Prayers Rise From Haiti’s Quiet Streets
Today was the last of three days of official mourning and the usually busy streets of Port-Au-Prince were quiet. I took the rare opportunity to drive some new team members a different route to the OBI warehouse. As we navigated the narrow streets of the Petionville neighborhood, we came across a church service taking place in the open air.
The churchgoers were mostly dressed in white. They sang hymns to music played on an old electric keyboard rigged to a crackling PA system, as the early morning sun shone though their raised hands.
We made our way past former landmarks like the Hotel Montana and into the city. For three of the team members in the car, it was the first time they had seen downtown Port-au-Prince and the horrific destruction left by the quake. For me, it was strange to think back to the chaos the city was in one month ago compared to the relative calm of this morning. In places where we saw bodies lying in the streets, looters robbing shops, and fires still burning – now there is quiet.
Before we arrived at the warehouse, we were stopped by a huge group of Haitians blocking the road. Ordinarily, road blocks in Port-au-Prince are a thing to be avoided, but this was no angry mob. The group was on a prayer march around the city – one of many such marches we saw throughout the day.
At our warehouse we met with a contractor we hired to make a quick modification to our delivery system. With so many containers arriving this week, we needed to convert our entrance ramp into a loading dock. We have a superb staff member, Lonnie, with us from one of our U.S. warehouses, and he needed to be able to drive our forklift out onto the dock to unload the containers. Even with the modifications, the space will be tight for maneuvering the forklift at right angles to unload heavy pallets.
Lonnie mapped out the dimensions of the new dock on the warehouse floor and spent over an hour rehearsing and fine-tuning his unloading technique with the forklift. In emergencies we cannot afford to waste any time; the supply chain must keep moving. I watched Lonnie visualize his technique much like a sportsman will visualize a circuit, and I’m confident that when those containers start arriving he will have the pallets flowing in perfect rhythm.
At Camp Casa we installed a water purification unit to help serve the 2,000 people living there. Our administrative assistant, Keisha, joined the field team today and was taking pictures of us installing the water system when a woman holding a baby approached her. The woman spoke to Keisha in Creole and pointed to the baby. Our translator stepped in and told Keisha that the woman wanted her to take the baby to the USA! “She will have a better life there,” the mother said in Creole. Keisha of course declined in the nicest possible way. It was a poignant offer set against a backdrop of tattered plastic sheeting in a dusty field surrounded by houses in ruin.
In another part of the camp a group of children struggled to get a homemade kite into the air. It was nothing more than a plastic bag tied to twigs. A 10-second flight was considered a success and merited high-fives and big smiles.
From Camp Casa we headed to a camp in Cite Solei, the most notorious part of Port-au-Prince—known for its gang violence and extreme poverty. I had been told of the water needs in this camp by another NGO and spotted it yesterday when taking off from the airport on a food drop. In the camp, the team met with the Mayor of Cite Solei and he told us of some dire water needs in several locations in the neighborhood. Our water team manager, Nick Balcombe, is going on an assessment tour with the mayor in the morning, and we should be installing the next water purifier in the afternoon.
In our “adopted” camp, Dadadou, we met with the camp coordinator and checked on the water system (which was running great). We took a team of Israeli post-trauma experts with us from our partner IsraAid. The team of young Israelis interacted with the children and coordinated specific activities designed to help kids recover from the disaster. Operation Blessing is planning on erecting a large 40 x 60 foot tent in Camp Dadadou, which will be used as a school, activity center, and social awareness training center. There are so many children in the camp and the school will serve them as well as kids from 3 other sites nearby.
The OBI team members working in Haiti want to extend Valentine’s wishes to our loved ones back home; it’s hard being apart, but our hearts are full here knowing that we are taking part in bringing much-needed relief to the people of Haiti.
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