Where's a speedboat when you need one?

Late Wednesday night I learned that my dear grandmother, Lula Dowell Morrison, passed away after an illness of few weeks. We did get to see her over the Christmas holiday -- but that fact still doesn't make the loss feel any lighter.

I spent all day yesterday trying to get a flight home in time for the funeral this evening, only to discover that every seat on every American Airlines flight (which seems to be the only commercial airline operating right now) is booked.

This is actually how things went:
Me: When is the next seat available?
AA: It looks like there's one seat open next Wednesday, but you'll have to pay an extra seven hundr-- ah, nope, now that one's gone too.

Super frustrating. Especially since the only place I want to be now is home with my Granddad.

Our stress leave is scheduled for March 7-22, but I'm hoping to get home sooner than that. Right now I'm trying to book a flight through the Santo Domingo airport and then I'll figure out how to get over to the Dominican Republic. Wish me luck.

An assortment.

Earthquake fatigue. I know that we are just starting down a long and hard road - but now, after the immediate aftermath, it seems people around these parts are longing for normalcy on some level. Let's not get lost in pity but rather remember that all those "IDPs" are people who would love to get back to the boringness of everyday life. Camps are starting to sport small restaurants and cell phone charging stations, and today I noticed that you can get a manicure at a camp in Delmas for 75 gourdes.

Hope. Most evenings at the MCC office staff members and volunteers sit down for a few minutes of reflection. On Thursday night, just after the approximately six days of prayer that happened in lieu of Carnivale this year, we took up the topic of hope. "Who or what embodies hope for you in Haiti?"

I have a hard time pointing to any one person as an inspiration of hope. Stories of post-earthquake generosity and bravery abound, but I still feel angry that this catastrophe happened to necessitate that selflessness and courage in the first place. (Is the beauty of a family sharing with others the little food they have left worth losing more than 200,000 people? I know that the scale of this disaster is not natural and that it reflects an unjust economic system, but I can't help feeling like this "lesson" is being communicated with literal overkill.)

Head-bound as I am, the most hopeful thing for me is a statistic. The World Health Organization shows that Haiti's annual suicide rate is exceedingly low - actually, at 0% it's tied for last place (in 2003, the last year for which figures are available). Given that many Haitian families were in dire economic straits before the earthquake, you would assume that suicide might be considered a valid option for those who find themselves at the end of one rope or another. But all that knot-tying and holding on in years past gives me confidence that Haitians will pull through this as well. It's not fair that they have to, and they're not going to be able to do it without a lot of support, but they'll do it.

Relief vs. development. Speaking of support: the line is blurry between these two raisons d'etre for foreign NGOs in Haiti. So many people have been living so close to the edge for so long that any free help is very much appreciated, and there are reports of folks with intact houses moving into tents to qualify for disaster relief or people coming into Port-au-Prince from the countryside to participate in food distributions. This is of course a very small minority, but it points to the fact that earthquake recovery must include a rural development aspect as well - especially as many of those in the countryside have opened their homes to migrants from the city, and especially if the all-important work of decentralization in Haiti will take hold.

I'm still happy to be working with the Haiti Response Coalition, which despite a certain internal chaoticness is focusing on ensuring that Haitian voices are a loud-and-clear part of the mega-NGO reconstruction conversation. There are three meetings scheduled this week in which Haitian leaders and Haitian NGOs will develop a vision statement that will, we hope, guide the overall process. Stay tuned.

Happenings

Well, here we are 10 days after our last blog post. After looking at that date, I've been trying to remember what's happened since then. The biggest recent event is me getting malaria. It's not official as there was no blood test, but the symptoms seemed like malaria and the course of treatment isn't too long so I figured I would play it safe and take the chloroquine. (You may ask why I just don't take chloroquine all the time. I guess it just comes down to convenience and not wanting to take a drug regularly for 3 years when, if you do get malaria, the treatment is quick and effective. So that's that.)

The Depps have been letting us stay at their house as we are still working in Port-au-Prince (and will be for the next few months). They're coming back from stress leave on Wednesday, so we've been trying to find alternate digs so as not to overcrowd them. MCC has rented a house in Kenscoff, which is up a cooler and greener mountain overlooking P-au-P -- and is a mere 45-minute drive from the office (it seems we are just not destined to live in this city proper, sigh). This house will serve as a retreat for MCC staff and a space for groups that are coming to Haiti. Sharon and I will be staying in this house for the next few months, so it will be our new temporary home. Since it's almost totally empty, this weekend we're getting some things from our Desarmes house to make it livable. Two good things about this move:
- just maybe there is good mountain biking in the area and I can get out once or twice in the next few months.
- there are almost no mosquitoes.
(I'm trying to talk MCC into a fireplace and a hot tub, but I'm skeptical they'll agree. But here's to hoping.)

