Hope and fear on my latest trip as I witness parents taking an active part in their children’s education, but also see how a clinic is struggling to cope with an cholera outbreak.
A chance to visit one of the newest camps in Haiti. The place feels more like a community and the brightly coloured latrines built by our staff pay testament to their hard work.
This is my third visit to Haiti and I’m always keen to see what changes have happened since my last visit and how our programmes are improving the lives of children in the country.
I look out at the beautiful views of the sea and can’t help feeling it’s a shame that all we see and read in the news at home are stories of the suffering of the Haitian people – we don’t see the beauty that this country also has to offer.
On my way out to Haiti for my second trip I was curious about what I would find and whether things had changed since my last visit in November. With recent news reports around the first anniversary of the earthquake claiming nothing was being done I was hoping to see some signs of progress.
It’s two months, now, since I joined Save the Children UK as an emergency adviser. Almost immediately I was sent to Haiti to review water and sanitation work we’re doing there in response to the cholera outbreak.
“Battles, campaigns and even wars have been won or lost primarily because of logistics”. Or so said Eisenhower. It’s equally true for aid work.
In a nation founded by former slaves, you might think that forced domestic labour would never be tolerated. You’d be wrong. Before the earthquake there was an estimated 225,000 children forced to live in and clean other people’s homes. Known as ‘restaveks’ these children are often sent away from their families to live with distant relatives or strangers – in the hope that they might have a better life. It’s a heart wrenching decision for any mother.
For my last blog from Haiti I want to focus on something positive since by the time this entry gets published a lot of media reports, no doubt, will have directed a good deal of criticism at aid agencies and the international community for the slow pace of progress here.
At 16.53 on 12 January 2010, the life of millions in Haiti changed in an instant. As I write this, sitting in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, there are numbers buzzing inside my head I can’t shake off.
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