supporting camps?

Things have changed since my last post. But mostly because I'm working for a different organsation. I am back in Haiti, and have been for over two months. After a wonderfully enjoyable break, I accepted another post out here. Part of me thought things would be different. I face different challenges - both within the organisation and on my new role - but overall the same picture still presides.

The biggest question faced at the moment, however, is yet again about people living in camps, and this formed much of my discussion recently with one of the Shelter Cluster coordinator here in Haiti. So far, agencies have done a lot to slowly persuade people to move out of camps and find more durable solutions. Though I wasn't taking notes during my conversation with the cluster coordinator, I believe he indicated somewhere in the region of 250 camps have been closed, out of a total 450 in the country. 

The conversation focused around the activities of one of the big NGOs here. They have restarted distributions in camps, distributions of shelter materials such as wood, plastic sheeting, nails, etc. The question is, are they right to do so?

Distributions in camps attract people back to the camps. The materials they are giving out are expensive, somewhere in the order of $250 per kit I think, or 10 times the average monthly wage. If, to be given those materials, you just have to live in one of the sites they plan to distribute to, does it not make sense to live within that site? Beneficiaries who had previously moved out of camps are known to have moved back in, in order to be eligible for this distribution. Much of the material is making its way rapidly onto the market instead of being used. 

Yet, the people in the camps still are likely to be the ones without any other option. Living in camp conditions is not pleasant. With significant rainfall almost every day, and falling heavily enough to create landslides such as yesterday, a camp is by no means the best place to be. Almost any other option is preferable to living in mud, under plastic sheeting, families crammed into 2x2m plots if they're lucky. The NGO appears to be working hard to give shelter materials only to those actually living in the sites they are distributing to, rather than those who move in from elsewhere just to receive something. Whilst some of the materials are being sold, most seem to be being saved and taken away to construct some more durable shelter. Even those which are being sold brings a form of income to the beneficiary family. 

It is certainly true that we, as a humanitarian community, don't have the capacity to help everyone. Even in some areas, such as Leogane, where the figures planned for transitional shelters outweigh the expected need, it is expected that in a year's time the picture will be different. (Current figures for the expected need come from very limited sources that do not portray the whole picture. Some agencies won't get funding for everything they had planned to do, and others won't have the capacity originally intended.) Carrefour and Port-au-Prince tell a completely different story where need dwarfs capacity. Also, agency deadlines for building transitional shelters vary, but one organisation here still expects to be building in July next year. Eighteen months after the earthquake, some beneficiaries will be getting a transitional shelter. Whilst of course the focus should be on longer term strategy, more durable solutions and closing the camps, we still have to face the fact that the camps exist now and are not going to disappear tomorrow. If beneficiaries are still in camps, and we as a community have the capacity to help them by providing shelter materials in the short term, is the choice not clear? 

monitoring and accountability

Monitoring and accountability are two vital parts of humanitarian action. You need to monitor to ensure that a programme is going well, that it is having the effect it should, and to work out how to change it to improve it during the programme, or afterwards for similar future situations. Accountability is about ensuring the beneficiaries are aware of the programme, understand what they can expect and what is expected of them, and can provide feedback. Most importantly, and this is what I'm struggling with at the moment, it's about ensuring beneficiaries need and want the programme being run, that they have input into its planning and implementation. It is all about communication and transparency.

As a change to my usual writing, here is a lighthearted example of how monitoring and accountability could be done in Haiti:

We live in a compound of about 15 people. A programme has been developed to provide wellness and staff support to those living in this compound. This programme has developed organically, and is flexible enough to change in accordance with changes in the situation. Whilst it might not have been thoroughly planned from the outset, it is acknowledged that this is arose out of necessity during the emergency phase, and it is deemed to be running smoothly at the moment. 

The lack of planning initially meant that it is only now, several months after the start of the programme, that monitoring and accountability are being mentioned. 

Therefore, I propose the following plan. Collectively, we could monitor who spends nights in rooms which are not their own. This information should be collated into an output tracker highlighting the successes of this programme. The results should also be communicated to our beneficiaries, and thus it is proposed to post up the output tracker on the central noticeboard for all to see. Not only would this improve the flow of information to our beneficiaries, but also provide more opportunities for beneficiaries to give us feedback on our programme and monitor more thoroughly. 

Such a programme will of course have added wider benefits of supporting the markets to regain stability, providing regular demand for Prestige, the local beer, and Barbancourt, the local rum. Indications so far are that the markets can sustain the significant demand that this programme creates. 

The information gathered by this monitoring plan can then be correlated to the number of empty bottles recycled each morning, as an indicator of how much alcohol was consumed on the previous day. This is not a completely reliable indicator, however, since often if we drink outside the compound at a bar, for example, the bottles will not be in our recycling bin. Therefore, a further indicator should be developed of the random bruises acquired during a night of drinking, and matched against incidents occuring in this programme. Similarly, any illness leading to a beneficiary not being able to work, and more importantly not being able to participate in the programme to full effect, should also be monitored and recorded. 