A couple of trucks will be delivering material relief in the next few weeks to us here in Haiti. This is great news, but our one big challenge now is receiving all of this aid and consequently getting it to those who need it. The volume of material may not look like a lot, but when it gets here each big pallet that is loaded by a forklift in the U.S. must be unloaded by hand and carried into our makeshift warehouse. Once there it must be loaded by hand again into our mid-size truck to go out to all the communities we are helping across this, unfortunately, traffic-snarled city.

Still we have no photos! Maybe we can get around to taking a few photos of something interesting one of these days. We're headed out to Desarmes tomorrow to get a few things and take a team of engineers to evaluate a school near there, and then we'll spend the night, pack up our stuff, and head back on Saturday.

On a sad note, our friend and former MCCer Josh has been here for the past few weeks but is headed home to Canada tomorrow - this is sad for us but great news for Marylynn. Here's hoping next time they can both come.

Making sense of it all.

I feel like I should update just to let you know what's happening with us here in Port-au-Prince. We've been busy working in the office, which is something new for us in Haiti. City life is nice (odd to say as the city has been so severely damaged): there are people around, electricity to be had, and an abundance of food items that we don't have in Desarmes. The weather is cooler and the distance between our temporary home at the Depps' and the office is more than a five minute walk (this may sound odd, but when your entire week is composed of walking across the street from your home to the office and the odd 10-minute walk to the center of town, a little distance can be nice).

How is the city? Some days I forget that an earthquake happened because stores have opened again, banks are open, and street vendors are crowding the streets as usual. Of course I didn't lose my home, no one in my family died, nor friends, nor co-workers. Every once in a while a bad smell hits you in the face and you remember what has happened, or you drive down a road and look across the valley and an entire neighborhood is rubble.

It's strange to be in a position of judging the level of need that people have and deciding whether or not they merit help. Most of Haiti would not turn down free food aid, tents, tarps, water, or shoes a few months ago, and now everyone is saying they need help. What do you say to a family who hasn't lost their home? What do you say to someone who is still employed and earning a salary? Sometimes the people that have the means and know how to ask are the ones that find aid before those that have more need but don't know how to ask for help.

The other difficult part about watching "aid" pour into the country is that a lot of the aid is going to Americans or Canadians or other international staff members. They are being paid with donation dollars and living and eating within the walls of the UN compound and all sorts of new vehicles and motorcycles are flooding the roads. I can judge other international workers just as much as I can be judged, I guess, but it's just the idea that millions of aid dollars are coming to...pay the salaries of non-Haitians, buy imported foods, etc.

Trying to finish this post... a few days later. Yesterday we dropped Ben and Alexis off at the airport and then we went over to the UN logistics base to try yet again to get IDs for easier access into the logistics base to coordinate with other NGOs or simply get more information about what is really happening here. I left there frustrated, and the drive to the office only heightened my frustration with everything, the international aid response, the traffic, work, etc. The prospect of going to the office just overwhelmed me and as I dropped off Sharon I hopped on a motorcycle to go "home." I got back, showered and sat with my book until I finished it and hung out in utter bliss in my 100% complete privacy (well, except for the cat).

All this to say, it's a bit surreal at times being in the position I'm in and the gravity of the new reality that is here in Haiti. Everything feels somewhat different now, and the country I've come to know over the past 1.5 years is a new place and the job I've come to know over the past 1.5 years is a different job.

For now you'll have to settle for the 1000 words

A brief note on why there has been an absence of photos on our blog. We felt that the devastation of Port-au-Prince has been widely documented (if you don't believe me, just ask Google), and that us taking photos would be somewhat akin to taking "souvenirs," if you will, of the earthquake. Somehow it didn't feel respectful to be out snapping photos of fallen-down buildings, etc., when all that those photos would communicate is that we were there.

But we are indeed here, and now that our roles are becoming more defined we will start taking/posting photos on specific things happening in our day-to-day lives.

Speaking of specific things: the MCC meat is due to arrive TODAY! Attentive readers will know that we've been working on getting this here for the last 10 days or so. It's been delayed multiple times: because of a problem at the Port-au-Prince airport we had to route the flight through Santo Domingo, from which it was trucked across the border (slooowly and bureaucratically) and to a local warehouse. Today we're meeting the meat and will hopefully be able to finish the distribution process soon. Canned meat photos likely to come.