Field Updates

February 18th, 2010 - "First Update From The Ground"

In the darkness of dawn on February 10th, we loaded up our off-road van complete with upgraded roofrack and newly-installed auxillary diesel bladder. We left around 6:30AM and drove through lush green farmlands until we reached the Dominican border town Dajabon around 11AM. We then met Father Regino Martinez, who is the coordinator of the Frontier Solidarity which is an advocacy group for Haitian migrant workers. He gave us a tour of his facilities and then he assisted us with crossing the border into Haiti.

The Dajabón River (also known as the Massacre River because of it's association with the masacre of 20-30,000 Haitians by the Dominican dictator Rafel Trujillo) makes up the border. There is a concrete bridge arching a hundred feet over the shallow clear sandy river where maybe forty women and children can be seen bathing, washing clothes, and fetching water on either side. At the gates on the Haitian side of the border is relative chaos with many Haitians wanting to enter the Dominican Republic where there is more work and higher wages. On the periphery there are children who aparently subsist off of money and food given to them by NGO groups passing by.

Standing on the bridge were three blue-helmeted South American UN Peacekeepers, one with a shotgun, one with an assault rifle, and the officer with only a sidearm. They were standing in the shade of a tree overhanging the bridge and aware but not visibly concerned or tense at all. We asked them if the road ahead to Cap Haitien was dangerous and they told us that we shouldn't have any problems. This was a welcome sign contrasting the rumors that we had heard about looters running
rampant in the North of Haiti after the earthquake.

As we entered Ouanaminthe, Haiti, we saw an immediate change in landscape. To our right was a large sloping field of mud sprinkled with old plastic bottles. There were perhaps twenty stands where people were selling everything from rice and beans to cell phone cards. The buildings were concrete and painted pastel colors with patches of algae all over.

Father Regino escorted us to a nearby Catholic church where we met some volunteer workers from Spain and some earthquake survivors from Port-Au-Prince. We were also introduced to Perard Monestime who is the director of "Solidarite Fwontalye" which is the Haitian division of Frontier Solidarity. Mr. Monestime, who went to college in Boston, struck me as an unusually intelligent and sensible person. We exchanged contact information and he gave us the name of an American-run hospital in the countryside about an hour's drive south of Cap Haitien that he said may have been able to use our help.

As we were leaving town, we dropped off about 650 pounds of rice and beans to the Catholic church to distribute to people displaced by the earthquake and staying with relatives in Ounaminthe.

So we continued on to Cap Haitien through the sunny countryside. Again and not for the last time I noticed the cheerfulness of the faces that I saw as we passed by.

After several hours of driving. we arrived in Cap Haitien and reached the beautiful Hotel Roi Christophe where I am still staying eight days later. The lobby and dining areas are filled with antique hardwood furniture and there is even a swimming pool. The hotel mostly serves as a launch-off point for aidworkers either working in the city or travelling to the outskirts. Because many people are staying there for an extended period of time, it has a very comfortable atmosphere with the Haitian owner Joelle playing the role of hospitable matriarche perfectly.

After dropping off our luggage, we drove to Milot where the Hôpital Sacré Coeur is located. Hôpital Sacré Coeur was founded in in 1968 by the Brothers of the Sacred Heart from Montreal, Canada. It was at first a simple facility without an operating room. Around the same time, Dr. Ted Dubuque of St. Louis was suffering from a fatal illness. He made a promise to God that if he survived his illness, then he would spend the rest of his life helping others. Dr. Dubuque survived and spent half a year at Milot where he performed over 250 surgeries. Upon Dr. Dubuque's return to St. Louis, he served as a fierce advocate for the facility and helped to raise the money and awareness that have made it the excellent medical facility that it is today. As we entered the gates of the volunteers' campus, it was a refreshing shock to see rows of diligently working medical professionals in OR scrubs sitting on a freshly-painted porch of a well-kept building using new Apple laptops connected to satellite-generated WiFi.

We received a tour from a board member named Stephen from St. Louis. The hospital usually cares for about seventy people at a given time, but as a result of the earthquake, there were about 400 people in medical tents on land that was freshly-cleared by the US military. In addition to the 400 patients from the earthquake, there were about 600 accompanying family members as well, making close to 1000 displaced people to house and feed. However, the hospital and it's volunteer staff were doing an unimaginably good job. People were well-fed, calm, soundly-housed, and even cheerful! As we were walking through one of
the tents of convalescing earthquake victims, we came across a little boy with both of his legs recently amputated. To our group's
amazement, he had a wide smile on his face and was even roughhousing with who looked to be his brother or cousin closeby. This image burned itself in my mind as microcosmic of the Haitian peoples' incredible resilience and determination to be happy and enjoy life regardless of external circumstances.

