Today our very own Jack Bauer is back with us. Eve, our boday guard, and his two compatriots, are all members of the Haitian SAS. That's what he says and I'm not arguing!
We plan to go see two projects in an area called Gonaives (gone-aye-eves). The three hurricanes last year decimated this place and it will prove to be a hard day. For starters it’s a three hour bus journey from where we are staying. Considering the roads and the fact that the hurricane destroyed many of them even more, it’s a perilous journey. There are still overturned school buses, cars piled up in corners where the water has just washed them into a huge heap, bridges downed and electric pylons lying on their sides. I’m sitting at the window and on not a few occasions I’m praying hard that we don’t tip over the edge.
The area is surrounded on all sides by mountains, so in effect all the houses are built in a huge bowl. Hence when the waters of the hurricanes came they had a devastating effect. Four months later there are still HUGE areas flooded. Hundreds of bodies of the 3,000+ killed have never been found.
The first project we went to see was a reverse osmosis plant that Compassion has installed in the city. Basically it takes water of any quality and turns it into pristine water which is totally safe and pure. This is a HUGE thing here, because there is NO mains water and people are drinking everything. That spreads typhoid, dysentery and countless other diseases. And kills hundreds of children. One in 12 children on the island as a whole dies before they reach age 12. The plant costs $20,000 to install and changes thousands of lives. It’s located in an inner city project which has an old blind pastor who positively radiated with God’s love.
We then move on to a small project about half an hour out of the city. It’s located by a dry river bed, but when the hurricane hit here the water was 25 feet deep! 25 feet. It covered the building in the photo below. We listen to testimonies of people who were here when the hurricane hit. One guy told of taking his wife and five children to the second story of his house. As the water kept on rising he moved them to the third floor. The waters kept coming, and no-one else in his family could swim apart from him. So he swam for 15 minutes until he found an old fridge floating in the water, brought it back, and with his wife under one arm and his five kids in the fridge, he just had to float to survive. The fridge overturned at one point scattering his children everywhere – but he managed to round them all up again. They got to a higher point on another building and after three days and nights without food, they survived. Our translator broke down while he was telling his story.
Another guy told of wedging his wife’s head in a tree (I kid you not) to keep her safe in the storm, he tried to save his other 3 children but lost his 13 year old and never saw her again. While he was telling us this about ten ladies in the crowd were crying and wailing, they had all lost at least one child in the hurricane.
The final story we heard was of a man with two small children under his arms. As the waters reached the top of his building he was faced with the choice of which child to let go, as he could only swim if he had one arm free. What a choice to have to make.
The children that we meet in the project are so full of life it defies logic. They are happy, bouncing kids. They sing and dance for us and tell us how Compassion has changed their lives.
The future for the place however is bleak. They need to relocate their buildings farther up the mountains if they are to avoid a repeat of last year. It also happened to them in 2004. Re-locating would probably cost $50,000.
We see a few other very disturbing sights and sounds today. But also signs of hope. We see some houses that Compassion have built for $3500 which will totally change lives. We are told of their goat projects, their water projects and on and on. It’s an amazing organisation and they have changed millions of lives.
Tomorrow morning (Friday) we head back to our first hotel in the capital. Hotels here are CRAZY money, ranging on our trip from $100 to $180 per night. It’s a real rip off, but the only people who stay in them are UN or NGO people, so they charge a hefty amount knowing that it will be paid.
Haiti has had a profound effect on me. There are so many places needing help and so many ways of helping. Really helping. Changing thousands of lives for a few thousand dollars. But that’s all to come. I hope I can be a catalyst to wake a few people up to the need.
Tomorrow morning we will leave our beautiful location by the ocean and head back to Port a Prince.
