On Roads.

Haiti for me has been constant change. 

Every day is so different and so unpredictable; the way I feel about the country, the people, the work, the workload. From exhausted to energetic, from so content to so frustrated, from happily at ease to suddenly stressed and under pressure. 

It’s a big mixed bag and I kind of love that. These extremes are very reflective of the Humanitarian sector as a whole, and a big reason to why humanitarian aid workers love it and hate it, and could never dream of doing any other job. Characteristically, the work also often throws some ethical challenges your way, which make you question the work you do, and the place in which you do it.

The beautiful SC house in Jacmel

Whilst there is a lot I really love about Haiti, at the same time there are parts of the environment and parts of the culture that just don’t sit well. If I’m to be entirely honest, there are many which I could list. However I want to focus on just one, due to an experience on the road that really was a little too close to home.

In my ‘Haiti is Not Tahiti’ post, I touched upon the dangers of being involved in a car accident in this country. The mob-scene that develops and the blame-culture that fuels it. If you’re accused of damaging anyone/anything, you’re in serious trouble - to the point that even your life may be at risk.

 
Well this particular day was a Saturday, which = a p.m. beach day. Twenty minutes’ drive along the main coastal road takes you to Cayes-Jacmel: stunning waters, big waves and white sands. I was here with a traditional Brit (big tea-drinker, most polite, very burnable skin) from another NGO. Lets call her A for reference. 

As we enjoyed our sunset swim and the pastel pink skies, A told me about her Haitian colleague who is currently battling for his life in hospital. A motorbike accident on his way home from work left him with what was initially thought to be a broken jaw. He had received treatment and had been sent home to recover. Later however, things turned nasty when it transpired that the break in his jaw had in fact extended to his skull, and that he was suffering from severe internal bleeding.

“How’s he doing at the moment?” I ask.

“Bad” she replies… “but…well.,.better. I mean, yesterday he was conscious for about three minutes”.
This is one of the longest-standing employees in the NGO that A works for. The guy that taught their entire team to dance salsa. The guy who is probably going to die.

Around 8pm, after the last of the evening's light had touched the sky, my driver picked us up. I’m feeling good. Well-exercised, happy and healthy. In a split second the whole situation changes...half way home the driver slows on the main road as we approach a large throng of people, some shouting. 

A ‘tap-tap’ (local open-air minibus type transport) is stationary on the road and some other motorbikes are parked up around, but outnumbered by the crowds. It’s very dark as there are no streetlights or other vehicles, but our headlights illuminate the scene, and we're quick to realise there’s been a road accident. A bad one: “deux morts et un blessés”; two dead and one injured. 

As we slowly approach I see a body splayed on his front, dark skin on hot tarmac. In contrast to everything else, he’s not moving. Everyone is crowding everywhere but not really paying any attention to him. I still have an unrestricted view. In my head I think:

‘I’ve seen this before. First Aid scenarios. Right, yes, First Aid….I’ve been trained in First Aid, really recently, we did these…the simulations…they looked just like this…they were for instances like this. Right? 

Right. 

Ok.

Oh. Hang on.

I’m in Haiti.

And I’m white in Haiti –not even accepted here at the best of times. 

Ok. 

So what should I do?'

 

As if she could hear these thoughts, A, next to me says “be careful, don’t get out”. We lock our doors, but I roll down the window. Our driver is talking to someone from the crowd, but I don’t catch the Creole. Like the man in the road, the motorbike is also lying on its side. He isn’t moving. He must be unconscious I think, why is no one talking to him? At least trying to reassure him? He might be able to hear everything going on around him…why is no one talking to him?

The driver stops and turns to me. He asks me what he should do, in a tone that implies he’s waiting for instructions from me. He repeats the fabric of the scene: two dead, one injured.
Next question: Do we take the injured to hospital? In most instances in any country in the world this would be a no-brainer, but a huge number of questions flicker through my head. What’s our NGO policy on this? Are we allowed? What would Security advise? Is it safe? If this person dies, would we be blamed by the family and Save the Children possibly targeted? I could potentially be putting whole teams of people at risk here – everyone in Jacmel knows where our office is. 