After dropping off some boxes of much-needed diapers and medical supplies we returned to Cap Haitien where Operation Get Done's real work began...

February 23rd, 2010 - "First Day of Food Distribution!"

The following day, after dropping off several hundred more pounds worth of food and tools to the Hôpital Sacré Coeur in Milot, my three accompanying travellers had to turn back to Santiago, Dominican Republic to return back to their respective jobs and families. Because of the flexibility that I have withy my job in New York, I plan on staying in Haiti for a minimum of 1-3 months.

Two days after I arrived in Cap Haitien, I met Daniel Mezidor when assisted me in negotiating the price of a camera that I was purchasing (my other one was stolen in Dominican Republic). Daniel learned English when he lived in the Turks & Caicos for four years. He is only 23 years old, but he graduated a four-year electrician's program when he turned 18 and wrote an electrician's manual in French when he was 21. After assiting me with my camera purchase, I bought him lunch and I explained my broad purpose for being in Haiti-- to assist with the earthquake recovery effort and to increase the standard of living for all Haitians. He instantly stated that he would volunteer himself seven days a week to this cause and that he would no accept payment for his efforts. Daniel was in Port-Au-Prince during the earthquake.

The following day, Daniel knocked on my hotel door at 7:00AM and brought along his friend Jack who is from Port-Au-Prince. We spent the entire day walking around town and meeting locals and speaking with them and listening to their thoughts, ideas, and needs. We stopped by a large public gymnasium and Daniel told me that it's a place where poor people can get free food and medical care. We were allowed in the gates by the volunteer security guards and inside we met Angie and her mom Twilla who are volunteer nurse practitioners from North Carolina. They and their small grassroots NGO have been giving free medical consultations to locals to nearly a decade. Angie speaks fluent Creole. At one end of the basketball court were folding tables with volunteer medical workers on one side and Haitien patients on the other side. Lining both sides of the court going all the way back to the other side of the space were Haitians quietly and patiently awaiting their consultation. Maybe fifteen Haitian volunteers assisting the American medical workers wore bright orange vests and were organizing and directing the crowds.

I spoke to Twilla and Angie and asked how we could help them the most. They replied without hesitation that they needed food to distribute to their patients and that it was heartbreaking to give medical consultations to people who were dehydrated and hadn't eaten in 5-6 days. I looked around at their patients and told them that we would be back in the next 24 hours with food.

We spent the rest of the day getting a tour of the local hospital and then met with the Director of the World Food Programme's Cap Haitien. I informed him that we were a mostly-Haitian grassroots distribution organization and would like to assist the WFP in efficiently distributing their supplies. He was friendly and accommadating and seemed excited to work with us, but stated that before working with us we needed to register our NGO with Cap Haitien's municipal government. We then went to the local registration office and began our paper work. Thus began "An Nou Yonn Ede Lot" which means "Let's Help Each Other" in Creole.

That night, Daniel and Jack got five more of their friends to come to my hotel so we could plot our food distribution at the gymnasium. We decided that although we wanted to help the local people in need, we wanted to specifically target people displaced by the earthquake. In order to do this, we made two hundred credit card-sized pieces of paper with our logo and the name of our organization on one side and two of our signatures on the other side. We numbered each card and wrote in the date, time, and location of the distribution. We obtained a list of people with phone numbers and addresses that the government knew to be displaced from Port-Au-Prince. We then borrowed motorbikes and travelled all around the city handing out our cards until 1:00AM. The following morning we got up early and ordered t-shirts with our organizations name stamped on the front and back. We then went to the local open-air market and bought 1100 pounds of rice, 400 pounds of beans, 30 pounds of chicken, and 400 bags of water.

Incredibly, all of this food was brought to the gymnasium in only two trips using a Toyota Corolla taxi. We then bought charcoal and about eight of the women on Daniel's block came together and cooked the chicken and about 100 pounds of the dried food. Meanwhile, the rest of us made 200 bags of about seven pounds of rice and beans each which a single person could subsist off of for about two weeks. There were already 100 people waiting at the front gates of the gymnasium an hour before our stated time of distribution. We brought in the hot food first and made it into about 120 generous portions to give to Angie's patients. After they had filed out, we collected all the bags of rice and beans for the earthquake victims and placed them at mid-court. The victims gave theirs cards to our doormen and walked across the basketball court in a steady stream, picking up a bag of food and exiting through the back of the building.

By the end of the distribution, we had given about two weeks of food to 200 earthquake victims (about 10% of the displaced population that has registered with the government in Cap Haitien) and 120 portions of hot food to local people in need. It was the first big success of An Nou Yonn Ede Lot and I treated all of our volunteers to lunch in celebration.