And here this ends, because I'm distracted by Switzerland beating Spain in the World Cup. (No, of course I'm not watching the World Cup when I'm supposed to be working. Of course there aren't TVs in the office specially. Accountability, anyone?)

Mr Peck

[This is posted about two months after it was written.]

Help is coming. But today, hinderance is coming too.

His codename is Mr Peck, because it is an open secret who he really is. We weren't supposed to know until three days ago. I had heard mutterings of his involvement, but I was aware two weeks ago and I think I was possibly the last to know. 

Sean Penn is out here at the moment and has been for a while, taking on the role of a humanitarian. He attends meetings along with the rest of us, gives updates on the work he and his organisation are doing, and the status of the IDP camp they are working in. I offer no opinion as to whether this is a good or bad role for him to be playing in Haiti - I have not had experience of working with him - but merely I think it interesting that Sean Penn has chosen to contribute this way. [Since I wrote this, my opinion of Sean Penn has deteriorated significantly, mostly due to an interview with CNN in which he stated how his was the only aid organisation doing any good work. Moreover he described how he had single-handedly organised a relocation from a flood-prone camp to Corail, in the north of Port-au-Prince. I know of five of six major agencies, including my own, who had significant roles in that move. I don't quite see the contribution he and his organisation made.]

Mr Peck is different, unfortunately. He is an equally, if not more well-known celebrity, and is coming to visit, to see the work that his fundraising has been put to. He will be here for two days and then return, having ensured that sufficient people in his entourage (approximately 20) have taken photos of him with smiling kids. 

Mr Peck began being involved in the work we are doing in Haiti 18 months ago, when he organised fundraising from his fans in order to support a school here. The total raised was $300,000, which is not actually that much money. Moreover, only $40,000 was given to us. It is highly likely Mr Peck can afford to write a cheque for the total amount from his own funds without batting an eyelid, but it still took over a year to receive the remaining 85% of the money. I cannot confirm, but it may have taken a year plus a large earthquake that received lots of press attention. 

Its major benefit was raising awareness amongst his followers. But now the feeling is that we begrudge that. The awareness he raised wasn't all that helpful, and he now is aiming to take portrays him as saintly, how good he is, he was supporting education in Haiti since long before the earthquake. Except the time, and particularly the effort it has taken us to receive the support from him almost means its worthless. 

Now, of course, he's come and the whole office is working to impress him, instead of doing our jobs. Numerous vehicles have been requisitioned to support his two-day trip north, when we are already struggling to provide sufficient vehicles to undertake emergency work. People have moved out of their accommodation, to squat in the rooms of others so that Mr Peck and entourage could sleep comfortably. In general, we are bending over backwards. 

'We' here refers to people on the ground here. If we were to get our way, we would cancel celebrity visits. It's not that easy, however. Head office, of course, likes such visits, but the question remains: Is the awareness raised worth the disruption to programming?

moving

Driving along the main road from Port-au-Prince out west, we reach perhaps 40km/h at the best of times. Every few minutes, we veer sharply to the other side of the road, avoiding the crack that has opened up on the tarmac. This remains one of the smoothest routes I know, however, by a long way.

On leaving the urban sprawl of PaP, heading west, you pass through the region of Carrefour. Its an overcrowded, poor community. Half of it is based on the side of a steep hill, access a real problem. the other half on the flatter ground towards the coast. Here, the streets are already flooding - rubble on the hills means water flows down the hill rather than drain away.

Carrefour is famous for its gang activity. Its also the place we are concentrating our programming in Port-au-Prince.

Our Leogane office is essentially a shaded rooftop. From here you can, however, sit and watch the recovery. To my right is an informal settlement, 50x50m covered with plastic sheeting. To my left, a small gathering of people sift through the rubble on a rooftop. The ground floor of that building is still standing, but it clearly had several other floors above that six weeks ago. 

It is easier to get things done here, but I'm quite glad I can work indoors. The heat is oppressive. The breeze helps, but sends papers flying. And the generator seems to cut out regularly. (Thankfully now, two weeks on from having written that, the middle floor of the office has been cleared for use - we still get the noise from the main streets outside, but not the breeze or the oppresive heat.)

South from Leogane takes you to Jacmel, to white sandy beaches. The proportion of houses damaged here is almost as much as Leogane, but the town itself is much smaller. Our team down there are operating on next to nothing, cramming four desks into an area roughly the size of my bedroom back home, variously used by 5, 10, or 20 people. Intermittent water supply, and even in the nice hotel which is the only place they currently have to sleep, any water even slightly warmer than cold is a premium. 

