So we were heading back today from Port-au-Prince where we had one of our country-wide meetings and the new team of expatriates could have the chance to meet each other, carry out some quick coordination, and establish a country-wide strategy. With almost all of the first phase emergency team on their way out, this would more or less be the new team for the next 6 months. It was quite the group I must say. Some coming from other ACTED countries: Afghanistan, Sudan, Myanmar, Iraq, Congo, Palestine, etc., etc. and others from other organizations, but with just the same level of qualifications. I felt quite privileged to be part of such a diverse, established, and impressive team, and to be honest...a bit out of my league. However, I take solace in the fact that I'm doing my job reasonably well given the obstacles we're facing. Also, knowing that for the time being, distribution of emergency needs is the predominant operation for the organization.
Despite all this, it was written on everyone's face: this emergency is kicking our ass. Too many consecutive nights of working til midnight are starting to wear on all of us. The hope is to be able to establish some planning, systems, etc. that can put us on the right track for the coming months and take us out of extreme emergency mode. Whether we'll get to that stage before people start burning out is a big question mark. I hope for the best, but its clear that this is not a group to take it easy when the pressure's on.
Right now the race is on to finish our emergency distributions to satisfy both donors and outstanding needs of affected populations. While a large amount of affected populations are finally starting to receive multi-faceted aid (water, sanitation, food, shelter, etc.) we are currently trying to fill in the gaps and forgotten communities which becomes more urgent by the day. Its so tough to move as fast as you'd like in this context, because you have to carry out the assessments, speak to committees, prioritize sites, wait for materials, and be sure to carry out the distribution safely and fairly. All of this takes time and people's impatience is understandable, but you feel like youre stuck in quicksand sometimes and unable to move. Anyways, its moving.
I had the chance to take a few videos on my drive back from Port-au-Prince, with the destruction of the presidential palace and Ministry of Finance topping the list for most jaw-dropping. Once you start taking picture of the devastation it quickly becomes a fruitless endeavor when every block there is a building that is even worse than the one before.
Sorry the videos aren't the best quality, but if you put it on full screen you should be able to make out the buildings better...
A bientot,
Chris
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Fumes baby
So its been a week in Leogane and things have started to move quickly. After spending the weekend getting briefed on the context, the base and my project, we began a hectic week of planning and carrying out mass food distributions.
As the Program Manager, I am responsible for a young, energetic and dynamic group of Haitians with whom we go through the process of distributing food. What would seem like a relatively straightforward exercise is rendered into a very complex operation that must be carried out with the utmost care and precision.
Food is not getting to the people as fast as we would like. The coordination capacity of the international community is lamentable at best and many NGOs are left fending for themselves and their beneficiary populations. This makes it very difficult to coordinate activities and ensure that every family is receiving some sort of aid. Both duplication of activities and a complete lack of aid are negative consequences of the coordination vacuum and happen all too often.
For that reason we try to analyze all populations systematically in order to reach those most in need first. Some of the difficulties we are facing is access to groups of people. Though there are many IDP (internally displaced persons) camps that have sprouted by communities who feel safer in open spaces, with other people, and away from their crumbling houses, many people have chosen to stay closer to their homes. These camps are far from friendly places and uproot the structure of a community, but they are also the best way to reach the largest amount of people so we are forced to use them as platforms for distribution and people are forced to move closer to the to receive aid.
Leogane is in ruins. The downtown looks like a movie set on sunny days and apocalyptic on gloomy ones. Once outside the downtown area people are still displaced, but the open spaces, farm fields, and large plots of land make it more hospitable than Port-au-Prince, but then again, that's not saying much.
The distributions so far have been up and down. All of which have been very intense given the gravity of the situation: hungry people and desperate people don't like miscalculations of food stock or late food trucks. And despite the challenges we have gotten on alright. We like to think that we are perfecting our systems and our roles, but its two steps forward, one backward here.
