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. 

sleeping

It's 01:30am. I'm wide awake.

This would be normal for me, elsewhere. There are times when I do just wake up in the middle of the night - I'll turn my ipod on and drift off again after half an hour or so. Not since arriving in Haiti, however. Here, I've been sleeping soundly, losing conciousness 30 seconds after my head hits the pillow/pile of clothes/crook of my arm. 

Tonight I am in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar building, in an unfamiliar town. I was awoken by an earthquake, and dutifully dashed outside. It lasted just a few seconds and was long over by the time I was outside. After waiting the requisite grace period, I return to bed. I lie here five minutes before another one hits. I have now felt three earthquakes in my life. I must have slept through ten or fifteen in the past month alone. 

Thinking too much is not good for you. Back in bed, I lie here thinking about all the people who don't sleep in concrete buildings any more because they're afraid. I decide, now, that I understand them. The building I am in, as with all buildings i go into, must have withstood a lot more than the little aftershocks we feel now. But that doesn't stop people, and now me, being afraid. 

And being afraid doesn't help sleeping. But nor does the generator that's outside my window. Time to put an old favourite - the dulcet tones of Alan Bennett reading Winne-the-Pooh - on the ipod and hope I don't get past chapter two. 

distributions

(Forgive me if I've written about these things before. I lose track. I'm impressed how the more regular bloggers manage it. Perhaps I'll have to start keeping notes on each entry.)

Setting up a distribution takes time. It's not just a matter of loading the trucks, driving to a location, then unloading as people come to you. I've also written about beneficiary identification, and that is the first stage. Following that, we return and explain to the community about what we are going to do, and when, and who will benefit. Information is the most important resource here. Providing clear information what, when, who and how can save a lot of hassle. 

During that visit, we ask for a list of each family to whom we are going to distribute. In camp settings, very often this list exists already. Camps often develop internal political structure, with a camp leader or committee emerging. This makes our life easier. 

It isn't a good idea just to support camps, however. (Overpopulated camps become dangerous. Latrines and waste disposal are obvious problems. Health deteriorates. Security and safety concerns rapidly rise.) If we just give to the camp, people in the surrounding areas see that the camp is benefitting from aid, and move in. So we aim to give to the surrounding areas too. Lists which include these populations are far less readily available, and usually have to be generated at our request. 

Once we have this list, we can distribute tokens. Using the community leaders to help, we identify one representative from each beneficiary family and hand them a voucher whilst explaining, again, what that voucher means, when and how the distribution will take place, and what the rules of the distribution are. For an average-sized list of 500 families, this can be a lengthy process. Often, it's possible to ask the community leaders to do this part for us, but that has posed some challenges here. Also, the voucher step can often be skipped, but it is a recognised, familiar, and long-standing system in Haiti. Changing the system now is likely to create many more difficulties than it solves. 

Some of these steps can be amalgamated, but even then the process takes time. Two days is what we're allowing for. Within one day would be even better. 

In an ideal world, then you can just turn up with your truck and exchange one voucher for one set of whatever you are distributing. 

Things are not ideal. If people start seeing you're giving out free stuff, they're going to want some. Particularly if they're desperate. And so many of them are. With it raining hard at night now, and many still sleeping in the open, any handout that might give them something to cover their heads with is sought-after. I mentioned previously how distributions have the potential to turn nasty. That means you need to identify a site from which to undertake a distribution from, a site that allows for a safe distribution to take place. That, or you get the military in to act as guards. This is becoming more and more necessary unfortunately, but remains something that should be avoided (these two posts provide good explanations of why). A few of the criteria involved in finding a distribution site include: a secure, sealed compound; an entrance for beneficiaries; a space to undertake the distribution, which needs to be accessible by several trucks; an exit for beneficiaries, preferably away from the entrance; an exit for staff, so that if things go wrong you can get your staff out quickly and quietly, to hop into vehicles that are ready and waiting - this particularly should be away from the entrance for beneficiaries; somewhere for the beneficiaries to queue outside the compound, preferably shaded - people might be standing there several hours (I've heard of one distribution that caused people to stand in line for 8 hours, due to problems with the organisation). In Port-au-Prince, however, there's no spare land. We don't get to pick the sites we want, because they've already been turned into overcrowded informal settlements. Any location that fits some of our criteria is valuable. Then we get to find out if we can use it - we've had owners that are untraceable, owners that have already lent their property to other organisations, and owners who just tried to charge extortionate prices. Those three came in one, short 4 hour session trying to identify a distribution point. 

