Africa Journal Disclaimer!

Greetings All!

This blog is a personal account of my journey through East Africa. I cannot guarantee that every thing I say here will be politically correct and I guarantee there are going to be grammatical errors! I want to share my experiences, but unfortunately I do not have the time to create literary masterpieces for each post. That said, if you do not mind a sometimes strong opinion and some run on sentences that would make an English professor squirm….please read on and feel free to share with your friends!

SOIL and the sanitation crisis in Port Au Prince

Another detailed email about what is really happening in Haiti from my friends on the ground!

Dear friends,

I am sorry that I have been out of touch for the past several weeks. Every day is like a lifetime and at the end we just collapse into bed after a cold shower, and in the morning we sit up and look out at the camp spread before us and the whirlwind begins again. But most of us have managed to hold on to our sanity, tethering our minds to our work. As the weeks go by the city begins to look more familiar, the shattered buildings have become a part of my mindscape and there are moments when I barely notice them. People wind through the traffic jams and the streets are lined with vendors, people who have left the camps during the day to return to their old sites along the street, sitting in front of their crumbled homes selling fried food and soaps. Children run around the camps in packs and their laughter filters through my pillows.

As the weeks drag into months I remain in awe of the ways in which people maintain their dignity, I am amazed by the discipline and kindness of hungry people. I think of how hunger can affect my own mood and wonder if I would be as compassionate and full of humor if I had not eaten for days. Despite the deepest resilience there is an anger brewing, a frustration with the fact that aid is not moving fast enough and as we move into the rainy season tens of thousands of people will be stranded without tents. Haiti has struggled with poverty for centuries but it was not a nation of homeless people. Haiti was a country held together by family and community and very few adults slept on the street. Before January 12 no one would have considered camping in Port au Prince, now over a million people sleep in the streets every night, forced to lay aside their fears as they drift off to sleep in a sea of neighbors and strangers.

For nearly 2 months Nick and I slept behind Matthew 25 house in the middle of a small tent city of some of our dearest friends, volunteers and doctors, adjacent to a camp with about 1400 people sleeping in it. Every night I left my purse next to my bed, and being myself I often left it out there in the morning when I went for coffee. In 2 months I never had a single thing stolen nor felt unsafe in any way. I even became accustomed to the evangelical woman with a megaphone who begins circulating around 4:30 am. I am used to the pace of life here, the easy smiles and the tough stares, the animated arguments and voiceless interchanges, but I will never cease to be impressed with the grace of the Haitian people, even in the face of inexplicable suffering.

Time passes and we have continued with our relief efforts though our strategy is shifting. We will continue to give food and water for the coming month, but we are also beginning to focus on sanitation solutions that could help prevent the spread of disease as the situation in Port au Prince shifts from emergency to recovery. Nick and I began attending the sanitation cluster meetings during our first week in Port au Prince, to get a better sense of the various actors. Just as people never slept in the street before the earthquake, there was no active interest in sanitation in Haiti prior to Jan 12. For centuries Port au Prince’s human wastes have been dumped into the ocean, rivers and fields without treatment. Before there was no question of where our wastes were going, and now the halls of DINEPA (the government direction of portable water and sanitation) are flooded with representatives of all of the world’s big organizations, everyone clamoring to get a handle on the sanitation crisis that has been unveiled by the earthquake.

Prior to the earthquake Haiti had by far the lowest sanitation coverage in the hemisphere and heavy child mortality due to water borne disease. In a city of more than 2 million people, hundreds of thousands never had access to a toilet and were forced to go to the bathroom in plastic bags or in nearby ravines. The sanitation crisis did not come from the earthquake, the earthquake only exacerbated it, as people spilled into the streets so too did their secrets, and when you don’t have a toilet, sanitation is a secret. Now the spotlight of international attention is directed on Haiti and it is impossible to ignore the increasingly dire sanitation crisis. Given that more than half a million people are displaced, there is a need for a minimum of 10,000 toilets to safely serve a population of that size. Two months after the crisis there are less than 3000 toilets in place in the camps and many of those that have been installed may be damaged in the coming rains.

In Petionville the two main squares are now home to over 13,000 people and only 15 portable toilets. Imagine if there are 866 people per toilet and 720 minutes in the day, that would mean that for everyone to use the toilet once a day there would be less than 1 minute per person. Also at the rate the toilets are being used, they need to be emptied every day and there are currently not enough desludging trucks in Port au Prince to service all of the toilets being installed. When the toilets are emptied they are taken to a new site set up by the government which is in the middle of the city dump. To get to the site you pass through piles of burning garbage the size of football fields. Hundreds of people come to the dump every day to scavenge for pieces of metal, and firewood. At the end of the steaming garbage there are 4 pits, dug shortly after the earthquake. The sludge from the toilets is dumped into or near the puts where it is mixed with all kinds of garbage and medical wastes. Now only 1 month after the holes were dug they are full and every day the amount of human wastes coming out of the camps is increasing.

