ONE OF THOSE DAYS

Believe it or not! Not every day on deployment with International Emergency Services is a good one! It's been a day of mental gymnastics in the stadium of disaster and the gymnasium of politics.

Yesterday I spent the morning doing, I think, what most people think of when they imagine emergency services. For me it was distributing food, but it could be building temporary shelters, or providing medical care, or cleaning wells - anything that involves the messy, frustrating, unpredictable, chaotic but amazing adrenalin rush that goes with meeting the needs of a person that has, through no fault of their own, been left in need.

Today was not a poster day for emergency services for me. I spent the day on administration and management, analysing and evaluating the way ahead for the team. The part that makes it all the more difficult is that it will result in me having to terminate the employment of a number of people who have worked with The Salvation Army teams since just after the earthquake.

All of these people have stories, some have been impacted by the quake and all of them have become friends and valued team members during what has been an emotional roller coaster ride for Haiti and the team. They have befriended the imported 'experts' and said 'welcome home'. And in the western hemisphere's poorest country, with over 60% unemployment, they could all do with an ongoing income.

So, to put it bluntly, today sucks. (But that's why I get the T-Shirt!)

DISTRIBUTING BABY FOOD

I could see the delicate aroma that rose in gentle waves from the piles of rotting garbage that lined the thick brown molasses like substance that crept down the canal. 1,400 patient (at this stage) people were already lined up down the bottom end of the canal waiting for the two organisations to deliver on their promises. Brazilian (UN) Soldiers in full gear, an assotrment of armaments and light blue helmets, were already closing down the roads and keeping the people in check.

At 8:30am when our team and two trucks arrived it was already 30 degrees, and 89% humidity. The roads were in grid-lock thanks to our trucks and the huge white UN VW truck; someone had forgotten their job to clear the rubbish from the road so that the trucks could get off the main road and access the distibution point.

We waited while men shoveled garbage and then watched as trucks got bogged in it, spinning wheels creating a beautiful brown sludge waterfall effect with mulched warm garbage. Eventually, trucks, people and material in place we began to fill the bright red Red Shield bags with two slabs of mushed sweet peas or smashed fruit. Sweat poured and muscles ached as slabs of baby food flew from truck to bag - but laughter and smiles (together with litres of drinking water) drove the energy levels and people were served.

The Salvo team worked hard today, and enjoyed their work. You would have been proud to watch them work: to see them not just hand out food, but stop to offer a smile and a word of encouragement, to help an old lady carry her load, to kneel down to look into the eyes of a child - to offer people that had lost much if not all a moment of dignity and respect.

MRE

I have now been introduced to the MRE!

Meals are (very) expensive at the Coconut Villa Hotel (our team accomodations in Port au Prince) so, thanks to the US Military, the team has been eating MRE packs on the weekend. Thanks to those that have gone before me we have a box full of the reject bits and a few complete packs left.

These Meals-Ready-to-Eat (MRE) packs are always like a lucky dip. But yesterday I won the jackpot! I chose a Vegetarian pack which came complete with a pack of M&Ms and a Chocloate (flavoured) energy bar. And then today I 'enjoyed' two crackers sandwiched together with jalapino flavoured cheese spread.

There's always a new experience to be enjoyed on deployments with The Salvos!

PARADOXE DU HAITI

In a place like Haiti and a time like this you see sights that have the ability to move you to tears, sights that make you laugh and others that leave you nonplussed. Today has been a day that has travelled the spectrum.

The day began with a tour of Place de la Paix IDP camp. (This is the IDP camp that The Salvation Army is managing that provides shelter and security for approximately 20,000 people in Port au Prince.) It takes about half an hour to walk the circumference of the camp (if you don't get stopped too often) and on the way you might see:

• An amazingly well stocked tarpaulin and tin shop that sells all kinds of things: medical pills of all colours and sizes; tins of Jack Mackerel and condensed milk, televisions, pregnancy pottery, rice, salt, grains, beans, fried dried fish and so much more
• Two UNICEF child safe tents, one with rows of little smiling children copying the words of a teacher who is instructing by use of a mega phone, the second tent with teenagers dancing to Celine Dion and Amazing Grace
• Children playing in the dirty, smelly water - the older one pushing a small suitcase on wheels with a younger brother sitting in the half unzipped case
• Women sitting on the ground with large metal basins full of soapy water washing clothes until they are spotless
• Young girls doing each others hair
• Food cooking on small charcoal fires: deep fried fish and other unidentifiable delicacies
• Little children chasing us, holding our hands and feeling your arm to see if the white comes off, and what all the hair is doing on your arms. Then trying to lift up your pants legs to see if you are the same colour down there (only to find socks that hide the skin)
• Children racing to see us and shouting the ubiquitous greeting: "Hey you!"
• Older people greeting you and saying: "Welcome Home"

All of this within the context of about 3,500 shelters of varying construction: plastic sheeting, tin, wood, cardboard; on an area the size of a soccer field (which it was: the goal posts have become the stabilisers for a lucky few). A wide, mostly stagnant, canal runs parallel and carries away some of the sewerage.