Then I catch myself and retrace these thoughts, and find it absurd that I am even thinking of such questions. Absurd and disgusted. I mean, isn’t it simple? Someone is potentially dying, and here I am in a huge 4x4 that can perform a lifesaving journey, and here I am hesitating over it? 

The humanitarian need is so plain that it's screaming in my ears and stabbing at my gut.

It’s simple right? Why isn’t it simple? 

I suddenly realise perhaps I’m not the voice of authority on this one – I’ll call the Field Manager. Yes, I’ll call, to ask. As I fumble through wet towels to find my phone, the driver interrupts these thoughts with an update: the injured was already on the way to hospital – in another car.

Relief, and ethical dilemma over.

 

I want to get out of here. We have no place to be here, and I fear agitation. To get through the crowd we have to drive right up next to the scene, our tyres just two metres from this young man’s still body. I am surprised at myself for how long it took me to realise, no, to even consider, that he was actually dead. That’s why no one was talking to him. He was dead. He lay face-down with one arm stretched out. Like a sleeping superman. An unrecognisable substance came from his otherwise unscathed forehead, and a perfect pool of blood radiated from his chest and collected on the road beneath him. He was so young. Early twenties at most. His toned, real human mid-rift was exposed where his t-shirt had ridden up, his hips slightly off the floor. 

So Young. 

A girl lay away from him at the rear of the bike, also face down on the road. I just see her bare legs, and her stripy t-shirt. And her real human body.

At last, someone in the street moves the huge pile of thorny branches that have been placed to block the road. Access granted, we thank them and leave the scene behind us. I feel awful. I feel grateful. Grateful that the injured is already reaching the hospital, and grateful be in these big NGO Land Cruisers every day, with their huge metal casing, with our amazing drivers and our obligatory seatbelts. I feel spoiled, and so guiltily fortunate. They’re so young - and they died. The toned youth of his mid-rift, and the smoothness of his dark skin. If he was wearing a helmet, he’d probably still be alive. 

Just ahead, a group of kids are running up the road with torches. No doubt they’ve just heard the news. Shit I think, their families aren’t even here yet. It’s only a matter of time before the word will spread to them. They’re dead. That substance from his head.

Then A breaks in, “the thing is, if you take someone to hospital you’re automatically liable for all the bills and medical costs”. Oh, hadn’t even thought that far. I tried to work out if and how that changed what I would have done. Then continues A: “When [her dying colleague] had his motorbike accident, no one would stop – no one wants to risk being liable for paying the fees; he was just left lying there on the road”. 

I feel awful.

I ask the driver for more details about the accident we'd just left behind us. He answers: A tap-tap without any headlights had hit the motorbike, carrying three people. Two dead, one injured. 

Oh. 

 “Was that the tap-tap back there?” I ask. 

“No” he says. “No, it drove away when it hit them”.

It drove away. Of course.

 

“If I had that job I’d kill myself”

Blog. In these months that have passed it has been left much neglected, but not once omitted from my To Do list. I could delve into my reasons for this echoing silence, but it can be pretty simply put: I’ve been busy. Why? Busy working, act-ually. 

But you’re only a volunteer? Erm, well, it’s not been quite like that. Please shed your kind optimism (I haven’t got a job –don’t be silly)…I’ve just been spending the last five months filling in someone else’s.

Upon my arrival in Haiti to begin this placement, it transpired that my so-called ‘coach’ (let’s called him P) who is supposed to provide on-the-job training, support and a shoulder to cry on, was due to leave that very same week. During my first three naïve days in his presence, P  kindly wrote a few pages of handover notes, introduced me to various faces as the “new Reporting Specialist”, passed me on his responsibilities and uttered some apathetic words of contempt for the job.

