazon and checked out their table of contents. Maybe cheating, maybe not but it was a huge help towards getting organized.

Writing the content was part fun and part painful. One day when I was in the mood to write, I hammered out about 20 pages of content. It was mostly the easy or interesting parts though and I left many of the dry bits until later. I found writing the less inspiring parts a bit of a struggle and these are what dragged on and on.

When the writing process came to an end I sent copies out to some friends who like to read and write and whose opinions I really value. They came back with some great feedback and advice and I revised the first draft based on it. Then I proofread it and started working on the final design.

The Design

I’m not a Photoshop wizard but I am artistic so I often get frustrated when attempting to get what’s in my head onto the computer screen. I downloaded all of the free ebooks I could find to see what sort of standard of design they had gone for. Some ebooks, like Chris Guillebeau’s, are done by professionals and it shows. Others were obviously just direct conversions to PDF from a basic Word document. I was aiming for something in between but the artist in me will always try to push it to be a bit above average.

In this case, I was lucky to have found a stock photo image (the hands) that I sort of accidentally managed to make work after a few different attempts. Black, orange and brown aren’t colours I expected to look good together, but they sort of just did. I would have liked to have made the header a bit nicer but ran out of time and was just fed up with looking at it by that point. I like how the footer turned out too. The best part is that it was all really easy to pull off.

I also wanted to take a bit of care with the layout, images and the font. I wasn’t happy at all with any of the fonts as they appeared in the Open Office document but once I converted it to into a PDF, the Arial font I was using looked much better. I tweaked the fonts and heading colours whenever I got sick of writing so this is something that was going on throughout the whole process.

Originally, the only photos I had were of the people I interviewed. I added more at the last minute and I’m glad I did. I would have liked to have added more still but my best photos are on a hard drive at home in Canada. I will be able to get them in a couple of months so I might add more to future edits of the ebook. Fonts and the layout are nagging little things but getting them right is essential for a polished-looking product, I think.

The Promotion

Marketing isn’t my strong point and when I see someone who can do it well, I’m usually in awe. With that in mind, I wanted to get as many people behind the ebook from the start in an effort to create a bit of a buzz outside of the readers of this blog, and my friends and family. So I reached out to blogs I read and people who I have interacted with in the past.

I started a spreadsheet to keep track of my efforts since I didn’t want to harass people with more than one email and I also didn’t want to lose track of people who wanted to accept guest posts, or do reviews or interviews. I also kept a simple list of email addresses of people who I interviewed or who helped me out in some way. I promised them free copies and this made sending them out easy.

I had a list of about 20 bloggers who were willing to help me promote the ebook in some way before I was ready to even launch it. Since then I’ve had a couple of guest posts published and one review, none of which were actually on my original list. I plan to follow up with the people on my list an add more people as I get time to approach new bloggers. I feel like reaching out to as many audiences outside of my own blog as possible will be key.

Because I’m donating 50% of the sale price to HODR, I have been chatting with their fundraising guy about promotion ideas. They have an Adwords budget to spend and they’ve decided to use that to help promote the ebook. I have no experience with Adwords so I’m looking forward to that. They’ve also added a link on their site to my guest post on Thrilling Heroics. Both of these things will help me reach an audience outside of the travel blogging world.

Distribution

I registered with E-Junkie for $5 per month and they automate the sales process. There’s not really much I need to do and that’s how I want it!

This is my first ebook and I had no idea what to expect. I will keep everyone posted on the promotion process and ebook sales will be included in my monthly earnings reports. I really enjoyed writing the ebook, I’m proud of it and I’m really excited to have what I consider to be a quality product for sale. Thanks again for everyone’s ideas and support!

My ebook The Underground Guide to International Volunteering is $14 with 50% of each sale going to Hands On Disaster Response.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I’m sitting in Leogane, Haiti on a really good net connection in a huge concrete building sipping on a cold Coke on my day off as a volunteer with Hands On Disaster Response. It’s hard not to feel guilty about having such a sweet setup when directly in front of the building sits a small tent city of homeless Leogane residents, most with buildings made of sticks, bed sheets, and tarps. But with every bad situation there’s always got to be hope. The temporary camps are dire places but singing emanates from within and friendly faces smile back at you.

