Hugh Jackman speaks out for the people of Haiti

Hugh Jackman, actor and World Vision ambassador, speaks out for the people of Haiti, whose lives have been devastated by the earthquake which struck on Jan 12th 2010.

Beyond Haiti's headlines

Guest Blog by World Vision aid worker in Haiti Anna Ridout

While headlines report violence and looting in Haiti’s capital and observers speak of chaos and desperation on the streets, I’m seeing another side to Port-au-Prince often lost in disaster reporting.

Young boys scramble and leap over rubble chasing their ingenious kites made of flimsy plastic bags. A dozen teenagers sing their hearts out at a spontaneous open-air church service overlooking the devastated city.

Small businesses – barbers, corner shops, bars – have already sprung up in many of the haphazard settlements of tents and makeshift shelters. Children dance, sing and laugh in one of World Vision’s safe play areas.

Only three weeks after the earthquake caused catastrophe here, people are already finding ways to rebuild their lives, often with a smile.

Calm

While there have been moments when fighting has broken out at distributions and security remains a key issue for the population as well as aid agencies, these are notable incidents rather than a sign of widespread unrest.

When World Vision and other agencies launched a city-wide distribution of rice, with the World Food Programme, designed to reach close to two million people in just two weeks, many feared chaos.

Today our team was in the notoriously volatile district of Cite Soleil. We intentionally started the distribution a few days later there to give us additional time to talk to those who have influence in the community, such as leaders and local groups.

This meant we were able to reach 8,500 people today in the most dangerous part of town with calm and cooperation.

Gesture

Incredibly poor, Cite Soleil was already a huge densely-populated neighbourhood of iron roofs and inadequate services.

My non-existent Creole means I’m often communicating with people in gesture or expression. As the empty food trucks left the site, a young girl with confident inquisitive eyes looked at me and smiled. I scrunched up my nose and she did the same.

She tried to speak to me and I shrugged my shoulders; she laughed. It’s staggering how such a spirit of tenacity can exist alongside devastation and poverty.

Sharing

At all the food distributions this week the most vulnerable have been first in line. A blind man and his daughter, an elderly woman with her arm in a sling, a pregnant woman with a month to go, all left with 25-kilogramme sacks, assisted by World Vision volunteers, without hassle.

Elderly women tell me how the only way they are eating is because neighbours, friends, strangers are sharing food and water with them.

Such generosity was echoed by a woman I met in a lively crowded camp, who has lost both her home and job.

“When we get help here, we never fight,” she said.“We are friends and we share our things and support each other.”

A nine-year-old girl who lost both her parents in the quake tells me of a friend who has taken her in. Families who have been left with nothing are surviving by sharing.

Continued support

The generosity of the public all over the world in response to this disaster has been incredible. Today that money is helping provide families with food, healthcare, water and shelter – immediate life-saving relief that is still needed for the millions of people affected.

As we look to the long-term rebuilding of Haiti, the continued support of the international community will be vital. World Vision will continue working here beyond the emergency phase to help people find secure jobs, reliable incomes and strong community networks.

As local artists start once more to line the streets with bright bold paintings, and potters display mosaic plant pots in amongst the debris, artists and businesspeople alike need help to enable their businesses grow and families flourish.
The evidence on the ground here in Haiti proves there is the resiliency and determination to make it happen.

Good Intentions not good enough for Haiti's children

Guest Blog by Anna Ridout, Emergency Communications Officer for World Vision in Haiti


This evening I walk up a steep hill covered in makeshift huts made of floral pattern sheets hiked up on anything that will hold them. I speak to a mother who is living in a fragile shelter perched on precarious rubble.

“We are worried about people who come to pick up our children,” she said, “it has happened here.”

Missing Child

At crossroads next to a flattened school, a man waited patiently behind the roped area as World Vision gave families rice this morning. Since the earthquake struck Haiti three weeks ago, he hasn’t seen his seven-year-old daughter. He shows me Jaymmiqua’s birth certificate and explains he has done everything he can think of to find her.

“I tried to look for her but I couldn’t find any information,” he said. “The neighbours said they don’t know where she is. The way the house is broken there’s no way to check inside. It’s like my soul has disappeared with my daughter.”

Afraid

This afternoon I talked to children who had found a safe and fun place to play at World Vision’s children’s play area. I met a nine-year-old girl whose Mum was killed instantly in the quake, while her father, severely injured, was flown to Santo Domingo for urgent medical treatment.


“I’m afraid of another earthquake,” she said. “I’m afraid to be alone. I’m afraid of people who may come to do bad things to me.”

Dust

A 12-year-old boy lives on a roundabout in what used to be the smart part of town. Since his Mum died, he is living with his Aunt and two cousins. He told me what happened on the day of the quake.

“I was on the street near my house and I felt a shake and I saw lots of dust,” he said. “I just stood there. If I was supposed to run, I don’t know where I was supposed to go.

“My Mum was at the open market and when she tried to come back home, some blocks fell on her and killed her. People found her and I saw her. I felt shaken because I lost my mother.

“My father has been living in Santo Domingo before the earthquake. I don’t know anything about him. I have a brother and sister but we are not together,” he said.

Alone and Vulnerable

When the earth split and plunged Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas into chaos, it did not just destroy lives, businesses and buildings. The earthquake split families apart and left many children alone and vulnerable.

Just as the recovery following such a catastrophic disaster will take a long time, it will take weeks and months for children to be reunited with their parents and for parents to find their children.

As just one day in this densely-populated city proves, the problem is complex. And as with most complex issues, there is no quick-fix solution.

