In a spontaneous camp, a group of young leaders rises to new challenges.

February 24th, 2010 | by Coco McCabe

Stephan Durogene, left, helps distribute goods at a camp at Delmas 62. Photo by Kenny Rae/Oxfam America

Read part one.

Together with Jennifer Banessa Destine and a few other young adults, Stephan Durogene formed a committee to begin lobbying for aid for families who had taken refuge inside a once-private compound at Delmas 62. By day, 300 people were squeezed together under a few tarps and ropes draped with bed sheets. But at night, the numbers soared to 1,000.

“I just wanted to help people out,” said Durogene, who knew that aid organizations would be flooding into the city and could provide assistance. “People don’t know where to go, so I decided to go forward.”

The small committee visited every aid group it could reach, including Oxfam, whose office was about half a mile from the camp.

“I explained to them there are injuries. They don’t have water. They don’t have anything to eat,” recalled Durogene.  Sometimes, the committee went back to make its case a second time.

The persistence of the committee members paid off.

First they got water delivered to the site. Then, when it started to rain, they appealed for tarps, and got some of those, too. Deliveries of kitchen supplies—pots for cooking, utensils for eating–followed from Oxfam, with the committee organizing an orderly distribution the following day. And soon, Oxfam was also digging latrines at the site and setting up a more permanent water supply in the form of a large collapsible bladder.

“I always have a head on my shoulders and come with bright ideas,” said a matter-of-fact Destine, 29, about the role she plays as the only woman on the committee. And because she’s a clear-thinker (and studied management for four years at university), the others embrace her ideas—like the one about recording the names of each head of household and the numbers in each family so the committee can keep track of how many people are in the camp.

During the evenings, the committee also works to keep order in the camp.

“At night, when everybody is back and ready to go to sleep, I take the megaphone and explain this is a private yard, and this is how we’re supposed to behave,” said Durogene.

Occasionally, the stress everyone is living under boils over and both Durogene and Destine have found themselves on the receiving end of a barrage of vitriol.

“Sometimes I find people cursing me,” said Durogene who speaks—always—with a quiet, calm voice, a voice that most in the camp seem to respect,” but I stay strong.….I didn’t know it was so hard, so difficult. But I’ll stay until everything is stable.”

Commitment is at his core.

Ulrich Bien-Aime, the retired school teacher who was living in his sister’s house in the compound, told me that Durogene was close—for the second time—to achieving his dream of becoming an engineer when the quake hit. A bullet shattered his university hopes the first time.

“One afternoon he was standing on a corner with friends when Aristide was going down,” said Bien-Aime. “Soldiers were shooting.” A bullet grazed Durogene’s head, destroying the vision in his right eye, and setting him back in his studies.
But he didn’t give up, said Ulrich.

Durogene is 27 now. He had just one project left to complete before the degree was his. Then, his world crashed.

“There is no building. No university. No staff,” said Ulrich.

Durogene said he’s not sure what will come next with his schooling or even with job prospects—which are nothing if not extremely challenging in Haiti. But of this he is certain: His commitment to the camp and the people it’s sheltering is paramount.

“I cannot go out and look for a job now,” he said. “I want to be sure the structures are in place in here.”

The camp is just a beginning. As Haiti starts the long, arduous process of rebuilding itself, the social solidarity born from this tragedy, and all the potential of people forever shaped by it, can become the rocks from which mountains of good may rise.

This entry was posted by Coco McCabe on February 26th, 2010 at 10:11 am and is filed under General, Humanitarian, News Blog,

In part one of a special two-part report, Oxfam America’s Coco McCabe meets a group of inspirational young leaders helping people get the supplies they need in one of Port-au-Prince’s many makeshift camps, following the earthquake that destroyed so much of their city.

Members of the Delmas 62 camp leadership committee including Stephan Durogene (left) and Jennifer Banessa Destine (second from the right). Credit: Coco McCabe/Oxfam America.