So what exactly do I do here? I’m the Report Specialist for all Save projects running in Haiti, which is about 50. In simple terms, every few months donors need to know the details of how we’ve been spending their money and how the programmes they're funding have been going, for example school reconstruction grants, hygiene promotion activities, micro-enterprise initiatives and education programmes.
I am responsible for coordinating, editing, translating, nagging for, and at times, supporting local staff/writing/re-writing these reports. I need to make sure they get done, and get in on time, and that they include all the essential data before I send them, gleaming and legible, to the Country Director for her comments and review. 

This whole NGO project reporting business risks sounding like a fairly simple and straightforward process. It’s not. My workload and stress-levels have varied enormously so far, and aside from hosting donor visits to the field and collecting a few case studies, it's a hugely (99%) desk-based job. To be brutally honest, some days I often do wonder what I'm doing, doing this?

Thinking back to my hand-over, P evoked in me this mixed feeling of self-pity and trepidation; he had this aura of greyness to him, as he half-guiltily packed his belongings from his desk. Exhausted by the role, his last words were “good luck with everything you’ve got coming. It’s a burn-out job to be honest, but see how you go, maybe you’ll like it”.

Other staff I met in the early days compounded my feelings of dread with not-so-uplifting responses: “oh reporting? I don’t envy you”
“ouch -hard job”
“egh, good luck”
and my personal favourite “Reporting officer? I hate reporting. If I had that job I’d kill myself”.

I don't know if you can relate, but when you start a job, nothing feels quite as foreboding as being entirely responsible for something that you really don’t fully understand. This, combined with being driven hours away to a totally different office from which to work, and dealing with steady stream of emails and attachments flooding your Outlook inbox. Emails emails emails. Emails and attachments from people who are in which position, from what field office? Talking about which report? Giving me drafts for when? I was thrown straight in, writing emails in French, navigating my way around who was in what role, trying to pick up Creole*. The first two weeks remained a little like this, with an elegant 'Reporting Calendar' displayed across a spreadsheet which silently screamed approaching deadlines from a bright screen. Deadlines which meant everything and nothing to me, glaring away. Combined with the 'no walking' security policy, you can trust my first month in Leogane was a bit of a tricky one. 

The lagoon, just down from the house



However, whilst sounding like a broken record, I am increasingly coming to appreciate that my environment and my freedom to explore has the capacity to change how I feel about so much. The breakthrough arrived when I was relocated to Jacmel, Haiti’s rare little paradise on the south coast. From this moment onwards I have believed myself the luckiest girl around to have the role of Reporting Officer, here. I live in a beautiful house a stone’s throw from a wavy lagoon -complete with its very own huge white dog to take me running, a blender in which to conjure mango and banana-peanut butter smoothies after work, endless rocky paths and village smiles, lizards everywhere, security rules that allow you to walk as you please, weekend treks to waterfalls, grinning locals under swaying palms to greet me on the way to the office.

I could go on describing life in Jacmel, but it'll only make you envious, and perhaps raise moral questions of the expat-local inequality divide, and the guiltily luxurious lives NGO workers can lead. Rest assured I have been mulling these over myself. Instead, I'll leave you with photos to replace the words, and summarise that it's a little bit like this....

Sometimes: the job really really sucks.
But all of the time: the location/house/life I’m living here, it’s so beautiful.
One not so unlikely day: I am likely to find myself under a tent in scorching South Sudan, or living in fear in restricting Afghanistan (albeit hopefully doing a job I love).
So in the meantime: being a Reporting Officer in Jacmel, je t’aime. 

Coconut break at the office in Jacmel

* Creole is the Haitian dialect here. It is what Afrikaans is to Dutch – imagine a baby trying to speak French and you’re almost there. A car is simply known as “une machine” (at term which also applies computers, washing machines and any other big electrical device), a pen is “une plume” (literally: a feather), and I wont touch on the verbs, but lets just say that as a lifelong French teacher, Creole would probably give my mum nothing short of a grammatical cardiac arrest. On aller!

 

Jacmel living, in pictures.
Haiti’s little paradise.

View from the Field Manager's balcony

smoothie concoctions in the kitchen

mangoes for breakfast lunch n dinner

Haiti = rum and lime

 

Caught in the rains during 6.30am run with my mate Boca.

ma chambre

the walk to work

Trek to Bassins Bleus waterfalls

La Vie en Cage.