I’m trying to allay my guilt by working as hard as I can. It seems impossible that one person could make any difference in this mess but when you get a bunch of hard working people together, it’s amazing what can be accomplished.

My first two full days of work were on a home that had collapsed into a pile of rubble and tangled rebar (photo above) and I was pretty overwhelmed at first. But having done several Hands On projects I should have known that it would be cleared impossibly quickly. As usual, I was surrounded by some of the hardest workers I’ve ever met and the high-intensity day in the hot sun was draining and painful but rewarding and it served as an immediate reminder a to why I keep coming back to these things.

I don’t even know if I can fully comprehend how damaging this earthquake has been in Haiti both in terms of life and property, but also economically. Something like 85% of the country’s GDP comes from business in Port-au-Prince and that pretty much been wiped out in less than a minute. In a country like Haiti that was pretty screwed before the quake, it is hard to fathom what this means and what the recovery will actually look like. Haiti’s dire situation blew my mind before this disaster and being here and seeing the devastation first hand has been a very sobering experience.

I love being here and I’m happy to be in a position to help, even if just a little bit. I will try to post as often as I can. Right now I need a nap because the past few days have kicked my ass. If you haven’t donated money to Haiti, please consider making a donation to Hands On, or any charity of your choice.

Please please please.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

My ebook is done! After over three months of research, writing, re-writing, proofreading, and designing, I’m happy to announce that The Underground Guide to International Volunteering has finally been launched!

I want to thank everyone who offered up ideas for the ebook. I have a great group of readers here who have wonderful ideas and I don’t think I would have even dreamed up an ebook on volunteering without your help.

I’ve done up an information/sales page so head there to learn what you can expect from the ebook and how to buy it. Here’s a quick overview: it’s 63 pages long and costs $14 (with $7 of each sale being donated to Hands On Disaster Response)

Initial responses have been positive and I’m really looking forward to hearing more feedback. I’ve worked really hard on this ebook and I dare say that I’m pretty proud of it. I know how much volunteering has enriched my own travels (and life in general) and I really think the ebook will give people the information and confidence they need to include volunteering in their next trip overseas.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I’m sitting here in Kuala Lumpur on a comfy couch in front of a giant TV showing Olympics results while surfing on a remarkably quick internet connection with a belly full of Mexican food. It’s a far cry from the last three plus months I’ve spent in rural Sumatra hauling rubble, throwing rocks, knocking down walls, building houses and being generally dirty and sweaty working with Hands On Disaster Response but I think I could get used to it. While I think I’m ready to move on, I really had a great time volunteering in Sumatra and will miss it a lot.

Here’s a bit of a summary of my time there:

The Work

The first couple of months were filled with rubble removal, rain or shine. It was tough but getting behind a shovel and wheelbarrow again was an amazing feeling. The salvage part of the work wasn’t quite as inspiring but separating river rock and bricks from crumbling mortar and saving tin and wood from the roof was important to be able to give people some materials to start with to rebuild their homes. Leaving people with an empty concrete foundation and a pile of rocks and/or bricks was kind of a bittersweet feeling but seeing them use that space and materials to build shelters was very cool.

I had a few attempts at joining deconstruction teams to bring houses safely to the ground but it wasn’t my thing. There is far too much pointing at things and thinking involved for me. Plus being responsible to bring down a giant structure scared the crap out of me, to be completely honest. But we had a bunch of people who stepped up to lead the decon teams and pulling down unsafe buildings as a team was always an exhilarating experience.

This past month has seen us building temporary shelters with a really awesome design. Wooden frames are built, chain link fence is wrapped around the outside and thin layer of concrete is put on top to create the look of a concrete house with more flexibility and less weight to fall on people if there’s another earthquake. I love the design and I love working with concrete so it was great to be a part of this process. I also got to work on prefabricating the pieces for the wooden frame which meant fun with circular saws. I feel like a learned a lot of handy new skills beyond just being a wheelbarrowing monkey (although I do love wheelbarrowing) and these are things I hope to build on when I head to Haiti.