An estimated 230,000 lives lost, huge swathes of the capital destroyed, more than one million people left homeless. Where in the sea of turmoil left by the January earthquake does Haiti begin to right itself? What are the first steps?

Whenever I asked those questions during my recent field visit there, the answer was often a long sigh. So much in Haiti - its infrastructure, its educational system, its job markets - demanded attention before this disaster. Now the need is hyperacute. Where in the world do you start?

Reconstruction starts with the people

One answer seems clear to me. Reconstruction starts with the Haitian people - like the committee of young leaders who emerged at Delmas 62 to help the hundreds of people camped in the yard of a private compound. They needed food and water, shelter and medical care. And they needed to be organised. It was through the efforts of twenty-somethings like Stephan Durogene, Jennifer Banessa Destine and a handful of others that sorely needed assistance began to flow over the tumbled walls and into their makeshift camp.

“Stephan, since the first time I met him, has always shown good potential,” says Ulrich Bien-Aime, a retired school teacher who was living in his sister’s house in the compound when the quake hit and has known Durogene since he was a high school student. “He believes in doing well, doing good, doing what’s right.”

In the month since the quake leveled much of Port-au-Prince, the opinion of Haitian civil society has gone largely unheard. But at the end of February, a coalition of civil groups is planning to hold a conference on reconstruction. Wouldn’t it be a perfect opportunity for new leaders, rising to the myriad challenges in the camps, to have their voices heard? Encouraging their participation in the decision-making that lies ahead can only make for a stronger Haiti.

Enormous personal strength

Already, some of these leaders have shown enormous personal strength. When the buildings at Ruben Leconte University crashed around him, Durogene, an engineering major, helped pull students from the wreckage before heading off to find his parents and siblings. They were safe - and deeply relieved to see him. They had heard the university had collapsed and feared that he had died in the rubble. But when they urged him to move with them to a safer part of the city, Durogene refused. He saw the need at Delmas 62 and decided that’s where he had to stay.

“I didn’t know I had this in me,” he said, sitting still for a rare moment in a patch of hot shade at the camp. It was about ten days after the disaster struck. “It’s during the earthquake I realised I can be a good leader.”

Part 2 will be published tomorrow, Saturday 27 February

Katty Rebecca Matin, 13, spends several hours each day studying the school books she brought with her in a pillowcase. Photo: Coco McCabe / Oxfam America

For kids not affected by the devastating earthquake that rocked Haiti in January, schools re-opened the first of this month. But few students in the North-West and South departments have shown up--not a promising sign for the government's intention to open the rest of the country's schools by March 1.

Around Port-au-Prince, the temblor reduced many of them to rubble, making it hard for kids to shake the nightmarish possibility of what that could have meant for them had the quake hit earlier in the afternoon when they were seated at their desks.

It struck just before 5 p.m. Kids had left for the day. Thankfully.

I heard that whisper of relief voiced over and over again on the dusty streets of the capital as we drove past schools with pancaked floors and collapsed walls. Countless lives saved by chance. Thankfully.

But what's been interrupted now is the certainty, order, and measure of opportunity that the school day brought to the lives of Haitian kids who had managed to secure themselves a place in a classroom--even if that classroom lacked both amenities and rigor.

Many in Haiti don't get the chance to have much schooling. According to one report, only two-thirds of Haitian children complete primary school. And the learning they get is hardly uniform, given that almost 80 percent of primary teachers are not certified. The report, compiled for the Partnership for Educational Revitalization in the Americas, pointed out that most students in Haiti--about 80 percent of those enrolled--attend private schools, but that three-quarters of those schools have neither certification nor license from the ministry of education.

The government wants to see all schools reopened in less than three weeks. But where? With what resources? A recent story in the New York Times described an orphanage that promised to educate the children within its walls, but a reporter who visited saw no signs of books, papers, or pencils anywhere.

