First camp.

Today I visited my first camp to look at our WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) programming. I arranged the visit with two hats. First, we are in the process of submitting a grant to a large institutional donor which contains a strong element of WASH interventions and second, one of the sectors I am responsible for maintaining an overall picture of for the Programmes team is WASH.

The camp itself is situated downtown of our office. Many NGOs have based their relief offices in the (relatively) less affected areas uptown, where there’s still a fighting chance of renting undamaged buildings and maintaining stable internet connections essential for coordinating the response. Downtown nearer the coastal region of Port-au-Prince is, as I discovered, altogether a different story.

The scale of the damage is quite breath-taking and if I gasped every time I saw something which shocked me I’d pretty soon be out of breath. I’ve never before seen a row of buildings flattened in a line with all the power cables sticking out in different directions like a badly-wired plug. I’ve never before seen a whole hillside of houses sliding into each other, like the icing on a cake that’s been left in the sun too long and melted into a pool around the base. And I’ve never before seen people queuing a mile long down the road in the pouring rain waiting patiently for a food distribution, the only cheery aspect of which is the sea of multi-coloured shower caps they were wearing, distributed by the phone company Digicel to stave off the rain. As we skirted round the edge of one of the most badly-affected and insecure districts of downtown Port-au-Prince I was beginning to appreciate how deep and how wide and how high this impact of this disaster really is.

The camp itself was one of the most gruesome scenes I’ve ever witnessed and yet simultaneously a testament to sheer perseverance in the face of, let’s face it, unfavourable odds. Last night it rained. And when it rains in Haiti, it pours. Parts of the camp were swimming in mud, with debris floating in pools of rainwater and women calf-deep in a mixture of mud and sludge cleaning toilets in their bare feet. I tried to imagine what it must feel like to be one of the lucky ones who made it out the other side of the earthquake alive and made for yourself and your family a new home, only to find you still don’t have solid ground beneath your feet.

Our WASH team are quite remarkable though and within the hour I felt energised by the meeting we’d had with the local committee who manages the camp, and the great steps forward that were taken to put an effective strategy in place to drain the rainwater. Boy, those guys are impressive. Indeed, when a group of children gathered round me excitedly to bump fists in a ‘gangster-style’ greeting I was feeling positively buoyed, and honoured to be there.

I returned to the office in a whirl of passion to prepare for the meeting with the donor delegation this afternoon. I multitasked for England, printing maps, putting the finishing touches to our concept note, liaising with our technical teams and making sure I had a copy of every assessment under the sun to back up our facts and figures. My colleagues joined in enthusiastically, supporting me wholeheartedly by furiously writing summary briefings of our work so far, and ensuring I had the latest assessment updates. I was all set to bring this grant home.

And then we got there. And the delegate we met was an incredibly laid back and obviously extremely tired WASH expert whose opening gambit was along the lines of ‘so what about the waste management…?’ After an hour of in-depth conversation on drainage and sewage disposal systems in the blistering heat, our lovingly-prepared multi-sectoral proposal sat untouched on the table. In situations like these there are ups and there are downs, and today was just one of those days. But, as in any emergency, there is no wallowing.  You have all of about 30 seconds to indulge whatever pain or exhaustion or frustration you’re feeling, and then it’s back to the office. Hitting the ground running again. Planning to take the WASH expert to visit our work in the camps. Thinking of new angles and approaches to go for. Sending more e-mails.

On days like these and worse, it’s the little things that get you through. It’s those children in the camp excited to greet you. It’s our team crowded round a video on a Friday night to spend time together and relax even though we know we’re all back to work again tomorrow morning. It’s knowing that you will see things and work with people who will inspire you to feel that same passion again tomorrow.  It’s going to sleep when your head touches the pillow, knocked for six but knowing you’ve tried your  best and given it your all.

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