The People

I loved the locals I came into contact with during my time on the project. Our translator Rena is always smiling and giggling, our driver Hamdan is so quick to jump in and help out with anything, and Rose the cook busted out meals and washed laundry in record time. A bunch of Indonesians came through the project as volunteers and it was great to meet them all, especially Redha, our first and most frequent volunteer who helped whenever he could on his breaks from university. Arman was a great addition later in the project and he taught me the way of the concrete wall and it was just really inspiring for me to see this older guy with a family to show up for work each day. The ice cream men on motorbikes were two of my favourite people each afternoon and Welly the fruit shake master was a lifesaver next door with some refreshing fruity creations after a long day at work.

I have made a lot of friends through Hands On with my time with them in Bangladesh and Haiti and it was great to see a lot of them in Indonesia. There seem to be a bunch of us who follow the organisation around and these people have become a sort of family on the road for me and knowing I can count on seeing them each time I head to a new project certainly makes my choice to go a lot easier. I made a bunch of new friends on this project as well and I’m convinced that HODR attracts people with a certain level of craziness that means I will always have people around who I have something in common with.

The Culture

The community in Sungai Geringging is rural and religious and there were a few issues with us descending on them to help out. Drinking beer in town was outlawed fairly early on. Boys and girls had to sleep in separate places which meant the construction of the ‘man tent’ outside and a girls-only sweet deal on the inside. A group of volunteers unwittingly caused a near-project-ending incident by walking down to a river late at night in boy/girl company. Old guys apparently were against us from the start, no matter how good the work we did was. Signs were erected saying ‘Volunteering, yes! Christianity, no!’ and the powers that be were paranoid that we were there to convert them. The work ‘Christmas’ was banned over the holidays. And so on, and so on.

Yay to culture! Boo to having to tip toe around it and having it affect our ability to do work there. It was probably inevitable that we would screw up from time to time. Things have always worked out in the end, but there have been some stressful moments in between. On the other hand, learning about the culture in rural Sumatra on such an intimate level was pretty fascinating and something I’m grateful to have experienced, even though it frustrated non-religious me at times.

While my time with HODR in Sumatra is over I don’t have much time to relax with a flight into Port-au-Prince, Haiti on March 15th. Between now and then the plan is to hang out with some volunteering friends in Malaysia before shipping off to the chilly UK to spend a couple of weeks visiting friends and family in London and Scotland. My ankle is still sort of screwed from when I hurt it a few weeks ago, my clothes are all gross, the cuts on my hands are still unhealed, my websites are neglected, and my bank account is hurting from expensive plane tickets but Haiti is where I want to be and, while two and a bit weeks between HODR projects could be a bit of a killer for my body and business, I can’t wait for the challenge.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

My good friends here with me in Indonesia knew before I did that I would be heading to Haiti instead of Pakistan… I just didn’t believe them at the time. Well I have just proven them right by booking one of the most ridiculous set of plane trips I have ever taken: Kuala Lumpur - London - New York - Haiti - Cape Town with a couple of side trips to Glasgow and home to Canada for 10 days each. Sorry about the carbon footprint thing.

In the end I guess I couldn’t resist the pull to head back to Haiti and help out. My motivations for previous volunteering stints have always been a bit suspect but this time around I really feel a responsibility to help out, even if just a little bit. This will be a tough one emotionally, I think. With the earthquake claiming more than 200,000 lives in such a small area, I am bound to come across endless stories of lost loved ones and grief. I’m not sure how I will cope with the whole thing but I will never know if I don’t go.

Strangely, my parents are dead set against me going back to Haiti, although somehow they were ok with Pakistan. I haven’t had a TV for months so haven’t seen any coverage of the quake and the only news reports I am getting are in print. It seems like, according to the Canadian media at least, things over there are bad with reports of rape and looting and fears of disease as the rainy season rolls in. From my personal experience I know that the media tends to make everything sound scarier than it actually is but in this case I’m not sure what to think.

I do have plenty of friends over there working in different capacities and all are safe and sounds and getting on with the work at hand. Several have been working with Medishare putting in 20 hour days in some very trying circumstances. The need for volunteers in support roles at their trauma hospital is huge and a couple of friends of mine have put out a plea for interested people to contact them. If you want their contact details, email me and I will pass them along, internet connection willing.

I will be working with Hands On for a fourth time and this time around things will be a bit different. They have already received over 5,000 inquiries about volunteering in Haiti (as a comparison, the Indonesian project I’m currently on has only received about 400 inquiries over the course of the project) and, as a result of the expected influx of volunteers they will have a capacity of 100 people at a time. If you want to volunteer with them you will have to submit your first and second choice for dates along with an application-style form. The project is due to run for a minimum of six months, check out their information page for more details. I’m locked in for March 15th until the end of May… maybe see you there?