All in all I want to say that I am hopeful that things will improve and I am quite impressed by the energy of the Haitian people. I just hope we as the humanitarian community get our act together before the situation gets any worse than it already is.
Im tired.
Chris
As the Program Manager, I am responsible for a young, energetic and dynamic group of Haitians with whom we go through the process of distributing food. What would seem like a relatively straightforward exercise is rendered into a very complex operation that must be carried out with the utmost care and precision.
Food is not getting to the people as fast as we would like. The coordination capacity of the international community is lamentable at best and many NGOs are left fending for themselves and their beneficiary populations. This makes it very difficult to coordinate activities and ensure that every family is receiving some sort of aid. Both duplication of activities and a complete lack of aid are negative consequences of the coordination vacuum and happen all too often.
For that reason we try to analyze all populations systematically in order to reach those most in need first. Some of the difficulties we are facing is access to groups of people. Though there are many IDP (internally displaced persons) camps that have sprouted by communities who feel safer in open spaces, with other people, and away from their crumbling houses, many people have chosen to stay closer to their homes. These camps are far from friendly places and uproot the structure of a community, but they are also the best way to reach the largest amount of people so we are forced to use them as platforms for distribution and people are forced to move closer to the to receive aid.
Leogane is in ruins. The downtown looks like a movie set on sunny days and apocalyptic on gloomy ones. Once outside the downtown area people are still displaced, but the open spaces, farm fields, and large plots of land make it more hospitable than Port-au-Prince, but then again, that's not saying much.
The distributions so far have been up and down. All of which have been very intense given the gravity of the situation: hungry people and desperate people don't like miscalculations of food stock or late food trucks. And despite the challenges we have gotten on alright. We like to think that we are perfecting our systems and our roles, but its two steps forward, one backward here.
All in all I want to say that I am hopeful that things will improve and I am quite impressed by the energy of the Haitian people. I just hope we as the humanitarian community get our act together before the situation gets any worse than it already is.
Im tired.
Chris
Friday, February 26, 2010
premiere jour en Haiti
So after an interesting three days of travelling, layovers in both hemispheres and cancelled flights I have arrived to Port-au-Prince. My French is weak at best, but I am surviving at the moment and fairing better than I thought.
I want to keep this short because I'm kind of on the run and have a bunch of things that I need to get working on. But Ill give a bried update.
Descending into Port-au-Prince was quite emotional. It is only the third or fourth day that comercial flights have been running. You could see the masses of tent camps from the airplane and an onminous fog hung over the city...remnants from the downpour from yesterday that is a brief, though dreadful, prelude to the rains that are sure to follow in the coming weeks. It was quite a moving scene watching those family members on the plane look with so much heaviness onto their homeland. The woman next to me knew 17 people who died and the final moments in the air were understandably difficult ones.
The tarmac on the runway is covered with massive cargo planes, US military vehicles, soldiers, supplies, broken walls, buildings, etc. The 'customs' unit was equally ramshackle and looked like a refugee camp version of an airport. Understandably so.
Driving around Port-au-Prince was very eery. The white dust from the demolished cwement seems to fade into the grey sky to make you feel like you are in some kind of dream world. People walk around half with a mission at hand and half to just walk around and do something. The food being sold on the streets are scraps at best.
The collapse of buildings is something I have never witnessed before to this degree. I have vivid memories of seeing terrible structural damages after the LA earthquake when I was only seven and that was nothing compared to the situation here. For many of the houses it literally looks as if the floors are pancakes stacked on tope of eachother with rebar, iron sheets and glass protruding from everywhich angle to make it look like some sort of perverted art exhibition.
Graffiti on the walls is most telling: "starving!", "need food, water", "aidez-nous!".
I haven't had time to collect my thoughts and I doubt I will in the near future. For now, its go-time for me. Lets get to work.
I head to Leogane this afternoon. This was the epicentre of the quake and where we have some distribution sites for food, water, tarpaulins, and non-food items such as cooking materials and matresses and blankets. I will not have any network but I will try and update you as soon as I get a chance.