Last week, three experts testified before a subcommittee of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on how to help Haiti recover from the incredible destruction left by the quake, and each one of them emphasized the importance a sound educational system will play in rebuilding the country.
And perhaps, no one wants that as much as some of the kids who've lost every semblance of comfort and security they ever knew--including their schools.

In a spontaneous camp of tarps and bed sheets at Delmas 62, Katty Rebecca Matin, 13, sat bouncing a neighbor's baby on her lap. She's good with kids, but where her heart really lies is with her books. And it was that love that prompted her to drag her school books--a pillow case stuffed with them--from her family's damaged home to the camp where they sit carefully stacked, and easily accessible, with a few other salvaged household belongings.

"I love school," said Katty, digging into the pillow case and pulling out a workbook. "Side by Side," it was called, a language book for those studying English. She flipped it open to chapter six--a section on families--and with hordes of them teeming around her, she ticked off the words for sister and brother, aunt and uncle, mother and father in near perfect English.

"I like doing homework," added Katty.

That's a challenge in a camp where there's not a quiet corner to be had or hardly a comfortable place to sit. But Katty has found a way to carve out some mental space for herself. Together with two friends, she has formed a study group and for two or three hours each day they focus on their school work. To give the sessions some structure, Katty's mother asked an older student in the camp to help tutor the younger ones as they plow through lessons in math, social science, English, and Spanish.

The informal sessions help pass the time at Delmas 62. But what Katty said she would really like is for school to start again--so her dream of attending university and studying science can come true.

The Haitian people have begun tackling the hard work of recovery. Many are eager to contribute, looking for opportunities to earn money, to meet peoples basic needs—opportunities like assembling family kits.

Workers assembling family kits. Photo: Oxfam

Oxfam America’s Coco McCabe is one of several Boston-based colleagues in Haiti to help with the relief effort. Here’s her latest update, dated January 29.

As devastating as the earthquake was for the people of Port-au-Prince, for some of them, there’s the thinnest of silver linings: jobs. Not necessarily long-lasting ones, but at least a few weeks’ worth of work that will put money in their pockets and help them weather the tough times ahead.

That’s how it is for 19-year-old Montinard Jean-Baptiste, who landed a job in an Oxfam warehouse not far from the airport, loading and unloading a stream of goods to help some of the people left homeless by the quake.

Jean-Baptiste is one of those homeless people. He’s now living in a cardboard shelter in a camp of about 600 people right behind the warehouse. With him are his aunt and uncle, who raised him and his four brothers and six sisters. All of them depend on the earnings his aunt makes from selling coffee and bread to people going to work in the morning. She supports the family.

Jean-Baptiste has managed to find some work in the past—for Coca-Cola, which has hired him for truck-loading stints 12 different times. But each time, after three months, the company has let him go. Oxfam is his second employer. And he says with the flood of aid groups pouring into the country—many of them needing help to carry out their work—part-time jobs have become more available.

“It’s important to me,” he says of his work at Oxfam. He plans to share his earnings (200 gourdes a day, about $5) with his aunt and brothers.

Late on a Friday afternoon at this two-story warehouse, there is a hum of activity. A rainbow of big plastic tubs—green, blue, red—fill the yard. Each is now loaded with “family kits” of essential household items like towels, toothpaste, shampoo, cups, plates, and eating utensils.

Men are busy lugging boxes of soap and kitchen implements from the warehouse, while others, men and women at three long wooden tables, quickly unpack them and reassemble the goods into the tubs, which can be used as wash basins. About 45 people are working here now.

Dario Arthur, an Oxfam staffer leading part of the emergency response, says he could have ordered pre-assembled kits to distribute in the camps. But that would have been a missed opportunity to give people jobs. The assemblers, who need to work fast and will be employed for just two weeks, are earning 500 gourdes (about $12.25) a day: a rate substantially above the local minimum wage. Warehouse workers will likely stay on the job for two or three months, as different supplies pass through.