That there is no space left in Port-au-Prince, for distributions, for settlements, is just one of the reasons why Haiti is so difficult. I shall see if one of my upcoming posts can highlight a few of the others. 

scaling up

My callsign has changed. It's annoying, because they've made all callsigns very similar now. My previous one was unique, and fairly easy to pick out amongst the radio traffic that almost entirely didn't affect me. 

It's understandable. This office, prior to the earthquake, was approximately 60 people. For the first couple of weeks, it was a group of about 30 international staff. Callsigns followed a simple system based on names, one easy to work out who was who. 

The office currently stands at 70 international and probably 600 or 700 local staff. We're aiming at about 1200 total. The old system began struggling as soon as there were 30 or 40 people using callsigns. The new system is far more scalable, but it means I don't can't work out a callsign if I just know someone's name. 

There must be so many things that have to change to scale an office up rapidly. Every member of the staff must get paid. Not just that, but ten percent of the staff have international contracts from other countries. A number of those, myself included, have residency in a third country. 

Managing the vehicles for that number of people is also a real challenge. We have perhaps 50 cars, and not many more drivers. The cars are in use from 6am to start picking up staff from various locations in town, to 11pm, curfew time. And despite all the planning that goes in to arranging cars the night before, there are always people who turn up and say 'oh, can I have a car for the next three hours'. And a few who turn up and say 'oh, I'm just taking a car for the next three hours'. 

Finance, logistics, human resources, in fact, the whole of the operations department (anything that doesn't count as the 'programmes department'), does not have an enviable job in my eyes. They have my utmost respect for keeping this machine ticking over. But then, this is why we bring in so many international staff. This is what they're used to doing. They've done it before, they'll do it now, and they'll do it again the next time in the next place. 

rest?

I'm taking a day off. Almost all of the office is, in fact. There are still a surprising number of people here, but several who, like me, are not actively working. Just responding to the occasional email, not letting work build up for tomorrow but not doing anything to reduce what already has to happen. Many have joined the excursion to the beach for sun, sea and mojitos.  

It's a wonderful feeling. It's the first time in three weeks that I've had this. Knowing that I could just hop in a car back to the flat, I could have done so five hours ago, or I could wait another five hours. The pressure has lifted. 

So I've been taking the time to catch up on some of the blogs I try to read, and I was particularly struck by this post from J at Tales from the Hood. It resonates so well with me. His description of night-time activities correlates remarkably with mine - I've heard each of those, not necessarily in the same order - and merely lacks the rooster which crows at intervals ranging from 10 minutes to 10 seconds, from midnight until 23:59. 

Being tired has its advantages. I only hear a small collection of these on any one night, but they're all regular features for anyone who can't sleep. 

It feels like it's going to rain again tonight. 

one month

(Posted late because I feel asleep typing it the first time!)

Today is Friday, 12th February. Today is a day of national mourning, national commemoration. People were on the streets from early this morning, white tops and black trousers or skirts, gathering in large crowds and singing to music blasted from 2m high speaker stands. This weekend will be one of reflection and prayer. Carnivale, supposedly starting on Monday, has been cancelled. 

***

Not last night, but the night before, it rained. I was only aware of it briefly as I faded into and out of consciousness, initially awoken by the cockerel next door who has a tendency to crow at 2am, 3am, 4am and 5am, as well as dawn and pretty much whenever the need strikes him. 

With near impeccably ironic timing, our first large-scale distribution of shelter items in Port-au-Prince was yesterday. We gave out plastic sheeting, hygiene kits, buckets for water and other items to people from communities in a district of Port-au-Prince. Over the previous few days, we identified who we were going to distribute to, and given each beneficiary a voucher. Inevitably, though, far more people came desperate for any handout that they might get. The vast majority of items we managed to give out to those we had identified, but as stocks were dwindling at the end our small team of volunteers from the community lost control of the crowd. We had to stop the distribution and leave the site, somewhat more swiftly than anyone ever likes to do, but plans for any distribution have to include escape routes. 

