Worth knowing

I’ve been absent for a while.  It gets harder to write as time goes on. The newness wanes. The work hits a steady rhythm. I get tired. I get tired of seeing too many people we can’t reach. I get tired of using a chisel to dent a mountain. I get tired of hearing the stories. The people who lost everything and then get raped in camps. The people who were scraping by, and don’t know how much longer they’ve got left in them. The ones who have always slipped through every crack and continue to get lost amongst the broken. And I get tired of seeing piles and piles of rubble on roadsides and hillsides and always thinking, without fail, every single time I pass by. Every. Single. Time.  I wonder how many people are under there?

I never even get close to giving up. There are far too many good people here. Far too much good growing stronger all the time. Far far too much hard work and commitment and dedication and passion to even come vaguely close. But we get weary on the days it hits us we’re not superhuman…that we can’t do it all. It just seems so unfair. For want of any other better word, it’s just downright, flat out, bottom line fundamentally unfair. Unfair that it’s always the people who are already down that get kicked. Unfair because for many people here the earthquake was just another heartbreaking thing that happened in an already heartbroken life.

And that’s when I get tired – because I wish there was more I could do. All the time.

Last week we hit the three month mark. And to celebrate this wonderful occasion we write a 90-Day Report chronicling every single little thing that we’ve done in the response over the period 12 January – 12 April. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was dimly aware I’d be here over this time. I may even have mentioned it to one or two people who asked what I’d be doing in Haiti – ‘Oh yes, and I’ll be there over the three month mark, so there might be some work around the 90-Day Report I’ll be doing’.

Some work turned out to be leading the project. Some work turned out to be 86 pages plus annexes. Some work turned out to be 5am starts and 1am bedtimes. Some work turned out to be a juggling marathon -0ne ball in the air at 7am, catch it at 9, throw up another two, catch them at 2pm and 5pm, throw up at 6pm, catch at 10 and so on and on and on. Some work turned out to be a 4.30am finish and a 6am start on publishing day.

Some work turned out to be just about one of the best damn experiences I’ve ever had. And the number one reason it got finished was the phenomenal team around me – supporting me right to the end line. People sat with me until the early hours just for company, people reviewed sections in an hour turnaround, people brought me dinner and fed me sugar when energy was waning. People told me jokes and made me laugh. And my manager was sitting with me at 4.30am as we crossed the finish line. Without them the report would still be some crumpled notes at the bottom of my bag and we would never have known

that we fed over 1.6 million people

that we gave more than 119,000 people basic supplies like tents and tarps, and hygiene kits and blankets and kitchen sets and flash lights

that we installed toilets and showers, hundreds of metres of drainage, thousands of litres of water supply capacity

that we took on the case of over 300 children to trace their families and give them back family to face the future

that over 40,000 people got access to medical supplies, and over 90,000 people got something between them and the rain each night

That is worth knowing. That is worth fighting for.

Advertisement