In solidarity,
Chris
I want to keep this short because I'm kind of on the run and have a bunch of things that I need to get working on. But Ill give a bried update.
Descending into Port-au-Prince was quite emotional. It is only the third or fourth day that comercial flights have been running. You could see the masses of tent camps from the airplane and an onminous fog hung over the city...remnants from the downpour from yesterday that is a brief, though dreadful, prelude to the rains that are sure to follow in the coming weeks. It was quite a moving scene watching those family members on the plane look with so much heaviness onto their homeland. The woman next to me knew 17 people who died and the final moments in the air were understandably difficult ones.
The tarmac on the runway is covered with massive cargo planes, US military vehicles, soldiers, supplies, broken walls, buildings, etc. The 'customs' unit was equally ramshackle and looked like a refugee camp version of an airport. Understandably so.
Driving around Port-au-Prince was very eery. The white dust from the demolished cwement seems to fade into the grey sky to make you feel like you are in some kind of dream world. People walk around half with a mission at hand and half to just walk around and do something. The food being sold on the streets are scraps at best.
The collapse of buildings is something I have never witnessed before to this degree. I have vivid memories of seeing terrible structural damages after the LA earthquake when I was only seven and that was nothing compared to the situation here. For many of the houses it literally looks as if the floors are pancakes stacked on tope of eachother with rebar, iron sheets and glass protruding from everywhich angle to make it look like some sort of perverted art exhibition.
Graffiti on the walls is most telling: "starving!", "need food, water", "aidez-nous!".
I haven't had time to collect my thoughts and I doubt I will in the near future. For now, its go-time for me. Lets get to work.
I head to Leogane this afternoon. This was the epicentre of the quake and where we have some distribution sites for food, water, tarpaulins, and non-food items such as cooking materials and matresses and blankets. I will not have any network but I will try and update you as soon as I get a chance.
In solidarity,
Chris
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Au revoir, encore
12:05 Sunday, February 14, 2010 – Gulu. As I sit on my balcony slightly guarded from the piercing, sandy, dry wind swooping down from the north, I think about the journey the air has taken to get here. Possibly beginning at the arctic, just south of Tierra del Fuego, travelling up the southwestern coast of South America. From icy arctic waters to the mountainous coast of southern Chile where it makes it way up to the driest desert on earth: the Atacama. After sucking the earth dry and leaving only the heartiest of life behind, I continues into the Andes: the ancient, mysterious, majestic and unpredictable mountain world of the Southern Hemisphere. After a few weeks paralyzed at the equator, the slow march up and across the Pacific begins jetting from pristine waters to the green coast of Central America, though the Sea of Cortez and up to desert I call home. If it’s winter this same wind may be the bane of some young surfer’s session as it cuts his face with the cold salt of the Californian morning. Moving up once again through the central valley, into the violent storms of the Rockies, across the barren prairies of the Midwest, throwing a banker against a glass apartment store building in New York then over to the maddened seas of Ireland, across mainland Europe down through the Mediterranean until its final march across thousands of kilometer of Egyptian and Sudanese desert until it whistles through the grass-thatched huts of Northern Uganda and finally pounds on my windows with the violence of a lifetime of struggle and the dry, merciless dust particles of the worlds it has seen.
Whenever the time comes to leave to a certain place, I frequently find myself observing weather patterns and dreaming of the movements of the heavens that are always with us and touching us wherever we may be. I think it makes it easier to say goodbye. If I feel like we are all connected in this seemingly vast, but unified mass then I know that those who I leave will always be with me and vice versa. As earth dwellers we experience the same water, the same earth, the same rain, thunder, lightning, sun, moon, stars, clouds, fire and wind, give or take some variation of course. And as human beings we all experience the same pain, joy, love, sorrow, comfort, loneliness, confusion, hope, fear, selfishness, generosity and fascination with this strange idea of life. My exploits in this continent as well as others have forged this perception of mine.