There are things that, over time, you learn about yourself - about your likes and dislikes, your strengths and limitations. Sometimes, we find ourselves in a situation which tests these qualities, and at other times, we chose to test them ourselves. In reality, it is often a combination of being faced with a situation which will test us as individuals (whether that be physically/mentally/emotionally) along with making our own personal decision as to whether to go through with that test or not.

Without doubt, my first month in Haiti challenged me in circumstance (the rigidity of security restrictions), but not in such a way that I really saw through/fully put up with that test of circumstance (the personal bending of security restrictions). 

In simple terms:

Circumstance = I was based in the small ‘town’ (think dusty dirt roads, some life on the streets and a bit of traffic) of Leogane, where expats working for Save the Children are not allowed to walk anywhere outside of their residence or office.  This, however, I found entirely fair. Why? Because the rules seemed unjustified, as everyone I came across kept confirming. In short, almost all security threats reside in the capital city Port-au-Prince, and all expats from the other NGOs in Leogane (that’s a lot) are free to roam around. Some have no security rules at all, some are restricted to walking the streets in pairs or more, others only in the daytime…but they’re still free.
It’s like the frustration incurred when you’re told you can’t ride in the front seat because your brother is older than you. He’s only three years older, so why should that make any difference?  Except with this journey, the frustration is even worse, because you can’t even leave the car, even when everyone else gets out.

Self-resolution = get away with what you can, whilst not running into trouble/putting yourself or your colleagues or your organisation in any unnecessary danger.

It may sound like an echo of my early blogs about Deployment #1 in India, but the start of this placement was really hard (do note however that then things change, and stuff got a lot better!). The positives however, are that I found myself in a far more structured placement here, exposed to some highly experienced expats, and working in the same office as motivated and experienced national staff who made up teams from all the different sectors: Livelihoods, Health and Nutrition, Water and Sanitation, Child Protection and Education. 

ma vie à Leogane

So whilst Leogane Field Office boded for a good set-up, finding myself at 7.45am in a car each morning to be deposited in a stifling room to work behind a laptop until I stepped back into a car at 5.30pm to be deposited at home until I got back into the car at 7.45am the next day…well…for me, that was HARD.
After each sedentary day I came home to an oven of humidity (bedroom) and longed for some kind of movement, some kind of outlet or activity. Just a walk down the street, or down the village path to the seafront. A perfect 20minutes on foot! Such a small request! 

I knew this would be the situation before I arrived and I knew it would be the ultimate test for me, yet from day one I was already cursing myself for putting myself through it. What was I thinking? Forgive me for sounding so far from altruistic, but giving up my physical freedom and emotional bien-être and working this hard, all for free? 

Seven years of on and off volunteerism is beginning to wear thin, and this was really pushing it. 

Moreover, I rejected the whole principle of it. How are we ever to implement an acceptance strategy as an organisation, when the only interpretation the locals can have of us is as foreigners being ferried about in 4x4s every day, kicking up the dust as we go?

Within a matter of days I knew that I couldn’t go on living like this. And often, little by little, when we find ourselves in situations we’re not happy with (nothing on TV/fatness/unhappy marriages) we find that we are able to do things to change them (bake a cake/don’t eat the cake/have kids*). I put on my trainers and ran laps up and down the driveway of the garden until I was sweaty and out of breath, watched by the guard perched in his shelter, probably thinking, who is this mental white girl? 

 

Something had to change. I weighed up the options.

1) Leave the traineeship (that’s giving up; rubbish)

2) Find another job in Haiti where the security rules allow expats to be human beings with legs (possible… best start looking then)

3) Change the rules (ask the somewhat intimidating beefed up Mr Security Man in PaP to make an updated assessment of the security situation in Leogane; sounds good)

4) Flex the rules (risky, but there must be some ways to get what I want, no, what I need) 

When I ruled out option 1), only spent a half-day on 2) and made some progress but never yielded results with 3) (he even said he’d discuss the results of his re-assessment with the Field Manager!), it didn’t take long to resort option 4).  

