Haiti – Day 2: Relief Efforts at Grace International

GoogleEarth® Image – Most likely taken immediately after earthquake as compound grounds still show open space.

Grace International

Two walls used to surround the grounds of Grace International in Carrefour, Haiti, only a few miles west of the capital, Port-au-Prince. The exterior wall enclosed the ten-acre Grace Village compound, which includes a medical clinic, a large, open-air church, a school, and the unfinished, two-story Grace Haiti Children’s Hospital. The inner wall, situated in the southwest corner of the compound, surrounds the girls’ orphanage. But since the 7.0 earthquake shook the country, only the inner wall remains standing.

The orphanage is home to 54 girls, ages 3-26, but since the earthquake, it has also become home to the families of orphanage employees, as well as the camping grounds for relief workers who are working with Grace International.

The orphanage itself had suffered some structural damage, but is still intact. Nonetheless, it was highly discouraged that anyone stay inside it because of the regularly-occurring aftershocks, and, as a result, all of the mattresses had been pulled out of the rooms and were scattered across the orphanage lawn. The girls are safe within the inner wall, and most of them sleep in a few of the empty shipping containers leftover from the hospital construction project – a reliable structure, as it turns out, that is both earthquake- and hurricane-proof. There is also a well on the grounds which was almost always occupied, and it was entirely common to see the girls drinking straight from it.

But what was once the once spacious, green lawn of the compound, has now become home to a dusty, teeming Tent City of approximately 17,000 displaced Haitians, too afraid to return to their homes – if they even had a home to return to. For all intents and purposes, these tents are now their permanent residences, with whatever material possessions they could salvage taken along with them. TVs, radios, toaster ovens and other home appliances are stacked inside the tents, some intact and some not, but maybe able to be sold for scrap or parts. Beside the appliances lay mattresses, makeshift grills, wash basins and piles of clothes. Outside the tents, along the narrow, trash-strewn corridors that wind through the camp, other signs of a small city have popped up, with vendors selling food and other goods. Some sell deep-fried vegetables and chicken, while others sell candy or produce or MREs that they’ve gotten from the US Army, and still others have set up small stands with power strips connected to car batteries so you can charge your cell phone or iPod. Like any black market, everything is for sale at an ever-increasing price.

And while the tents’ walls are hung in hopes of providing some privacy, and of protecting their possessions from would-be thieves, nothing is able to escape the elements. No matter how well-built the tent is, the heat and humidity still penetrate, and the dust covers everything. This fight against the elements goes on all day, as they try to keep the sun off their backs and the dust out of their lungs; it continues through the night, as they try to keep warm; and it will change again in less than a month when the rains start again. At all times, the elements continue to drag them down, like a constant reminder of everything they’ve lost.

Yet the elements aren’t the only thing the Haitians were fighting – they are fighting each other, too, and not necessarily with violence: they are fighting for space to live, food to eat, water to drink, and dignity to preserve. They fight the constant threat of infection and sickness from each other’s trash and excrement; they fight the depression and sadness of having lost their loved ones; the hopelessness of having nowhere to go and of having no way to help themselve; and they fight the humiliation of having to turn their country over to foreigners, no matter how well-intentioned they may have been. There are many, too, who are now fighting to provide for the thousands of orphans left by the earthquake, whether they are the neighbor’s children, or children they found just roaming the streets alone. Children are proving to be one of their most difficult fights, too, as it is the children who are most vulnerable to sickness, dehydration, starvation and even abduction.

At night the Tent City becomes another place, and the relief workers remain behind the inner walls of the girls’ home. Still, we could hear what was going on outside the walls, and were often awoken at night. Without fail there would be some type of worship service coming from near the church each night, and it was common to hear the population break out in spontaneous worship, praying and singing songs in both French and Creole. Other times, the sounds were of a different kind of adulation: one night it was the raucous cheers coming from a nearby tent which had hooked up a TV to watch the Arsenal soccer match, while another night it was a loud dance party that a different tent had put on. But still other nights, the sounds were less uplifting: from time to time there was the deep rumbling of an aftershock which could shake you out of bed, and left most of the camp in an eerie silence for many hours thereafter, interrupted only by hushed sobs and the muffled cries of children coming from distant corners.

Ed. Note: Parts of this post have been modified from an earlier story, Grace in Haiti, published on the Rock Church (San Diego, CA) website: http://www.therocksandiego.org/stories/medicinhaiti/

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Read More:

Haiti Earthquake Project – Home
Day 1: Travel – San Diego to Haiti
Day 2: Port-au-Prince to Carrefour
Day 2: Grace International Orphanage & Tent City
Day 2: Medical Clinic at Grace Int’l
Day 2: “The Transport from Haiti”
Day 3: Carrefour – Boys’ Home Clinic (updates soon)
Day 4: UN/PROMESS Trip 1; Medical Teams International (updates soon)
Day 5: UN/PROMESS Trip 2 (updates soon)
Day 6: Boys’ Home Clinic: Freelance Relief Workers (updates soon)