As some of you may have already heard, I leave for Haiti in two weeks. In January I visited my organization’s headquarters in Paris to discuss my next posting. The office was mayhem. The earthquake had only hit 7 days prior. In the scramble I managed to speak to my superior concerned with new postings and after passing through names like Sudan, Yemen, etc. I stopped her and told her I wanted in. I wanted to be part of this.
There are some strange questions you ask yourself when you find yourself eager to get on the ground of a human tragedy of the scale as that which we have seen in this poor Caribbean nation. Initially you find yourself defensive over your excitement of the crisis. Then the guilt settles in and you realize that not only do human catastrophes excite you, but it becomes your livelihood, which is quite a twisted notion. I will not attempt to legitimize my ambitions. I do believe that there is something very bizarre and potentially nefarious about pursuing this type of work. I was told once by a person with substantially more experience in the field than myself that, many times, the best you can do for the people of Haiti, Sudan, Iraq, Yemen, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, Afghanistan, etc., etc. is to be a witness. Be a witness to their suffering and make it real to those back home. TV images may provide a degree of potency in certain situations, but it is exponentially less effective than hearing about pain on a human level from someone you love and trust. This will be my first promise as I set off. Though Northern Uganda has its plight and it is quite grave, I have not felt the same amount of desperation that I expect in my next mission, or possibly even in the prior one. But this time, I will try and provide updates as frequently as possible and tell you about it when I come home. You are forewarned.
As I prepare for my departure I am taking care of some final business here in Uganda and also some personal preparations for Haiti. Initially, I was intended to leave this weekend, but it got pushed back because of some internal changes. To tell you the truth, I am chomping at the bit. My project here is winding down, and this month is mostly intended to train the new Program Manager to fill my place, handover most of the projects, and write some final reports. I suppose it is nice to have some time to leave things properly and not just escape ‘like a thief in the night’, but I can’t help being eager. I ‘m on our website, BBC, MSF, reliefweb, etc. everyday trying to stay up with the crisis. Ever since I left school, I have been trying to get into emergency/disaster/humanitarian relief. This is what I have been waiting and preparing for. Though my work here in Gulu is incredibly challenging and fast moving at times, the context is rather stagnant and somewhat lacking in dynamism. In other words, I am a bit bored.
To prepare for Haiti I am cramming French like a high school senior desperate to graduate. I have a Congolese teacher who visits for two hours daily and I am feeling slightly more comfortable, but I still have a ways to go. My other preparation is much more personal. I am trying to use these few weeks to collect my thoughts and prepare myself mentally for the task at hand; daily meditation, yoga, lots of sleep, and walking around town are a few ways that I am doing this. Trying to enjoy the peace and pace of life here are others. While not necessarily lagging with work, I am trying not to kill myself, and to organize my duties so that by the last week I can spend most of my time supporting the new Program Manager. I feel that decompressing before I arrive to what is sure to be a very intense situation (both in terms of work load and environment ) is incredibly important.
So that’s about it. I guess it would make a bit more sense to write more frequently as to avoid heavy posts such as this one, but unfortunately it’s the best I can do. As the wind continues to howl and remind me of far off places and people on this Valentine’s day I will be thinking about those I love who I am not with today. Though I continue to feel you in spirit, it doesn’t make me miss you all any less. Thank you for your support. Hopefully my absence from your lives will be less prolonged once I return to the Western hemisphere. Regardless, I appreciate those of you who have continued to put in the tremendous effort it takes to keep me in your thoughts and I promise that it is very much appreciated on this end.
I wish you all the best on this strange day and I hope to see you when I am back in California in April.
In Solidarity,
Chris
Whenever the time comes to leave to a certain place, I frequently find myself observing weather patterns and dreaming of the movements of the heavens that are always with us and touching us wherever we may be. I think it makes it easier to say goodbye. If I feel like we are all connected in this seemingly vast, but unified mass then I know that those who I leave will always be with me and vice versa. As earth dwellers we experience the same water, the same earth, the same rain, thunder, lightning, sun, moon, stars, clouds, fire and wind, give or take some variation of course. And as human beings we all experience the same pain, joy, love, sorrow, comfort, loneliness, confusion, hope, fear, selfishness, generosity and fascination with this strange idea of life. My exploits in this continent as well as others have forged this perception of mine.
