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| Police officers control the crowd in the Santa Teresa camp in Petionville, Haiti, during a distribution of food and other emergency supplies on February 1. Photo by Paul Jeffrey/ACT Alliance. |
A group of young men, not listed to get relief, start being disruptive. Local police do little to control them. The ACT workers, staff of the Lutheran World Federation, stand their ground and keep directing aid to the most vulnerable.
Eventually, the crowd gets unruly. A policewoman fires two shots in the air. The distribution is stopped and the ACT team leaves the village, frustrated its efforts have not gone as planned. “Yes, it’s complicated,” says distribution coordinator Sheyla Durandisse. “There is a lot of pressure on the team.”
Like walking in a dessert
Fellow aid worker Emmanuela Blain admits she and her colleagues are frustrated. “Yesterday we had a distribution that was perfect. Perfect.”
Sylvia Raulo, country representative for the LWF, praised the workers for their patience in a difficult situation and said Gressier was a situation seemingly bereft of hope. “People are traumatized,” she said “and we know how people can react in these types of situations.”
This distribution proves that life for Haitian is not predictable, especially when people in rural areas find themselves in desperate situations.
| Earthquake in Haiti |
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| An earthquake of magnitude 7.0 struck Haiti on 12 January at 16h53, with the epicenter located 15 km south-west of the capital Port-au-Prince. On 19 January, at least 70,000 people were killed, with estimates up to 200,000 people that could have been killed in total. ACT is responding with food, water, medicine and other relief efforts. Read more DanChurchAid is a member of ACT Alliance. |
As she newly widowed Marie Therese waited in a food distribution line late last week, she tersely summed up Haiti’s plight. Though thankful that assistance was reaching her and others in Gressier, Therese, 51, said: “It’s like we’re in a desert.”
Looks like the quake was yesterday
In the nearly three weeks since the catastrophic January 12 earthquake, Haiti indeed feels like a land bereft of much that makes for a dignified life.
Port-au-Prince’s downtown area, hit hardest by the quake, still looks and feels as if the disaster happened just days ago. Homes and apartments are crushed, the smell of rotting flesh wafts through the air, and numerous buildings look as if they are ready to fall into the street at any moment.
It is startling to see a building cut in half with furniture and desks, filing cabinets and sinks exposed to the harsh midday sunlight, just as it is startling to see thousands of people living in makeshift displacement camps around the capital.
Back in business
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| People have started cleaning up in the debris casued by the quake on 12th of januar. Photo: Paul Jeffreys/Act Alliance |
Yet the capacity of Haitians to embrace elements of normal life is encouraging beyond words. That means dressing in Sunday best to attend worship, or offering a hand to neighbors or visitors. Or, as barber Charilien Charles, 25, has done, re-establish his business, complete with cracked mirrors in one of Port-au-Prince’s sprawling displacement camps.
Is business good? “Unpredictable,” Charles said, shrugging his shoulders, saying he has to be patient.
Unpredictability and patience are also watch words for the international community as it continues providing humanitarian assistance to Haiti – an effort that was slow in starting and is still not seamless given the many daunting challenges that faced Haiti before and immediately following the quake.
Beyond comprehension
“The devastation is beyond comprehension,” said Martin Coria, Latin America/Caribbean regional coordinator of ACT Alliance member Church World Service, reiterating an all too well known point but one which must be stressed given the logistical difficulties of getting aid to disaster survivors.
Something else that needs repeating is that aid workers themselves continue living in the streets because of the widespread devastation, according Raulo. “Everyone here is dealing with this loss of life,” Raulo said.
The people of Haiti come first
Raulo knows that, three weeks into the response, donors are rightly concerned about whether aid is getting to those who need it, a concern she says is legitimate and welcome.
“We are accountable, first and foremost, to the survivors living in Haiti, and then to those abroad giving and pledging money,” she said. While Raulo said exact numbers of people receiving assistance were still being compiled, between 40,000 and 50,000 people had been assisted by ACT programs in the last three weeks with clean water, food, shelter and psychosocial help.
Future efforts would focus on rebuilding homes and schools and on long-term food security – part of the ACT’s commitment to look beyond immediate emergencies, she said.
Raulo does not downplay challenges, either in Haiti or with the response. Aid efforts will have to deal with problems like government corruption and the unpredictability of events.
Still, one irrefutable fact has emerged in the last three weeks, particularly given Haiti’s history of weak state structures. “Haitians are an extremely resilient people,” Raulo said.
By ACT International