Haiti Projects, Farewell

Today is a project documentation day; we leave for the airport at seven. The first mile is over muddy, rutted, washed out roads before we reach some asphalt that is slightly better. We pass piles of garbage and refuse, and are never out of sight of mountains of earthquake rubble. The roads are congested with cars and trucks, taptaps large and small., and crowds of people going to work and school. Merchants are setting up their little stands and laying out their sheets upon which they place their wares: papayas, mangos, bananas, breadfruit, vegetables of every sort, live chickens, cut up chicken, hardware, shoes, shirts, almost anything you can buy in a store you can find here. Goats wander the streets, foraging for something to eat. Two men strain to move a two-wheeled cart piled high with bags of cement that they will deliver. Past tent cities large and small.

We reach the airport and must wait a bit. Dieucon, our driver is still making calls, arranging the day. It is no easy thing to find the projects we are to visit. Where we are going, streets are not named, and houses have no numbers. We will meet the first person at the water distribution station a kilometer above a ruined church they both know about  and she will lead us to her house. We drive. The roads get narrower and climbs. At the water distribution station we can go no further and spend minutes turning the car and finding a place to park it. Sixty seven year old Rose Marie greets us with a huge smile and leads us through passageways no wider than 3 feet that turn and turn again, open, then close, leading to an area with thousands of dwellings, one upon the other.

Her little house, newly rebuilt, has three unconnected concrete block support walls, with the rafters and interior walls made of wood. It is small, but seems sturdy and well built, with splashes of paint to brighten the scene. No one in this whole area has metered electricity, but she has a few light bulbs from a wire that goes off, who knows where and brings the intermittent electricity that this country knows. Like all of her neighbors, she has no running water, but needs to carry it from the distribution point which is often out of water. She lives with and supports her 97 year old mother, a daughter and several grandchildren. Her sister was killed in the quake.  This house is a vast improvement from the squalor and danger of the tent that she lived in for many months, and she is immensely grateful for the help she received in rebuilding.

We repeat this process three times today. Each story unique, heartrending, but in the end an uplifting story of human perseverance in the face of adversity

I leave Haiti tomorrow.