Contributor: Rinn Self

Joseph Moїse prepares bamboo poles for temporary housing. Photo: Miguel Samper for Mercy Corps

This is Joseph Moїse. He’s 34 years old and a native of Pétionville. Before the earthquake he was a teacher and now he’s a cash-for-work participant with Mercy Corps — but what he really wants to do is direct.

We met Joseph today in a displacement camp and Mercy Corps work site called Impasse Corail. He quickly volunteered to speak with me and let Miguel, our photographer, take some pictures. He told us that, before the earthquake, he lived on the second floor of a house nearby — a house that completely collapsed when the quake struck.

He and his extended family escaped the crumbling building and are now living in temporary shelter in the Impasse Corail camp. When we came along, he was in the process of rebuilding his tent with the plastic sheeting Mercy Corps had delivered earlier in the week.

During the day, Joseph and his neighbors in the camp are part of a work crew — removing rubble, clearing out drainage ditches and earning a daily wage from Mercy Corps. When we asked what he planned to do with his wages, he said his first priority was taking care of the woman in his life: his mother. I asked if he planned to return to teaching when he gets back on his feet and his school reopens.

That was when he really opened up.

He enjoyed teaching — the classes he taught were an unusual combination of physical education and penmanship — but what he really wants to do, he told us, is to make a film. What kind of film? A documentary perhaps? A moving story about his community’s struggle in the weeks after the earthquake?

No — a comedy. “You know Mr. Bean?” he asked us. “That’s like what I’m making. But funnier! I’m much funnier than Mr. Bean,” he assured us seriously.

Joseph took us up the steep hillside to show us his new tent site and the huge bamboo poles he would use to hold up the plastic sheeting. The bamboo grows just a few hundred feet away from the camp.

“It’s amazing that after all this, the earth still gives back,” he said. As he gathered up the poles, he showed off the new work gloves he’d been given when he started the cash-for-work job. He is deliberate and serious as he describes his plans and cuts the support polls for his tent.

But he’s also written his stage name in marker on both gloves.

He’s ready to give back — through the heavy lifting required to rebuild his neighborhood and the longer-term need for some comedy to lift its spirits.

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What was so incredibly hard to see was the destruction of national treasures and symbols of this city — such as the famous Iron Market — all broken, twisted and ruined. Photo: Rinn Self/Mercy Corps

Yesterday was the final day of the three-day national mourning period here in Haiti. We’ve had several new team members come on board this weekend, and we thought today would be a good day to see more of the city and get a sense of the scale of destruction caused by the earthquake. Our country director Bill — who lived in Haiti for many years — and his wife Dominique, who was born and raised here, took us on a tour of downtown Port-au-Prince.

It was the first time I had personally seen some of the worst hit areas of the city and it was absolutely overwhelming. What I had seen on TV and even in the displacement camps where Mercy Corps is working did not prepare me for the sheer heartbreaking magnitude of the damage that Port-au-Prince has suffered.

The heart of the city, once a vibrant commercial centre, now looks like a war zone. Completely shattered buildings line every street and the stench of death and burning rubbish is suffocating, even now a month after the earthquake. What was so incredibly hard to see — especially in the company of a native of Port-au-Prince — was the destruction of national treasures and symbols of this city: the National Cathedral, the famous Iron Market and the Presidential Palace, all broken, twisted and ruined.

We climbed up on top of the car and watched throngs of men, women and children waving Haitian flags and marching towards the palace. People danced and smiled and waved at us and we smiled and waved back. Photo: Rinn Self/Mercy Corps

Dominique wondered aloud — how do people rebuild from nothing? And we realized, no, this is actually much worse than nothing. There is no clean slate here to start from, they must live in and around the shattered shells of their homes and businesses because there is no alternative.

In this densely populated and desperately poor place, it will take weeks, months and perhaps years to remove all of the broken pieces and start over. Seeing what I saw today, I can’t even imagine the pain of having my entire city destroyed and then having to look at that destruction every single day, reminding me of the people I had lost and the seemingly impossible journey of rebuilding ahead.

As we neared the Presidential Palace, we realized that the crowds around us were all heading the same direction. Very suddenly, we found ourselves in the middle of a very large demonstration. We were forced to stop and park the car as thousands of people filled the main square outside the palace.

But this was, very fortunately, a peaceful gathering with music, song and prayer. We climbed up on top of the car and watched throngs of men, women and children waving Haitian flags and marching towards the palace. People danced and smiled and waved at us and we smiled and waved back.

It was an amazing and deeply moving mass expression of hope and faith, a wonderful sight after the incredibly painful tour we had just taken. Inspired by the unbroken spirit of the people we’d seen, we’ve all gotten a much-needed boost to start this week off with new energy and determination.

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In many ways, Haiti is a study in contrasts. Here in Petionville, houses lay in ruins while directly next door a brightly painted Yamaha dealership sits undamaged. Amid concrete rubble and twisted rebar, children run and play and smile.

Cash-for-work participants in the Petionville neighborhood of Port-au-Prince receive payments for a week's work of clearing debris, shoveling out ditches and repairing roads. Photo: Rinn Self/Mercy Corps

My day today was characterized by stark contrasts as well: it began with a quiet and orderly distribution of cash payments to our cash-for-work participants in a nearby neighborhood. It ended with the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

This morning, my colleague Carol Ward and I went up the road to the Ecole des Frères to oversee the first cash payment disbursement to participants in our cash-for-work programme. In this neighborhood, one of several where we are working, a group of 80 men and women had been clearing debris, shoveling out ditches and repairing roads for the past week. Today was payday.