At risk

As this week has shown, children separated from their families are at risk of abuse and exploitation, trafficking or losing their identities permanently if they are not rapidly registered for family tracing and reunification.

World Vision has called on a halt to all new international adoptions, while working hard to protect and identify children in Haiti and over the long-term will help strengthen community networks and support systems.

Taking children out of the country in the midst of chaos will permanently separate thousands of children from their families – a separation that could compound the acute trauma they are already suffering and inflict long-term damage on their chances of recovery.

As I and the woman agreed as we stood next to her temporary shelter over-looking the destruction of the quake, let’s not let the genuine desire to help those in need become an excuse for short cuts or easy answers.

Returning home from Haiti

Guest blog by World Vision aid worker James Addis

I’m writing this from a little eight-seater plane that has just flown out of Port-au-Prince airport. I think the pilot said the plane was a Chieftain but it was difficult to hear him above the whirr of the engines.

Other communicators will be coming take my place. It’s an odd feeling. I’ve spent the last few days looking forward to returning to the comforts of home. Now they are actually in sight, I feel slightly deflated.

One feels a whiff of nostalgia for working long hours in difficult conditions, rubbing shoulders with people who have lost everything including those dearest to them and possibly are now missing a limb; and yet are prepared to soldier on regardless.

Real life

It’s odd how we spend most of our lives seeking some kind of security and comfort—financial security, a decent retirement, a comfortable home to live in with conveniences like dishwashers and microwave ovens; an air-conditioned office with every kind of phone and internet connection, and things to entertain like Wii players, and ipods, and big, flat-screen televisions.

But the real living, I imagine, is done when everything is haphazard, unreliable, uncomfortable, and dangerous.

Comfort zone

Out of your comfort zone you are forced to rely on every scrap of ingenuity, resourcefulness, and courage that you can scrape together. And there’s a certain kind of joy in discovering you have those things when you did not know you had them. And when they are exhausted you are forced to lean on God and simply ask that he take care of things. There’s a sense of release and peace in that.

Free Food

I think Gilbert Bailly will be feeling some of these emotions. He is my favorite person in Haiti right now. His three Muncheez pizza restaurants miraculously remained intact during the quake. But he realized he had not a chance of running a business in the current chaos.

Nobody has money to eat out, and there’s no fuel or power to run his restaurants normally. Did he retire to a corner and sulk? Did he shoot himself? Did he anticipate financial ruin?

Actually, no. He calmly reopens one of his restaurants and uses it as a base to provide cooked meals and distribute donated food for free to people who desperately need it and can’t afford to pay.

Right now much of this food is coming from World Vision. Other donors are providing the fuel he needs to keep the place running.

Staff volunteering

His formerly paid-staff have become volunteers. They know there is no money in this. I’m sure their satisfaction comes from seeing the hundreds of hungry come through the door to get free food.

Each day, Gilbert’s sstaff distribute about 1,000 plastic bracelets in a needy part of the city. They vary the location to spread the goodwill around.

Late in the afternoon, the restaurant opens its doors and those who turn up wearing a bracelet are allowed admission.

I’m thinkin many years from now, when Gilbert reflects on his life and what he has accomplished in business and elsewhere, he will probably remember this as one of the toughest times and a commercial failure. I think he will also remember it as his finest hour.

Did you feel that one?

by Guest Blogger James Addis in Haiti

I must be remarkably insensitive to after-shocks. Colleagues keep saying did you feel that one. Where were you at X p.m? or Y a.m. Did you feel it?

I must confess I haven’t felt a darn thing since the really big one a few days ago. I think my biggest concern is a really big quake in the dark. I’ve been sleeping with a flashlight in my hand. The thought of fumbling for it in the inky blackness does scare me a bit. But once I’ve got the flashlight firmly clenched in my left hand, I sleep like a baby.

It was a bit of a quiet day yesterday. I managed to phone my wife and my parents back in New Zealand. It was so good to hear their voices.

Evacuation

Another moving moment was watching children of World Vision Haiti staff being evacuated. They had turned up to the office to say their final goodbyes before taking the trip to the airport.

Earlier I had spoken to Jhonny Celicourt, World Vision Haiti’s communications manager, whose wife and 4-year-old daughter were evacuated a few days earlier to Florida. His mother lives in Orlando. Up until that point his family had been camped out in a tennis court, opposite his home. His house did not collapse but was seriously damaged during the quake.

Despite all the upheavals, and a seriously distressed daughter, Jhonny has been faithfully turning up to work every day. Indeed, the day after the quake, having not slept a wink all night, he joined a team delivering medical supplies to city hospitals absolutely swamped with quake victims.

Sleeping Rough

Later, I got out to a homeless camp, about a 5-minute drive from the World Vision office. I met Fabiola St. Juste. She does not like being there very much.

The eight-year-old sleeps on a particularly rocky patch of ground that was once part of a grassless soccer field in Petionville, Port-au-Prince. She sleeps on an old piece of carpet, but complains when she lies down it still feels hard and cold.

A few days ago, her only protection from the elements was provided by thin, torn, roughly-tied-together bed sheets, suspended by odd bits of lumber. It provided some protection from the sun but was useless against the rain. Three families—15 people—slept, ate, washed, and socialized, in the crudely constructed tent. Fabiola hated the fact that it was so crowded. “There was not enough room to eat, or sleep. There was not enough room to do anything,” she said emphatically.

Even so, she would not risk going back into her home, which suffered structural damage but was not destroyed in the earthquake.

If there’s one bright spot in the grim picture, it followed a World Vision distribution of tarpaulins, cooking utensils, and hygiene kits to the hundreds encamped on the soccer field. Fabiola considers the tarps to be the most helpful thing because they keep the rain out.