My first week in Haiti

Me in front of my new house

Haiti.
I can’t believe I’m finally here. After years of trying to imagine what it’s like, of learning, reading, and crying about all the suffering and sadness that has happened here, I’m finally seeing this place with my own eyes.
With Haiti’s history instilled in my mind, I arrived on the plane from Miami. I looked out of the window, scanning the landscape I had learnt to be so bare and so sad, but what I saw was amazing tropical breath-taking beauty! Green mountains, winding rivers flowing into the sea, untouched stretches of sandy beaches, and that blue, blue caribbean sea.

I stepped off the plane and took in my first breath of hot, dusty Haitian air. I was the only white person on the plane traveling alone, among the American evangelists wearing their matching bright yellow T-shirts, apparently on their church’s yearly weekend trip to Haiti. Lucky for them, however short your trip, or short-term your impact, you get a lot of cudos for having the word ‘jesus’ on your t-shirt.
That is one of the big things you notice here. Jesus is everywhere. I see that name at least fifty times a day. I find it amazing. There has been so much pain here, so much suffering, shock and misery and they continue to give thanks to their god. Thanks for what? The lack of basic facilities needed for survival? The violent hurricanes that have ravaged their lives? The deforestation of their beautiful landscape? The earthquake which has affected every single person here in Haiti, killed a loved one, robbed so many of their very last humble possession... Oh I could go on and on, and I will. After a flight of about an hour and a half from Miami, it is impossible to get one’s head around the contrast, and it is difficult to suppress the anger towards how richer countries, like America, have made positive contributions to keep Haiti down.. Economically, politically and consequentially socially...
Haiti’s history is one of abuse by richer powers, from before its very beginnings, its current population being descendants of African slaves, abducted from their lives, robbed of their last thread of humility and humanity. It was the slaves’ brave and violent fight to regain these that rid Haiti of this system of abuse, and invited in a politic of independence, wherein Haiti began its lonely struggle to survive, a brave island, on its own in a sea of opportunism, exploitation and revenge.

The Haitian history is a fascinating one, pivotal and crucial in the history of the world, and one which I will not lay out in chronological detail, but to which I will refer to often. It tells the story of bravery, leadership, strength and courage, overcoming injustice against all odds. It tells the story of a people unwilling to accept their situation of extreme exploitation,  who, with hatred and rightful anger, will risk all they have to gain their freedom, whatever the cost. Whatever the cost. Their success has indeed come at a great cost, which Haitians today are paying with their lives, their health, their own humanity.


I spent the first couple of days in Port-au-Prince sitting in the back of a pick-up, watching the my new world go by, letting the heat of the tropical sun touch my skin, and welcome me to my new home. The weather is perfect! Very hot!
My first thought and surprise about Haiti is how beautifully green it is in the suburbs of Port-au-Prince. There are some really beautiful big trees around, with brightly colored flowers decorating the high branches and big fat green water retaining leaves casting relieving shade on the streets below. Lovely!
The roads are crazy. I have never seen roads like these anywhere, they are covered in pot-holes, (massive pot-holes!) and driving seems to be an obstacle course just to dodge them and if possible avoid crashing into anyone else. Makes for a bumpy ride.
As we drove around between the districts of Tabarre, Pernier, where I am based, and Pétion-Ville, myself and Aron, one of KCH’s DC based interns, sat in the back of the truck and discussed the landscape unfolding before us. Haiti is very mountainous, and Port-au-Prince is between mountains, which means there are some great views to behold. We discussed how we expected to see a lot more rubble and damaged buildings but were surprised there wasn’t so much evidence of the earthquake of January 12th of last year. Hmmm..