SOIL is a small organization and we do not have the capacity to make an impact in terms of number of toilets, but we are innovative and we are planning on being in Haiti for the long haul. So we have chosen to focus our efforts on piloting ecological technologies and helping as best we can to coordinate between other large agencies to increase the efficiency and cultural appropriateness of service delivery. This week we began a project in collaboration with OXFAM – GB to construct 50 urine diversion toilets, 100 arborloos and construct a pilot composting site for Port au Prince. We will be working on this project for the next 6 months while continuing to move forward with our sanitation work in the north. We hope that our pilot work and our dedicated networking will help to create sustainable sanitation systems in Haiti. We are committed to breaking the cycle of disease that happens when people come in contact with untreated human wastes by rebuilding the nutrient cycle. By recycling human wastes through composting, the pathogens die off and the nutrients can be reused to enhance agriculture and feed people, breaking the disease cycle and closing nutrient cycle.

With the rainy season just weeks away, organizations focusing on health in the camps have warned of large-scale risk for outbreak of diarrhea due to the high density of the camps, the lack of proper waste management services, and poor sanitation services. The pace of aid is slow and the level of dissatisfaction is understandably growing. Sometimes frustration washes through me and I remember what Rea always says to me “se’m pa janm dekouraje” which translates to “my sister never give up”. If Rea can stand strong and keep fighting, fiercely moving through the dust of the crumbled buildings, then surely we can all find the strength to keep moving forward.

The rain began to fall a few days ago and I could feel the city shudder. As the rubble runs down the main streets and the latrines fill we feel even more committed to our work. I drift off to sleep at night, willing my heart to slow after the madness of the day, before I sleep it returns to the rhythm that reminds me that there is nowhere in the world I would rather be. Many organizations filled with good hearted people will come and go, restricted by security rules and short term contracts, but SOIL will stay and we will do our best to be the glue that holds together all of the incredible souls, Haitian and international, who are working for reconstruction and a sustainable future.

To maintain our immediate relief and sustainable sanitation work we need your support. Everyone has been so generous and I know how difficult times are for all of us. We ask you to continue to supporting our work on any level that you are able. Your love and donations can make a difference.

With love from Port au Prince,
Sasha

You can donate online at www.oursoil.org or send a check made out to SOIL to SOIL, 124 Church Rd., Sherburne, NY 13460.

Wish list:
1. Laptop computers (we now have a new office and new employees so we are in desperate need of working laptops that can hold charge and connect to the internet.
2. Digital cameras (as our team spreads out it becomes more and more important that everyone in the group can document their work through photos so that we can share it with you).
3. Tents (tents are impossible to get right now in Haiti but if you have a link for a way to get cheap waterproof tents you can send them to Miami and we will find a way to get them to Haiti)
4. USB keys (we need to get them for all of our employees and some of our grassroots partners so that we are able to share documents easily).
5. Rechargeable AA batteries and charger
6. Cordless drill (need several, one for Cap one for PAP)
7. Backpacks (need some good travellin’ backpacks as our team is going back and forth between Cap Haitien and Port au Prince)
8. Video camera (need a flip camera for Cap Haitien to document work in the north)
9. Little moleskin notebooks (oddly invaluable)
10. A Daihatsu truck for moving compost in Port au Prince. We need to raise $25,000 to get the poop-mobile… can you help?

We also welcome other material donations such as medicines, shoes and clothing, but given the tremendous logistical challenges of getting supplies shipped into the country, we ask that you organize a way to get the supplies to Haiti and we will be more than happy to help distribute them. We prefer, whenever possible to buy all of our aid supplies in Haiti through donations, thereby supporting the local economy, but there are some things, such as those on the list above, that cannot be found here. If you can send any of the items on this wish list please let me know so I can have a sense of what I need to keep looking for. Any material donations from the list should be mailed in the next week (if possible) to the following address:

Sasha Kramer
c/o Kefryn Reese
1429 SW 15th Street
Miami, FL 33405

On the good news front, our dear friend, founding member of SOL and dedicated colleague Rea Dol was featured on the New York Times website this weekend. Please have a look and learn more about one of the most amazing women I have had the honor to meet in Haiti.
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2010/03/06/world/americas/1247467192053/the-mother-figure-of-morne-lazarre.html