I saw this happen as well on Monday. I observed a distribution in the areas surrounding Leogane. The Canadian military volunteers security for distributions in that region, and had set up a cordon around the site. We were distributing to about 500 beneficiaries. The site we were using then was completely open, and as the orderly queue of beneficiaries with vouchers got shorter and shorter, our stocks got lower and lower. There was a second, ad-hoc queue of hopefuls which had about 1500 people in it. As the last kit was given out, the military released the cordon. Within about five seconds, we were surrounded by people picking up our discarded bags and plastic strapping that tie the bundles together for transport. The crowd was very good-natured, but it could easily have been different - without any form of shelter, aware that at any time now it will start raining, and in a month start raining heavily, and standing in the hot sun for several hours only to be left with nothing...

***

There was another noticeable aftershock this week. It was the fourth since I arrived, and the first I actually felt. Our security officer used it as a drill to train us to get out of the building if we feel one, but most of the people, including the few national staff who were around at that point, just treated it as an annoying interruption to work. 

Earthquake instructions for Haiti are different from other places, I understand. Because of the building materials (almost exclusively concrete) and the poor or non-existent building codes and standards, the first priority is to get out of the building. Getting under a table won't provide much protection if the ceiling collapses and a concrete slab weighing several tonnes falls. 

an introduction to beneficiary identification

Another day of assessment. We spent the entire afternoon going to a camp of about 5,000 people, up in the hills of Martissant, south-west of the centre of Port-au-Prince.

I hate these decisions. Based on two hours driving up and down this mountain, most of which was spent making wrong turnings, crawling along bouncing up and down roads so uneven that our large 4x4 was having difficulties, I have to decide whether these people get our support or not. 

The first site we visited had approximately 30 makeshift tents on a plateau. Whilst filling out the joint assessment tool - a way to quickly determine the needs of a group of people in terms of shelter, food, water and sanitation, security - we were surrounded by several dozen members of the camp, all keen to show how little they had. An aunt looking after her sister's seven children, because both parents had died in the earthquake. They ate whatever they had. 

We saw evidence for about 20 families living there, but they claimed the ground was full at night when everyone came back from work. We went on to the next section of this disparate camp, and heard similar stories. My concern was we saw no evidence for it, only their word that at night the camp population swells 10-fold and these people sleep on the floor each night, leaving no trace of their presence during the day. Was this a camp of 5,000, or 500? It's important to get it right - if you decide to help, you load the truck up with the right number of items. It's difficult to drive away with things left. 

That second section, of four, was the most disconcerting. We met with the community leaders for the area, and in a lapse of judgement I let a group of them gather between us and the car. It wasn't a problem, but we started being questioned ourselves. One particularly, and I'm sure he was just doing what he thought best for the community, started saying its been 20 days since the earthquake and they haven't received any help. The tone of his voice began to change as well, but the phrasing of the statement alone was enough to set me on edge. I can't speak Kreyol, but understand a lot through French. I called an end to the assessment, and we headed back to the car with thank yous all round. Later, when my colleague and I were alone, we agreed that we had both felt the same. Moreover, we are not here out of obligation. My colleague still runs a business, but comes to work for us during the day partly because he needs to earn money - business in the last few weeks has been understandably slow - but also because he believes in the work we are doing. The tone, the expectation, the lack of understanding of why we were there, was enough to alert us both.

Throughout the four sites making up this one camp, we saw perhaps a total of 100 families. Perhaps 200 if you include the surrounding area. But numbers will often increase significantly if you include the surrounding area. We have the capacity to do it. But its whether we choose to. 

And its not just whether we support them, but whether they receive any assistance at all. It's unlikely any other organisation will come, and there are strong arguments to be made for supporting that type of community - people who haven't been displaced very far at all, can continue making their livelihoods, but just don't have adequate shelter and sanitation provision for the moment. But our capacity is not large-scale. And we have a looming deadline. It's not raining yet, but some forecasts say thunder and lightening tomorrow. Given this, do we go back to that community of several hundred families, or do we find communities more easily accessible and use the same time to provide assistance to several thousand families, even if this assistance is perhaps not as long-term?

My choice, when writing the strategy, erred towards the latter. I have been second-guessing myself ever since. 

(I don't, actually, have as much leeway as that though to make the decision. First, there are available stocks and purchase orders made prior to my arrival. There's pressure from the donors to spend the money in the way they want it spent. And there's internal organisational politics which set an target number of beneficiaries. I sleep at night knowing that this decision wasn't mine. Well, I sleep at night because I'm exhausted at the end of each day.)

And so to bed.