Lack of space also affects vehicles, so vital to almost all of our programming. I have also spent more time in the rural areas surrounding Jacmel than the other offices. Getting there requires some interesting drives. At one point, the road disappeared, but our driver didn't worry. He swung down the slope and into the river. After 200 metres along the opposite bank, at a point with no obvious distinguishing features, he forded the river again, up the bank, and lo and behold the road began again. (Road, here, is being generous. Path that is travelled by vehicles.) If it rains the day you want to travel to these remote communities, you're out of luck. That would frustrate me, if I had carefully planned vehicle movements only to discover many couldn't go anywhere anyway!

Each of the offices we have here have their own challenges. As I travel around the country, I learn to better appreciate creature comforts.

just one of the problems we encounter

Our organisation held a distribution recently and everything went smoothly. About 1% of the beneficiaries we had identified and given tokens to didn't turn up, but that is an acceptable error. We are checking why they didn't turn up through post-distribution monitoring. Such monitoring can also confirm if the items we distributed did actually go to the beneficiaries that we had targeted (rather than being stolen, or people coming to the distribution from other areas, or many other reasons). I await the results, but I remain optimistic. 

Our team leader for Port-au-Prince distributions, Charlie Tango, was driving back from it having cleared up, when he overtook someone walking along the road carrying some of the plastic sheeting we'd distributed. The distribution had taken place in a site very near to the area we were targeting, so finding someone walking away, that far from the distribution, wasn't planned. 

Charlie Tango stopped and undertook a quick bit of post-distribution monitoring on the spot. He was only carrying plastic sheeting. That distribution had been for several other items as well (our standard kit, when we have the supplies to do so, includes at least buckets, jerry cans, hygiene items, kitchen items, and blankets). He hadn't needed anything other than the plastic sheeting, so had discarded the rest. It turns out he had been from the temporary settlement that we had targeted. He'd left several days beforehand, but his friend had told him about the distribution. He'd come back during the day over the last few days, to be registered and to attend the distribution, but didn't sleep there any more. 

I commented on the large IDP camp at the local 9-hole golf course here. I originally wrote that there were 50,000 people camped there. I modified this to be 20,000 when I read the official estimates from the camp management cluster. The NYTimes, in this article*, cites 70,000. Family registration has been undertaken at that camp, and this estimate has been revised to 38,000. (I suspect, given this figure is based on our estimate of five people per family, that this will increase again.)  

We can't get a straight estimate on the people in any one camp. People, like our beneficiary that Charlie Tango talked to, are moving regularly, even now, almost two months after the earthquake. How are we to determine how many people we need to support?

* this editorial has one of the most accurate journalistic depictions of the situation here in terms of shelter that I have seen. It loses all its credibility, however, in those final few paragraphs, in which it suggests the solution is to just move everyone out of Port-au-Prince. The problems with that proposition are greater and more serious than any of the issues Lawrence Downes discusses earlier. 

Hair-raising moments in Haiti

Your security sitrep announces that the power grid is being turned back on in certain areas of town, despite numerous cases of power lines being down and exposed cables being reported throughout the city. 

You are driving along in the dark. 

It starts raining. 

The car driving towards you brakes sharply for some unknown obstacle, much to the annoyance of the vehicle behind it. 

As the distance closes, you see what appears to be a black rope caught in its wheels, stretched back up behind it, away into the darkness. 

Closer still, and then suddenly two metres in front of the windscreen is a more black rope dangling down, obvious now that it is cabling, bare wires exposed. 

You brake, almost alongside the vehicle coming the other way, glad not to have driven through that mass of cabling. 

The other vehicle revs its engine and jolts forward, straining to be free from the cabling. If it breaks loose, the cables dangling down in front of you will also fall. 

***

Thankfully, this was not literally a hair-raising moment. 

Hope

Whilst we sit here, concerned about the damage reports coming from Chile, there are moments of happiness. I have seen this scenario twice now. It runs something like this:

Lima Charlie and I drove to Leogane one day. This is about 30km to the west of Port-au-Prince. (This is a 1h30 drive - the roads are so bad, the traffic so heavy, that if you get there in less than 1h30 you're doing well.) We were supervising a distribution that we were undertaking, and we spent several hours setting it up, unloading the trucks and liaising with the Canadian military who provide all distribution security in Leogane.

The majority of our time was spent on crowd control. Ensuring people knew where to queue up, who to talk to when registering beneficiaries as got the plastic sheeting we were distributing at the time, and where to go once they had collected the articles. Around the edge, groups of interested people were amassing. The beneficiaries themselves formed an orderly queue. At the exit, crowds of men waiting to help the females we were distributing to with carrying the articles home - a few signs saying 'Orbis Tours' and 'Mr Kender, Hotel Hilton' would complete the airport arrivals scene. Around the edges, hopefuls awaiting any chance to benefit from the distribution congregated. 

Our driver picked one out from the crowd, tall, slender, and a carefully groomed beard. Our driver was clearly excited to see him, and ran over and hugged him warmly. Groomed-Beard turned out to be an old school friend of our driver. Each thought the other had died.