Live from PAP: Fear slows relief efforts

Another amazing letter from my friend in PAP, Haiti

January 22, 2010

To our dear friends and supporters who have been so present through this difficult time. I feel like I have a wall of love and protection around me knowing that you are all holding Haiti in your thoughts and prayers. I apologize for not having written for the past few days, it is partly that life here is so hectic and fast paced and partly because I find that writing about the situation brings all my emotions to the surface and brings me to a vulnerable space that can be rather overwhelming. That said, I so want to be able to share with all of you what we are experiencing and the important difference we have been able to make as a result of your generosity.

When I first arrived in Port au Prince I spent a day at the UN compound by the airport where NGO’s, doctors and soldiers swarm around talking on satellite phones and running from meeting to meeting. I learned about the massive amounts of food aid that arrived in the first week and was stockpiled at the airport. I learned of the aid trucks filled to the brim with supplies blocked at the border and sitting idle at the ports. Since that day I have not returned to the aid compound and chosen instead to go into the streets, into the camps where people hide from the sun, huddled together under tattered tarps waiting for the food that has yet to come, into the alleyways littered with the rubble of fallen dreams and the spirits of those we have lost.

I know that some of these stories of aid not reaching the victims are beginning to filter into the international media but I wanted to see if I can shed some light about why this is without casting blame. Everyone who has come here is devastated by this disaster, everyone wants to help but the slowness in distribution is not a question of intentions, it is a question of long standing fears and the security structures put in place in response to these fears.

A few days ago I got an email from Nicolas Kristof of the New York Times asking me to comment on the supposition made by many (not Nicolas himself) that Haitians have received large amounts of aid money over the years and have somehow squandered it. I responded to him by talking about fear, this same fear that is slowing the distribution of aid during this crisis. For centuries Haiti has been portrayed as a dangerous country filled with volatile and threatening people, unsafe for foreigners. This supposition, this fear and misunderstanding, has very deep implications for foreign aid and cross cultural understanding.

I have been amazed to visit friends working with large NGO’s in Port au Prince only to learn that they are forced to operate under security restrictions that prevent any kind of real connections to Haitian communities. One friend showed me the map, used by all of the larger NGOs where Port au Prince is divided into security zones, yellow, orange, red. Red zones are restricted, in the orange zones all of the car windows must be rolled up and they cannot be visited past certain times of day, even in the yellow zones aid workers are often not permitted to walk through the streets and spend much of their time in Haiti riding through the city from one office to another in organizational vehicles.
The creation of these security zones has been like the building of a wall, a wall reinforced by language barriers and fear rather than iron rods, a wall that, unlike many of the buildings in Port au Prince, did not crumble during the earthquake. Fear, much like violence, is self perpetuating. When aid workers enter communities radiating fear it is offensive, the perceived disinterest in communicating with the poor majority is offensive, driving through impoverished communities with windows rolled up and armed security guards is offensive and, ironically, all of these extra security measures actually increase the level of risk for aid workers.

As I said, this wall of fear is not a new phenomenon and it has had very serious implications for the distribution of the millions of dollars of aid that have been flowing into the country for the past 10 days. Despite the good intentions of the many aid workers swarming around the UN base, much of the aid coming through the larger organizations is still blocked in storage, waiting for the required UN and US military escorts that are seen as essential for distribution, meanwhile people in the camps are suffering and their tolerance is waning.

Over the past 5 days I have been grateful to work with a small organization unhindered by bureaucracy and security restrictions. I am so thankful to work with a courageous team of Haitian community leaders and a respectful and fearless group of Americans. Thanks to the generous donations of our supporters SOIL has raised approximately $30,000 for immediate relief efforts and we are committed to providing that relief as quickly as we can get the money into the country. The most striking thing I have noticed while visiting the many camps throughout the city is the level of organization and ingenuity among the displaced communities. Community members stand ready to distribute food and water to their neighbors, they are prepared to provide first aid and assist with clean up efforts, all that they are lacking is the financial means to do so. When the quake struck people’s savings were buried under the rubble of their former homes, banks are closed and no one has been able to access their accounts. Food and water are available for sale in the streets but no one is able to purchase them.