All told, the crew here will put together 10,000 kits. As soon as 100 or so are assembled, off they go in the back of a truck to one of the scattered camps that now dot Port-au-Prince. But Olivier Girault, an Oxfam logistician, says one of the challenges is determining where the need really lies.

Beyond the gates of the warehouse yard, a small crowd of men has gathered. When a truck trundles out with its load, a commotion erupts: The men are clamoring for the goods, saying they are representatives from camps where people need help. But Girault says that all the requests need to be checked out, otherwise the kits could wind up in the market for sale—not in the hands of families who could use them.

By the end of the day, a sea of cardboard and plastic wrapping stretches beneath the work tables, all that’s left of hours of frenetic activity. The workers stream out of the gates, and Girault, with a smile on his face, climbs into a truck to head home. Hired just a few days ago by Oxfam and fluent in French, Spanish, English, and Creole, this is the first regular job he’s been able to land since returning to his native Haiti nine months ago.

“It’s good for us Haitians to work for those who can’t work and lost everything,” he says.

Invest in Haiti’s recovery by donating to Oxfam’s Haiti Earthquake Response Fund.

Learn more about how Oxfam is responding

Tags: Coco in Haiti, earthquake, Haiti, jobs, Port-au-Prince
Posted in Central America, Mexico & Caribbean, Disasters & conflicts

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Oxfam America's Coco McCabe is one of several Boston-based colleagues in Haiti to help with the relief effort. Here's her latest update, dated January 27; this is part two of a two-part series.

Read part 1.

In December, about a month before the tragedy changed everybody's lives, Janicia Dorval got a bank loan of 15,000 gourdes (about $370) to help her fund a used-clothing business. It was in full swing at the Petionville Club on Wednesday, with customers--mostly women--crowding around the shoes and purses heaped on plastic tarps next to the dusty road. There were the red patent leather slip-ons, shimmering in the sun, and green flip flops, and practical black loafers.

Dorval, leaning toward the practical in flat canvas shoes and a simple hat to keep the sun off her head, was driving a hard bargain with her customers. She wouldn't budge on the price of a black bag with a zipper--35 gourdes (87 cents). But toss in a pair of sandals, and she'd let the whole catch go for 400 gourdes (about $10). Behind her stood her shelter, decked out in a tiered lace curtain, yellow with dust.

Asked what she needed to help her business grow, the answer came as no surprise.

Money, she said.

But for Pharisien Marcaise, a 45-year-old tailor, who had sent all four of his children to Catholic school, there's something even more important for Haitians to have if they are going to move their country forward following this disaster.

"Education," he said. "If the country doesn't have education, it's a dead country."

Marcaise spoke with an unshakable conviction, even as the price he has now had to pay for it is higher than any parent should ever have to shoulder: When the quake struck, his son, who was studying to be a lawyer at Rubens Leconte University and was the first of Marcaise's children to achieve that academic level, was killed when the building around him collapsed.

"There are people who have lost five children," he said quietly above the hum of the camp around him. "I have to keep going with my life."

For now, that means keeping a small generator chugging so he can charge the batteries on the cell phones everyone here carries. Without a regular source of electricity, people depend on small vendors like Marcaise to keep them connected with their friends, their families, and the world.

Invest in Haiti's recovery by donating to Oxfam's Haiti Earthquake Response Fund. 
Learn more about how Oxfam is responding.

Nous vivons

The will to live in Port-au-Prince is irrepressible, as is the good will of Haitians.

January 24th, 2010 | by Coco McCabe

Andy Charles Etienne and his daughter Christina, five. They escaped their collapsed home, and Etienne says "we are alive and standing and give thanks for this." Photo by Liz Lucas.

Oxfam America’s Coco McCabe is one of several Boston-based colleagues in Haiti to help with the relief effort, where they join 200 Oxfam staff already on the ground. Here’s her latest update, dated January 23.