I’m looking especially forward to seeing some of my Haitian friends from Gonaives as I imagine some of them will come up to volunteer for awhile. I’m a bit apprehensive of what I’m getting myself into but at the same time, I can’t wait to get there.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

It’s been a week since an earthquake hit Haiti, not far from the country’s capital city, Port-au-Prince. The internet stopped working here the day of the quake so I’m getting all of my information at once right now and it’s been pretty overwhelming: up to 200,000 feared dead, bodies being loaded into mass graves by front-loader trucks, the city of Port-au-Prince flattened and an estimated 500,000 people left homeless, desperate people looting orphanages, aid not getting through and on and on.

I left Haiti in March 2009 after spending five months in Gonaives, one of the most screwed up places I have ever been. Thankfully the city was unharmed by the quake and my friends there are all ok. Many have had family and friends of their own die in the earthquake and it makes me wonder how much misery the people of one country can take.

It’s not all completely bleak though and it seems like there has has been a huge outpouring of support. I’ve heard bits about Twitter donation campaigns raising millions, star-studded telethons in Canada and the US, massive media coverage of the quake, stories of survival, rumours of debt cancellation, and a huge aid effort attempting to get underway.

I’ve been through Port-au-Prince a few times on my way down to Gonaives and each time I stayed at St. Joseph’s, an orphanage for boys who have been abandoned by their families or rescued from slavery (mind-bogglingly, it still exists in Haiti). Seeing photos of the building - a beautiful place filled with artwork, plants, musical instruments and life - without the top four floors and reading about Bill Nathan’s close call is sad and sobering.

A few friends of mine are there already, some are on their way with medical teams and more here in Indonesia are looking for ways to get there as soon as possible. This disaster relief crowd I hang around with these days are an eager bunch. I want to help but I think for now it will be a cash only effort.

If you’re in a position to give, cash is what is needed so pick your favourite charity and please do what you can.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Yesterday was my second Christmas Day spent abroad while working with Hands On and it topped the one in Haiti. Of course, last year in Haiti I spent most of Christmas day in transit trying to escape the country for the beaches of the Dominican Republic, but even that torturous journey on the back of a pickup truck with 20 people had a charming side.

This year’s holiday festivities were certainly a lot more relaxing but also a lot more covert. The community here is pretty sensitive about religion and some people are worried our goal in the community is to convert people to Christianity. In an effort not to stir up trouble, we’ve been banned from uttering the word ‘Christmas’ and have instead chosen to wish friends a Merry Holidaymas, Happy Day or even, my favourite, Happy C-word Day which just makes me laugh.

There’s a great gang of people here at the moment and on Xmas Eve we had a BBQ, sneakily drank beer, and turned the backyard tent into a dance party on complete with strobe lighting provided by our blinking headlamps. Xmas morning was mostly spent nursing a hangover with me surfacing from time to time to fetch the contents of my stocking or collect my secret Santa gift before retreating back to bed but I had no complaints. In the afternoon we all pitched in to create a not-so-traditional meal of pot roast, veggies, spaghetti with mushroom sauce and BBQ chicken topped off nicely with pastries and apple crumble. Xmas evening was spent nursing a food coma while listening to people sing along to the guitar and joining in with some out of tune contributions from time to time.

Volunteering is a great way to spend the holidays and I’m always impressed with how many people rock up for a week over Xmas and New Year’s to help out. In Haiti a big gang of people descended on us in late December and in Indonesia it has been the same but with people generally staying for three or four weeks. We’ve even had a family of four choose to spend their holidays working with us, coming all the way from Alaska. It’s a great atmosphere and I’m still loving it. We’ve had a recent influx of Indonesian volunteers too which is really inspiring as well.

Hands On started on this day five years ago after the Tsunami and, while this is a sad anniversary, it also makes me happy to think about how many people took action to do something positive in the face of devastation. I’m surrounded by some pretty amazing people here and I feel lucky to have gotten the chance to spend another Xmas with Hands On getting dirty and sweaty.

Happy belated C-Word Day everyone!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!