Haiti is a complex and largely misunderstood culture. Today it is even more so after being repeatedly dragged across global media in light of the 2010 earthquake and now the most recent tragedy, Hurricane Matthew.
Heart strings are pulled and once again, all eyes are on Haiti.
Sobering news accompanied OCHA’s Hurricane Matthew’s Situation Report No. 7 (11 October 2016):
2.1 million people have been affected
1,410,774 people are in need of humanitarian aid
750,000 are in need of urgent help and are in need of food, nutrition, and emergency agriculture
175,509 people are in need of temporary shelter
Fact finding and metrics matter greatly when administering humanitarian aid. Over the years tangible results of large scale agencies have been cross analyzed and cataloged. However in less than a decade, what field research has not qualitatively nor quantitatively documented is the efforts of grass roots groups based in Haiti. The efforts and achievements of the following are laudable and provide a unique perspective and analysis of key risk reduction factors.
Bette Gebrian, a registered nurse and medical anthropologist who has lived and worked in Grand'Anse for decades has been one of Haiti’s tireless champions. Bette started her mitigation efforts a week before Hurricane Matthew hit. She quickly went into high gear with a call to arms to her friends for funding and colleagues to scourer local hardware stores for corrugated sheet metal and other items so hurricane survivors could put metal roofs back on their homes. With a bit more than US$100 per house she was able to buy galvanized metal sheets, roofing nails and cement. Her off the cuff formula? With 30 sheets of metal, 10 pounds of nails and 5 bags of cement she can produce a 425 square foot house. She currently has helped repair 170 homes and if she is able to secure additional funding, she hopes to build 500 homes plus.
Grand'Anse was one of the hardest hit areas where possibly tens of thousands of families saw the roofs of their homes blown away. While they are in the midst of regrouping their lives having a roof, even a 425 square foot one, makes a difference.
Maryse Pénette-Kedar and the team from PRODEV, a Haitian NGO founded in 1995 have been actively preparing survival kits and distributing aid to 7000 school children and families at their 27 schools located in the southern region of Camp Perrin, Les Anglais Chardonnières, Port à Piment, Torbeck, Chantal, Grand’Anse, Corail, Beaumont and Roseaux. One of their priorities is to provide safe shelters in communities where schools were destroyed.
Father Rick Frechette of NPH is an ordained priest who became a doctor so he could care for Haiti’s poor. Lately Father Rick and his team have been doing outreach and responding to the many pleas for help, mostly from isolated areas that are cut off in D'Asile, Grand Boucan and Baraderes. His accounts of their aid relief efforts sounds like a chapter from a Tin-Tin novel. From cutting their way through fallen trees on the road, to losing one of their caravans to brigands, who robbed them at gunpoint at Carrefour Charles at Corail. Never a dull moment in the life of Dr. Father Rick.
While bridges are out and roads are still being cleared of debris, arrival by water seems to be the surest route. Haiti’s provisional President Privert just authorized a local private initiative, a new deep water port called Port St. Louis. Having a deep water port east of Les Cayes will become instrumental in delivering humanitarian aid to the areas hardest hit by Matthew. Soon due for arrival at Port St. Louis is a self-propelled barge from Puerto Rico which is bringing 15 doctors and desperately needed medical supplies.
Timing is of the essence and the opening of this new port could not have been better.
Now we need to pray that Haiti remains on everyone’s radar and that funding continues to flow so supplies can be purchased locally. Having groups like Western Union waive remittance fees and approaches that are more circular economy based are a surefire way to help restore Haiti’s economy and position them on much stronger footing on their road to recovery.