Our hope is that SOIL, AIDG and other small organizations will be able to help provide communities with the means to meet their needs in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, bridging the gap during the time it takes for the larger organizations to mobilize. I am honored to know a network of brave community leaders throughout Port au Prince whom I met during my human rights work from 2004-2006 and our team has spent the past several days visiting the camps with them and helping to distribute the resources that we have at our disposal. Each day we have been purchasing water trucks to deliver to camps that have yet to receive water, giving money to community organizers who are then able to purchase food from local businesses and distribute it to the areas most in need, bringing doctors and medical supplies into zones of the city that have none, providing our generator to community cyber cafes so that people are able to contact their families, driving patients from the camps to medical clinics that can receive them.

The magnitude of this tragedy is unimaginable and we are aware of our limitations and our inability to help touch more than a small percentage of those affected. While it breaks my heart to think about those we cannot help, it also fills me with hope to see the impact that we have been able to make. Each day I am awed and humbled by the dedication and compassion of my colleagues, both Haitian and international and touched by the outpouring of love and support that we have received from around the world. Please keep your love and donations flowing and we will do everything in our power to funnel that love and aid to the communities that need it the most.

With love from Port au Prince,
Sasha

Acknowledgements:

I want to take a moment to identify some of my committed colleagues who have been invaluable partners during this crisis. Thank you first to the dedicated staff and coordinators of Matthew 25, especially Sister Mary, Patrick and Vivian, who have graciously received us in their home and taken incredible care of us. Thank you to Cat Laine and Peter Haas of AIDG who have been our closest partners in this effort, Ellie Happel and Roberto Francois who came to Port au Prince several days after the quake to lend a hand, Amber Munger and Melinda Miles who have been tirelessly coordinating among the smaller NGO’s to develop a coalition, Nick Preneta and Jessica Lozier who left their jobs in the US to return to Haiti to help SOIL and AIDG with our relief efforts, Leah Nevada Page and Michael who flew in from Spain 30 hours after the quake to lend a hand. Thank you always to the SOL team (Josapha Augustin, Baudeler Magloire, Eveline Augustin, Marc Orel, Rosie Joseph, Erinol Frederick, Francius Estimable Dauphin, Nica Lagredel, Paul Christian Namphy, Wisnel Jolissaint, and Nadine Mondestin) for their guidance and hard work, I thank the SOIL team back home (Sarah Brownell, Kevin Foos, Moira Duvernay, Ashley Dahlberg and Jennifer Benordan) for their love and advice. Thank you to Rosemond Jolissaint who will be leaving for the US for a fundraising tour in the coming days, and thanks to our colleagues who are organizing his tour: Jimmy Felter (DC), Erica Simon (NYC), Jennifer Benordan (SF) and Barry Kramer (LA). Thank you to the wonderful students who have visited us in Haiti over the years and are now providing support in every way possible from organizing fundraisers to sending out emails to our list (Ann Marie, thank you!). Thank you to Peggy and Phillip of Caribbean Express who have been helping us to get money into the country through their airline. Thank you to my mother who has been helping to respond to my important emails and working to get money and support through to us, and of course the rest of my family who always hold me in their hearts. And most of all thank you to our grassroots partners in Port au Prince without whom we could never do this work: Rea and Dodo Dol, Paul Loulou Chery, Guinette Apolon, Lisius Orel, Fritz Pierre, Daniel Tillias, Jean Ristil Jean Baptiste, Lavarice Gaudin, and the members of AVJ.

And my deepest gratitude to you, our international supporters, we love you so much.

For more information on see Democracy Now’s recent coverage at www.democracy now.org. To follow our updates please join the SOIL group on Facebook and encourage others to join as well. You can donate online at www.oursoil.org and follow our blog on the webpage as well.

Kouraj cherie: Update from Port au Prince

Kouraj cherie: Update from Port au Prince

January 19, 2010

This afternoon, feeling helpless, we decided to take a van down to Champs Mars (the area around the palace) to look for people needing medical care to bring to Matthew 25, the guesthouse where we are staying which has been transformed into a field hospital. Since we arrived in Port au Prince everyone has told us that you cannot go into the area around the palace because of violence and insecurity. I was in awe as we walked into downtown, among the flattened buildings , in the shadow of the fallen palace, amongst the swarms of displaced people there was calm and solidarity. We wound our way through the camp asking for injured people who needed to get to the hospital. Despite everyone telling us that as soon as we did this we would be mobbed by people, I was amazed as we approached each tent people gently pointed us towards their neighbors, guiding us to those who were suffering the most. We picked up 5 badly injured people and drove towards an area where Ellie and Berto had passed a woman earlier. When they saw her she was lying on the side of the road with a broken leg screaming for help, as they were on foot they could not help her at the time so we went back to try to find her. Incredibly we found her relatively quickly at the top of a hill of shattered houses. The sun was setting and the community helped to carry her down the hill on a refrigerator door, tough looking guys smiled in our direction calling out “bonswa Cherie” and “kouraj”.