We arrived early at the school, where a large displacement camp sprung up after the earthquake. We met with Jean-Pierre, the community liaison, and Alex, a representative of Fonkoze, our local partner who handles all the payments. One by one, participants filed in, were greeted by the Fonkoze staff, turned in the voucher card they had been given at the start of the week, received their cash payment and signed the register. Everything went off without a hitch and the participants all seemed proud and pleased to have earned a week’s wage.

When we returned to the office, I jumped in another car with our Country Director Bill Holbrook and our Logistics and Security Coordinator Jacques Azemar for a completely different trip — to meet with a bi-partisan Congressional delegation that was spending a whirlwind half day in Haiti. The trip was arranged by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and included Representative Earl Blumenauer of Oregon — a big proponent of Mercy Corps' work — who had invited us to attend part of the delegation’s visit.

Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi (left) talks with Mercy Corps Country Director Bill Holbrook about the work that needs to be done in Haiti. Photo: Rinn Self/Mercy Corps

We drove to the Geshiko clinic, which before the earthquake was Port-au-Prince’s primary HIV/AIDS facility. Today, it is hosting a field hospital unit run by DMAT — the U.S. Disaster Medical Assistance Team. Mercy Corps was one of only three international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) invited to the briefing. Bill had only a few moments to speak with Representative Pelosi, Representative Blumenauer and Representative Charles Rangel of New York.

To each of them, he expressed Mercy Corps’ firm belief that job creation and economic rehabilitation are key to the successful long term recovery of Haiti. He explained how our current work here is setting the stage for this long-term development, and how we are working to empower Haitians to build a new economic and social foundation for their country.

It was an exciting opportunity, and I’ll admit to being a little starstruck by all these U.S. politicians we suddenly found ourselves speaking with. It was gratifying to see how appreciative they were of us, the humanitarian and medical community who have responded to this disaster.

But as impressive as the politicians were, seeing the hard-working people of Petionville collecting their weekly wages this morning was a hard act to follow.

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After working on interviews and gathering stories about our Comfort for Kids programme, I learned that some of our team was headed out to see our new office and some of the neighborhoods around it, all of which were greatly damaged in the quake. I went along for the ride and to look for signs of Haitians getting back into a more normal routine.

Out in the streets, the destruction caused by the quake is apparent everywhere you turn. Alternating piles of garbage and rubble line the streets, signs saying “Help us — we need food and water” in French, English and Spanish still hang on walls and buildings, and the smell of raw sewage is overwhelming. However, I did see other more subtle signs that people are picking up the pieces and trying to build a day-to-day existence out of the chaos of the past few weeks. There were women selling fruits and vegetables on every corner, people crowding onto brightly-coloured mini-buses for trips across town and groups of workers clearing debris. It’s definitely a start.

There is an all-hands-on-deck feeling among our team here, as is common in an emergency response, but I wasn’t expecting to be pulled into the logistics planning quite so directly. When we arrived at the new office, however, I found myself pitching in to help our human resources manager draw out a physical plan of the new space and determine how we will organise our teams within the office. Now back at our temporary office, I’m thinking about the connections between what I saw around me today and the work we were doing ourselves in the new office. It doesn’t seem like the most obvious need in a situation like this — figuring out where desks will go in a new office — but it’s the kind of day-to-day routine that is happening all over the city as people try to pick up the pieces of their lives.

Building a solid infrastructure of talented staff, functional equipment and clear logistics processes will allow Mercy Corps to work efficiently and effectively here for years to come. And this is exactly the mindset that guides all of our work in Haiti: we’re helping people to create some kind of workable foundation and carve out space for a new routine.

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Rosemarie, a Haitian psychologist with ten years of experience working with children, will be working on Mercy Corps’ Comfort for Kids programme. She believes that psychosocial support is especially important right now. Photo: Rinn Self/Mercy Corps

My name is Rinn Self, and I'm a Communications and Development Associate in Mercy Corps' Seattle office. I've been deployed to Haiti for the next two weeks to connect the international media with members of our emergency response team, as well as highlight and document the work we are doing here to create long-term recovery.

To that end, in the relative calm of our office’s garden, I sat down today with Rosemarie, a Haitian psychologist who will be working on Mercy Corps’ Comfort for Kids programme. Before the earthquake, she worked in a small clinic in Port-au-Prince with just one other psychologist and a pediatrician. She has worked with children in Haiti for more than ten years and believes that psychosocial support is especially important right now.

She told me that the reactions she’s seen among kids have been what psychologists would consider very typical — they are clinging to their parents, they don’t want to sleep alone or even go inside the house. Their lives have been turned upside-down, and “they just want a protector,” she told me.

Rosemarie explained how important it is that adults and other family members accept this behaviour as a normal response to stress and support these kids through their healing process. She is very glad to be working on the Comfort for Kids programme, because it will help parents recognize the importance of emotionally supporting their children.

Rosemarie also told me that she welcomes the opportunity to show people in Haiti how beneficial psychological support can be, both in extreme situations and whenever their kids are experiencing stress. In this sense, she appreciates how the programme will target different types of caregivers — psychologists, social workers, parents and teachers. This Thursday, she and about thirty such caregivers will take part in a training of trainers, the first step in ensuring that this programme reaches as many Haitian children as possible.

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