So on Saturday I arrived in my new home, the KCH office in Pernier, Port-au-Prince, which I will be sharing with Frantz, a young Haitian man, an orphan on the KCH program. I had been pre-warned that the house was basic, so I prepared myself, with an open mind, and the knowledge that I am so so lucky to be used to living in the conditions I know, and that this here, Haiti as it is, is reality for many many people, and the house I live in which has no furniture or kitchen yet and mostly no electricity is luxury here where hundreds of thousands of people are living in tents and make-shift tents held together by tarpaulin and whatever else they could find.
So to describe my house, I do not want to appear like I’m complaining, I just want to give an accurate account. So its a big room with a nice tiled floor. There are windows high up in the cement walls but they have no glass in, just metal bars, so mosquitos and other miscellaneous creatures are free to come I and hang out. I have a bedroom with a ceiling fan which works when the electricity comes on - which is always an exciting time :)
Apart from a single bed and a mosquito net, my room is bare.
There is water which Frantz has to get in a big barrel (from somewhere, I’m not quite sure) and fill bucket by bucket into a tank on the roof. So I only flush when necessary ;)
There is a banana tree next to my house and when they are nice and ripe, my plan was to stick my hand out of the window and pick one for my breakfast...... Until......
Last night, I was sitting on my porch, minding my business, talking to Astrid, my boss and Aron the intern when in the candlelight I saw a distinguishable shape on the wall. I shined my torch on it and said in a calm voice, “THAT is the biggest fucking spider I have EVER seen”. It was a tarantula. Yes. A mother of a tarantula, bigger than any I had even seen in ‘captivity’. I would guess it measured roughly 30 centimeters in diameter. Frantz tried to kill it with a plank but it scurried away into a hole in the wall.. Back to its banana tree.. It was the biggest he’d seen, but apparently they sometimes come in the house.. I have no windows.

KCH is an organization, run by Astrid Fitzgerald in Washington DC, which helps young Haitian adults, who have mostly grown up in an orphanage just outside Port-au-Prince, to access education, whether it be primary, high school, vocational training, or university. There are 40 people on the program, aged 18-25, half of which are involved in micro-business training, to facilitate small, income generating businesses among them. The other half are in schools and universities. These young people come to KCH desperate for an education and qualifications. Unfortunately KCH is only small and can only support a small number for now, and the biggest challenge is fundraising to support these kids. (I say ‘kids’ half of them are the same age as me.)
My job as the KCH program coordinator means I am the KCH representative and presence in Haiti. The students come to me first and I liaise with Astrid in DC.
I guess I’ll have more to say on that as my role develops and once I fully know what Im doing.

On Monday I asked Astrid if I could see ‘downtown’. I wanted to see the flattened palace. On the drive down from Pétion-Ville, I started to see real tent cities, destroyed buildings, houses, churches, shops, schools... We drove down an incredible road where I saw my first view of the massive hillside covered in slum-like cement houses. At night the hillside is mostly dark, because they don’t have electricity most of the time, but in the day, the piled-up shacks make a beautiful tapestry of sand-colored shapes, with flashes of colourful tarps, buckets and washing drying against the walls and the heaps of rocks and rubble. Dispersed between the communities are large groups of tents, hanging on the mountain edge, taking up any expanse available. I caught glimpses of this breathtaking view between the leafy trees lining the road and climbing the hillside of Pétion-ville.
Pétion-ville, a suburb town of great contrast, we had had lunch in a beautiful restaurant called ‘Quartier Latin’, in a large old colonial house with a leafy garden and tablecloths. Directly across the road from Quartier Latin, is what used to be a pretty green square but is now a tent slum. The boundaries of the tree covered park are marked with hostile-looking backs of make-shift tents, made from gathered pieces of tarpaulin, with the occasional source draped across someone’s home.. USAID, CONCERN.. The streets of this city are branded with these big names. Kids walk with light blue UNICEF school bags, tent cities are lined with latrines and water tanks donated by GOAL, most cars (all four by fours) display the associated organisation on the side.. Medicines Sans Frontiers, Red Cross, and countless smaller NGOs.. And of course, everywhere you go, UN trucks drive past, with UN officers dressed in camouflage, carrying huge shotguns, always with their distinguishable light blue helmets.

We drove further into the centre of Port-au-Prince, with three of our students in the back as it is not recommended to go there alone. There was more and more rubble around, more building ripped in half. We turned a corner and I saw the enormous cathedral, big and ornate enough to rival any European cathedral, with only some of the walls left standing. I got out of the car with one of the students, and immediately was surrounded by children holding out their hands. A mother holding her baby who was very obviously suffering from malnutrition stood and looked at us. I walked to face the cathedral, and the front wall towered above me, the big front doors, now only an open archway allowed me to see straight through into the vast open space.. The few pillars left, the beautiful ornate flooring. The large rose window still clutching on to a few shards of colored glass. The only thing left intact is a small white crucifix with Jesus’ suffering nailed to it.  I asked my friend Moise if there were many people inside when the building collapsed. He said yes.