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