Ayiti wonm jounal

“Today I have no food for my children, only coffee” 

This is Vena St, Juste. She lost her husband in the 2010 earthquake, and the father of her youngest child recently died of Cholera. She lives in Fort National, one of the most vulnerable zones in Port au Prince, and has lived there her whole life. I met her while working for Digicel on a joint social protection/mobile money project with the Haitian Government. 

She says the situation is hard for mothers inHaiti, with no jobs and a constant struggle to find food. She receives no help from her family. She has a boyfriend who shares the house with her that sells things on the side of the road to make money, but he spends most of it drinking and gambling. She has three children, and two of them go to the free school down the road and the youngest goes to kindergarden which costs 7,000 HTG (about $175 US) each year. Sometimes she does not have enough food to give to her children when they go to school, so she must make the difficult choice of which child to give money to that day. She said if she had money she would start a small business, pay rent and buy food with it. 

Fort National is just one of many neighborhoods that suffer from crushing poverty like this. NGO’s and the Haitian government have plans to deliver assistance to this community, and help create a little breathing space for women like Vena. But in the meantime Vena makes do, ensures the survival of her children and does it with a grace and humor that is incredibly inspiring. Perhaps her most memorable and powerful quote was:

“Haitian women suffer much, but they are strong and dream only of building a better life for their children.”

Women like Vena are the true force that will drive Haiti forward, not us expats that come and go in our white land cruisers. Its important to remember that as we approach our jobs every day, and try to emulate a little of her grace and humility. 

“Cholera Trek”

The donkey stood there placidly, as box of Aquatabs, training supplies and a Satellite phone were lashed to the animal’s panniers. I was told we we’re “renting” the donkey, to help us carry everything to our destination which lay on the other side of a scorched-looking ridgeline, 12km away.  I was glad I brought my headlamp.

This is just an ordinary workday for Mercy Corps’ Water, Hygiene and Sanitation (WASH) team, who operate in some of the poorest and remote areas of Haiti’s Central Plateau. As the program closes up this month, the team will have brought vital services to more than 630,000 Haitians.

Cholera in Haiti appeared with a vengeance just 10 months after the 2010 earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people, dealing another massive blow to a country that was already the poorest in the Western Hemisphere. Cholera had been absent in Haiti for more than three decades and it quickly spread, infecting more than 470,000 people. Although Cholera cases have dropped by more than two-thirds, the disease still presents a deadly threat to more than 50% of the population who still live without access to clean drinking water.

That’s why Mercy Corps’ cholera-prevention teams travel to some of the hardest-to-reach areas of Haiti to distribute water purification tablets and deliver critical hygiene information. Mercy Corps uses the draw of free Aquatabs to engage people in education sessions about the spread of cholera and the importance of getting water from clean sources. Sharing this life-saving knowledge ensures the program’s impact will last well beyond anything we could give away.

As we began the grueling hike up the ridge to the village of Bananier, I was struck by how much pride the team took in their work. This was one of the last distributions before the program ended, and when final beneficiary numbers were totaled up at the end of the week they would have reached more than double what was originally projected.

We descended into a lush and humid valley, a welcome break from the heat of the exposed hillsides and unrelenting sun.  We were apparently the first NGO that had ever been to Bananier and a group of about 75 assembled – shy at first but they began to warm up and joke and laugh as I took their photos and the training started.  When our box of purification tablets was nearly empty, we packed our remaining supplies on our donkey and began to head out.  A few minutes down the trail, I looked back to see the whole village accompanying us, showing their gratitude for coming this far to help their friends and families.

And this is how Mercy Corps forges strong relationships with the community. In the world’s toughest places, Mercy Corps goes the extra mile – hiking far away from the comfort of cars and air conditioning, listening to people whose voices rarely reach outside their villages, and ultimately empowering vulnerable families to lift themselves out of poverty. If you think about it, that’s a great reason to go for a hike. 

Mobile Money in Haiti was made famous about a year ago by Nick Kristof, who wrote an article about how money transfer through mobile phones was offering hope and financial services to thousands of earthquake survivors. 

As the program wraps up, I got the chance to participate in a series of focus groups and interviews with program participants. The goal was to see how we can do it better next time - and leverage the ecosystem of vendors accepting mobile payments to drive economic development as Haiti moves from emergency relief to long term recovery. These vendors are the face of entrepreneurship in Saint Marc. 

As my feet sunk into the artificial turf of Haiti’s national soccer stadium in Port Au Prince, I imagined Haiti’s most skilled players on the very same pitch and couldn’t resist the urge to kick a soccer ball around a bit.  I thought especially of James Marcelin, who I feel a special connection with even though we’ve never met. He is from Saint Marc, Haiti where I currently live and plays for the Portland Timbers, my hometown soccer team.

Imagine my delight and then multiply that by ten-fold and you’ll get a sense of just how much fun the kids were having that day. That’s the ethos of Football pou Lavi, a joint program by Mercy Corps and Partners In Health that uses the power of soccer to help stop the spread of HIV. By leveraging the unifying power of sport, Mercy Corps is able to provide critical health education to young people in a way that really sticks – particularly because this program is led by a group of coaches and peers from partner youth organizations that are highly engaged and motivated.  

With rates of HIV/AIDS higher than any country in Latin America, Haiti’s youth are particularly at risk. That’s why Partners In Health has also added volunteer counseling and testing services, where participants can find out their HIV status within 15 minutes. It was inspiring to see the line of apprehensive youth line up to get tested and then encourage their friends to do the same.  After testing, they went off to a mix-gendered awareness raising activity where volunteers from the audience described the various transmission avenues for HIV.  And finally, they got to play a real match on their country’s finest pitch. Now that’s a side of soccer that can really make an impact. 

When I was in southern California I visited an Occupy LA event to see the movement first-hand. I was pleasantly surprised by the atmosphere of organization, determination and cooperation that accompanied the communal hippie ethos. The occupations are raising awareness about an important issue and I was inspired by the many people that have devoted so much energy to the cause. But nobody had a tangible idea of what to do next - the occupiers I met eschewed money and organizational hierarchy and ultimately wanted to change the system but not participate in it. Kind of ironic that underlying all these hippie ideals there is a fundamental failure to realize that change comes from within.