When we got back to Matthew 25 it was dark and we carried the patients back into the soccer field/tent village/hospital where the team of doctors had been working tirelessly all day. Although they had officially closed down for the evening, they agreed to see the patients we had brought. Once our patients were settled in we came back into the house to find the doctors amputating a foot on the dining room table. The patient lay calmly, awake but far away under the fog of ketamine. Half way through the surgery we heard a clamor outside and ran out to see what it was. A large yellow truck was parked in front of the gate and rapidly unloading hundreds of bags of food over our fence, the hungry crowd had already begun to gather and in the dark it was hard to decide how to best distribute the food. Knowing that we could not sleep in the house with all of this food and so many starving people in the neighborhood, our friend Amber (who is experienced in food distribution) snapped into action and began to get everyone in the crowd into a line that stretched down the road. We braced ourselves for the fighting that we had heard would come but in a miraculous display of restraint and compassion people lined up to get the food and one by one the bags were handed out without a single serious incident.

During the food distribution the doctors called to see if anyone could help to bury the amputated leg in the backyard. As I have no experience with food distribution I offered to help with the leg. I went into the back with Ellie and Berto and we dug a hole and placed the leg in it, covering it with soil and cement rubble. By the time we got back into the house the food had all been distributed and the patient Anderson was waking up. The doctors asked for a translator so I went and sat by his stretcher explaining to him that the surgery had gone well and he was going to live. His family had gone home so he was alone so Ellie and I took turns sitting with him as he came out from under the drugs. I sat and talked to Anderson for hours as he drifted in and out of consciousness. At one point one of the Haitian men working at the hospital came in and leaned over Anderson and said to him in kreyol “listen man even if your family could not be here tonight we want you to know that everyone here loves you, we are all your brothers and sisters”. Cat and I have barely shed a tear through all of this, the sky could fall and we would not bat an eye, but when I told her this story this morning the tears just began rolling down her face, as they are mine as I am writing this. Sometimes it is the kindness and not the horror that can break the numbness that we are all lost in right now.

So, don’t believe Anderson Cooper when he says that Haiti is a hotbed for violence and riots, it is just not the case. In the darkest of times, Haiti has proven to be a country of brave, resilient and kind people and it is that behavior that is far more prevalent than the isolated incidents of violence. Please pass this on to as many people as you can so that they can see the light of Haiti, cutting through the darkness, the light that will heal this nation.

We are safe. We love you all and I will write again when I can. Thank you for your generosity and compassion.

With love from Port au Prince,
Sasha

Haiti Slideshow

Hi All!

Check out the Haiti slideshow on my site - www.sarahfretwell.com > (menu item) haiti.

Please repost it to your facebook page now to help others learn more about Haiti.

Also, for live updates from Haiti check my facebook page (www.facebook.com/sarahfretwellphotography).

Haiti

Well it has been three days and the devastation of what has
happened Haiti is beginning to sink in.

I have been in touch with a few people we met while working with some non-profits there last December, but I have been unable to contact many people we met during our trip there.

While many people are getting their news from CNN, I wanted
to share what I feel is an invaluable perspective about what is actually going on in Haiti. Please listen to listen to this Democracy Now broadcast it will shed a lot of light as to how Haiti has gotten to this point.

Link - http://www.democracynow.org
(Friday January, 15th, 2010 broadcast)

Unfortunately, on a good day Haiti is a country where most
people do not have access to food and clean water, there is little to no
sanitation, the electricity (where they have it) works intermittently, and most of the buildings were already falling down! Worst of all US foreign policy has greatly contributed to the current political and economic state of Haiti.

I am sure that post earthquake the situation there is
comparable to the worst refugee/war zone in the world right now.

If you want to help by donating please donate to one of the
following organizations, as there are only a few NGO’s who can guarantee the aid will actually reach the people who need it instead of lining the pockets of the Haitian elite.

http://www.oursoil.org


http://www.standwithhaiti.org/haiti (Partners in Health /Paul Farmer)

http://www.yele.org
http://www.beyondborders.net/index.php

Yoga Anyone?

Yoga anyone?

Check out some of my favorites from a shoot with a Santa Barbara based yoga instructor Kelsea Dior Wilder. She is an amazing yoga instructor and very photogenic as well! We had a lot of fun and completely exhausted ourselves.