As preparations for Haiti’s spring rainy season continue, Oxfam America’s Kenny Rae reports on shifting needs and a race against time.
It’s my first week back in Port-au-Prince after a brief respite in Boston, Massachusetts. Last night was uncomfortable. Not physically, as my tent is now packed away and I’m sharing a room in a down-at-the-heel hotel on a hillside overlooking the harbour. But as I listened to the rain, I realised that my conditions were utterly luxurious compared with those endured by the tens of thousands of families sleeping rough in the city below me.
A thick layer of mud
My concerns were confirmed first thing the next morning. I visited a small spontaneous camp in Delmas 83, where I was confronted by around 300 people who had just been through a miserable night. The rain had turned the topsoil of their small field into a thick layer of mud. The few grassy strips remaining around the perimeter were laid out with clothes, mattresses and even sodden cardboard boxes that had previously been used for improvised shelters.
Our intention in coming here was to set up latrines but now other priorities are beginning to seem more pressing. Will the 400,000 square feet of plastic sheeting ordered arrive as promised by next week? It is critical that it gets here as soon as possible so that we can start distributing it to the more than one thousand families we’ve identified as in need of shelter. I find myself with tough decisions to make. Should I deploy two of the four Haitian engineers working with me to focus exclusively on drainage in the camps? How would this affect the plan to set up water tanks next week and the endless demand for toilets from neighbourhoods throughout our working area?
The need for drainage
While dwelling on this, I find that people in the camps were all too aware of the need for drainage and many of them had started digging small trenches around their own settlements. Samuel, a 12 year-old boy, is swinging a pick almost as big as he is, cutting a channel around the tiny tent he shares with his mother and sister.
Other urgent issues emerge. I am told that the owner of a nearby piece of land currently housing a small camp has changed his mind. He wants the latrines built on his property removed, even though hundreds of people are already using them.
“Doesn’t he realise that this is a much more hygienic solution than having people pooping in the open, that it’s temporary and that Oxfam will fill and cover the pits?” I ask.
“Yes, but he wants to talk with you,” comes the reply, so I know that a good part of tomorrow morning will be spent trying to resolve this, a real stretch for my two years of high school French.
Gathering materials
The problem at Delmas 77 was a bit more basic. The engineer had explained to the work crew that the latrine pit had to be dug 90cms wide. The next day he was running around gathering materials. When he returned today he found a hard-working crew digging a pit 1.5 ms wide (fully one foot wider than the length of our latrine slabs). We had to have a talk about communication and the need for supervision but ultimately came up with a good solution.
I have a tentative plan for the next two weeks: to identify priority sites for additional water tanks and start to set these up, to have one of the engineers trained in how to properly chlorinate and test water, to continue scouting other potential priority sites for more toilets and get these built.
But after seeing the impact of this week’s rain, reviewing the increasing populations of the camps and knowing that within a very short time the heavy rains will be here, I realise that we need much more plastic sheeting. After conferring with colleagues, I call the manufacturer in Ohio and ask how soon we can have an additional 500,000 square feet. He’s sympathetic to our needs, explains about his obligation to existing customers but promises delivery here in two weeks. Hopefully this should give us enough time to begin distribution before the downpours begin.