Naughty.

In the first week I started small. I’d ask a driver to take me out of the office at lunch, and take me to a market. As with everyone I spoke to in Leogane, my driver said the same “ah oui, la securite a Leogane c’est bien! Pas gen probleme”; ah yes security in Leogane is good! No problem!
At the market he’d get out of the car and walk around with me as I was met with mixed responses of smiles, frowns, hellos and threatening shouts of “BLANC”. This freedom, however small, was a mini victory for me. Contact with real Haitians!

low production = low yield

Turning attention to the market for a moment, I was shocked by the poor quality and poor selection of produce, along with their extraordinary costs (don’t get me started on that one) for such a poor country. Miserable piles of bruised tomatoes grouped in six, covered in flies and already soft to the touch. The same with carrots. In fact the market is more or less just a sparse and expensive selection of onions, rice, cornmeal, beans, pasta, potato and charcoal. Bananas and mangoes can be found on the streets, but very little else. If you don’t like mangoes and deep fried chicken with plantain, you’re buggard, because there’s nothing else to eat. Coming from the plethora of colours and superfluity of both choice and quality of India’s markets, this barren muddy Haitian equivalent was a real contrast. 

I miss chai tea.

Anyhow, drawing the ship back to the dock (is it allowed to invent one’s own sayings? Guess so…) my market mini-missions were surpassed by Leogane’s RaRa festival, which was conveniently held the second weekend after my arrival. Even more conveniently, Save the Children’s Child Protection Team were doing a lot of awareness-raising and hygiene promotion at the festival, which was the perfect opportunity to get permission from Boss to photograph the whole event. And on the side-lines, maybe to have a great time being free and enjoying the festivities as well. These legs were made for walking, don't you know.
Believe me, I made the most of every minute. And what did I learn? Wow the Haitians know and love to dance! Man they got the style...

I also came across some kids that had used free condoms distributed as inflatable balloons. Why not.

Save the Children Child Protection promotion at the RaRa festival

Hygiene promotion/cholera prevention water tap.
Creole: Hello water, hello soap, goodbye germs!!!

Given the mounting length of this post and in order to retain a degree of professionalism (stop your chortles) I can’t go into detail about further security-bending escapades…except that they may have involved making friends with another NGO, which may have had minimal security rules, that may have led to me smuggling my running stuff to their house from time to time, which may have resulted in the odd countryside jog, which may have satisfied my need for exercise, and may have kept me sane.

Most importantly, in the end I discovered the little paradise of Jacmel, which lies two hours over the mountain from Leogane and on the South coast of Haiti. Turns out we have a Field Office here too, and so with a little asking about, stating my case and seeking relevant authorisation from those at the top, I eventually got relocated here. RESULT. Beautiful Jacmel where even Save the Children expats are permitted to roam freeee -you have no idea how happy I am now. In the same way that I have felt at so many different points of this traineeship, and faced by all these various circumstances and personal challenges, this year really has been from one extreme to the next and back again.

If you’ve just opened this link and skimmed all the way down to see how long my post is, then don’t worry…you don’t really need to waste your time reading the above – just know that la vie en cage, it’s not for me.

And what’s the moral of the story? If you can’t beat it, change it. And if you can’t change it? Move elsewhere for something better.

 

*not really, though it’s not unknown

Perfect stillness on Leogane seafront

view from my room in Leogane (Rapunzel Rapunzel...)

oi tarantula get off my bedroom sofa

An old 'Gingerbread' style house.

Leogane was the closest populated area to the epicentre of the Jan 2010 earthquake,
hence it experienced massive destruction and lost an estimated 80-90% of its buildings

RaRa crowds/epic building

Bootyshaking RaRa in full swing

 

Boat painting - Leogane seafront

 

 

beached - Leogane seafront

A very rarely found willing to be photographed Haitian!
They generally hate it here; so many beautiful pictures never taken...

Hair bobble mania; i'm not sure what can be found in greater numbers in Haiti, these or mangoes