Nous vivons–those are the first words scribbled in one of my notebooks–overheard as we lurched onto a main road in Port-au-Prince to begin another day of logging people’s needs and scrambling to meet them in the wake of the second deadliest earthquake the world has seen in the last 30 years.

I don’t know much French, but I know enough to hear gratitude and the thrill of being alive. A man dashing across the street had spied our driver–a friend–and a smile of wild joy shot across his face.

“Nous vivons!” he shouted. We live!

But how?

 The UN estimates that those left homeless by the earthquake number 609,000 in and around Port-au-Prince. In this city of collapsed concrete, shelter is at a premium, and the good will of people like Ulrich Bien-Aime assumes even greater significance than it once did. . He lives in his sister’s house–still standing–at 62 Delmas, and a sea of tarps and bed-sheet huts that sleep nearly 1,000 people at night now fill the yard.

The clatter of families living in the open has nudged aside the peace and privacy he once enjoyed inside his compound walls. But Bien-Aime doesn’t mind.

“After the earthquake, they knew no one was here. They all invaded,” he said. “I say welcome, welcome.”

An elderly man in glasses and gray slacks, he looks every bit the retired Chicago school teacher he is–slightly formal, but thoughtful and still anxious to impart a lesson. About 12 years ago, Bien-Aime began spending at least half the year in his native Haiti. It was a place that had educated him well, and for free–and he was distressed to see how so much had changed. So together with four friends, they are pooling their resources to pay private school tuitions for 13 kids.

“I realized how bad the situation was,” said Bien-Aime. “We talked together and said how can we help a few?”

It’s a question the earthquake has left him asking–and answering–again.

Touring the yard-turned-camp this morning, he scouted for a place that Oxfam could build a bank of latrines and agreed that a sliver of land behind a building would be ideal.

“I don’t mind at all,” said Bien-Aime. “If you don’t help humanity, you are not human.”

Save lives now by donating to Oxfam’s Haiti Earthquake Response Fund
Learn more about how Oxfam is responding

Tags: Coco in Haiti
Posted in Central America, Mexico & Caribbean, Disasters & conflicts

Oxfam’s Coco McCabe is one of several Boston-based colleagues on her way to Haiti to help with the relief effort, where they will join over 200 Oxfam staff already on the ground. Here’s her latest update, dated January 18.

I suspect tonight might be my last night of sleeping soundly. Aftershocks are continuing to rattle the nerves of people in Port-au-Prince.

“Be careful,” said Yves Gattereau, a program director for Oxfam Quebec in the Dominican Republic, as we gathered for a debrief in San Juan. “You won’t sleep a good night of sleep. You’ll hear it coming. You won’t know if it’s the big one.”

Oxfam water distrubution in Haiti, January 18, 2010. Photo: Oxfam

And after the 7.0 temblor turned much of Port-au-Prince to rubble, the big one is on the minds of everyone–including Gattereau’s mother.

After the quake, Gattereau, who had not received word from his parents, went to look for them in their neighborhood near Port-au-Prince and found them sleeping in their car . Though their house and a guest house next door were still standing, neither felt comfortable spending the night inside. They’re not alone.

“Everybody is sleeping outside their house,” he said.

When the quake struck, his parents, who live half the year in Montreal and half the year in Haiti, were just about to leave home to visit a friend. Gattereau’s mother was outside, waiting for her husband.

“She fell down and the ground just opened in friont of her eyes,” he said. The memory of that gaping hole is too strong to bear. Gatterau said his parents have now come to live with him in San Juan while they decide what to do next.

Save lives now by donating to Oxfam’s Haiti Earthquake Response Fund

Learn more about how Oxfam is responding

Tags: Coco in Haiti, Coco McCabe, Dominican Republic, earthquake, Haiti, Port-au-Prince
Posted in Central America, Mexico & Caribbean, Disasters & conflicts

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