As some of you may have already heard, I leave for Haiti in two weeks. In January I visited my organization’s headquarters in Paris to discuss my next posting. The office was mayhem. The earthquake had only hit 7 days prior. In the scramble I managed to speak to my superior concerned with new postings and after passing through names like Sudan, Yemen, etc. I stopped her and told her I wanted in. I wanted to be part of this.
There are some strange questions you ask yourself when you find yourself eager to get on the ground of a human tragedy of the scale as that which we have seen in this poor Caribbean nation. Initially you find yourself defensive over your excitement of the crisis. Then the guilt settles in and you realize that not only do human catastrophes excite you, but it becomes your livelihood, which is quite a twisted notion. I will not attempt to legitimize my ambitions. I do believe that there is something very bizarre and potentially nefarious about pursuing this type of work. I was told once by a person with substantially more experience in the field than myself that, many times, the best you can do for the people of Haiti, Sudan, Iraq, Yemen, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, Afghanistan, etc., etc. is to be a witness. Be a witness to their suffering and make it real to those back home. TV images may provide a degree of potency in certain situations, but it is exponentially less effective than hearing about pain on a human level from someone you love and trust. This will be my first promise as I set off. Though Northern Uganda has its plight and it is quite grave, I have not felt the same amount of desperation that I expect in my next mission, or possibly even in the prior one. But this time, I will try and provide updates as frequently as possible and tell you about it when I come home. You are forewarned.
As I prepare for my departure I am taking care of some final business here in Uganda and also some personal preparations for Haiti. Initially, I was intended to leave this weekend, but it got pushed back because of some internal changes. To tell you the truth, I am chomping at the bit. My project here is winding down, and this month is mostly intended to train the new Program Manager to fill my place, handover most of the projects, and write some final reports. I suppose it is nice to have some time to leave things properly and not just escape ‘like a thief in the night’, but I can’t help being eager. I ‘m on our website, BBC, MSF, reliefweb, etc. everyday trying to stay up with the crisis. Ever since I left school, I have been trying to get into emergency/disaster/humanitarian relief. This is what I have been waiting and preparing for. Though my work here in Gulu is incredibly challenging and fast moving at times, the context is rather stagnant and somewhat lacking in dynamism. In other words, I am a bit bored.
To prepare for Haiti I am cramming French like a high school senior desperate to graduate. I have a Congolese teacher who visits for two hours daily and I am feeling slightly more comfortable, but I still have a ways to go. My other preparation is much more personal. I am trying to use these few weeks to collect my thoughts and prepare myself mentally for the task at hand; daily meditation, yoga, lots of sleep, and walking around town are a few ways that I am doing this. Trying to enjoy the peace and pace of life here are others. While not necessarily lagging with work, I am trying not to kill myself, and to organize my duties so that by the last week I can spend most of my time supporting the new Program Manager. I feel that decompressing before I arrive to what is sure to be a very intense situation (both in terms of work load and environment ) is incredibly important.
So that’s about it. I guess it would make a bit more sense to write more frequently as to avoid heavy posts such as this one, but unfortunately it’s the best I can do. As the wind continues to howl and remind me of far off places and people on this Valentine’s day I will be thinking about those I love who I am not with today. Though I continue to feel you in spirit, it doesn’t make me miss you all any less. Thank you for your support. Hopefully my absence from your lives will be less prolonged once I return to the Western hemisphere. Regardless, I appreciate those of you who have continued to put in the tremendous effort it takes to keep me in your thoughts and I promise that it is very much appreciated on this end.
I wish you all the best on this strange day and I hope to see you when I am back in California in April.
In Solidarity,
Chris
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