And in amongst all of this, even as your mind is trying to make sense of the myriad informants - the smells, the sights, the sounds - and convinces itself that in any normal world this whole experience is offensive, a young man walks confidently into the frame, obviously dolled up with hair slick, clothes smart, small bag hanging off one arm and a beautiful, brightly coloured, sweetly smelling bouquet of flowers carefully protected in the other. What could his story be: is he courting one of the young girls up the next corridor getting her hair done, or is he visiting a relative who has lost family?

Even now, just over six months after the earthquake, an average of 12 bodies are recovered each day. As I drove past a wall in town this morning, I saw some amazingly beautiful graffiti on a broken wall. It was a relief map of Haiti; but look closely and buried in the colours that form a mountain range are two eyes from which two tears are falling. Alongside the map, the words: "We Still Need YOUR Help".

SHELTERS IN HAITI

If you laid all tarpaulins that have been distributed by Shelter Cluster agencies end on end, they'd reach from Sydney to Perth, London to Baghdad, Lisbon to Moscow or New Delhi to Beijing.

The earthquake created approximately 20 million cubic meters (26 million cubic yards) of debris that have to be removed. To put this into perspective: after the Pakistan earthquake in 2005, that number was 2.3 million cubic meters (3 million cubic yards).

If you put all the debris in shipping containers and put them end on end, they would reach from London to Jerusalem, Melbourne to Perth or New York to Las Vegas. The majority of Haitians are removing debris from their plots by hand.

Over 18 months, Shelter Cluster agencies are planning to build approximately 125,000 transitional shelters. These will provide safe places to live for approximately 625,000 people. This is slightly more than the number of people living in the cities of Las Vegas, Gold Coast or Glasgow.

Shelter Cluster agencies are planning to build enough transitional shelters for 55,000 people per month. This equals the population of Hereford, UK; Wagga Wagga, NSW, Australia; Limerick, Ireland; or Cheyenne, WY, USA.

Welcome Home

In my experiences of emergency and disaster relief I believe I have proved that it is people that have suffered most that are often the most gracious.

One of the men (JR) that works with the Salvo Team here in Port au Prince has suffered terribly, (and is indicative of so many). His wife was killed in the earthquake, leaving him with three young children. He volunteered to help in any way he could in the early response and has stayed on with us, and eventually was offered a role. Whilst working for us JR visited a remote area, and the truck he was travelling in rolled over the side of the road: stunned and bruised he crawled out of the wreck, picked up his cell phone and dialed his wife, only to get a message saying the service to that number had been cut – and remembered that his wife was dead.

JR is one of the most gracious and grateful people I have met so far. He works hard and refuses to accept a wage, instead asking that his wage be placed in trust for his children’s education.

When I am introduced to a Haitian person they always greet me with a huge smile and the phrase: “Welcome Home”. I love that. For me it immediately puts you off guard and makes you feel that you belong. JR’s story, of course is not unique, but despite the destruction and the human tragedy the Haitian people are gracious and welcoming.

First (Day) Impressions

It was in Sri Lanka as a young boy when I first heard the harsh scratching of a straw broom on hardened ground in the early and cool hours of the day. So when I was wakened, on this, my first full day in Port au Prince by the warm breeze and that familiar sound, I was a little disorientated. “Where was I?” It took a moment, but then I remembered, and the next question was; “Why?”

I was soon on the already (at 7:30am) congested road to the office: a road pockmarked by potholes and bounded by remarkably neat piles of rubble scraped from the road to the curb. Street stalls selling everything from pungent deep fried fish, bags of water, and FEMA (camp) cots to medicines of all shapes and colours were already doing business in front of mounds of torn concrete and bent steel, the remains of houses and shops.

Erroneously I had assumed that when an earthquake struck, along a defined fault line, that the destruction would be more ‘ordered’, that there would be some sort of pattern to the demolition, but this is not so. The destroyed buildings reveal only how indiscriminate, and unpredictable the destruction is. Alongside a mound of torn and broken concrete there is a building that looks like it was the same, little affected. Buildings that may not have been up to any code, remain intact whilst buildings, like the Presidential Palace, (which you would assume were well built) had imploded and looked like a Lego house after a tantrum.

New communities of tents and shelters of all shapes, colours and sponsors have appeared around the city. One of these is the Place de la Paix, (in Delmas 2, Port au Prince) an IDP (Internally Displaced Peoples) camp which is managed by The Salvation Army with the help of some other NGO partners. About 20,000 people live in this camp, on a soccer field, next to the Salvation Army Haiti Headquarters. These shelters, which range from sticks held together by tarpaulins through to wood frames and corrugated iron roofs are crowded together and offer little to no privacy, but this is one of the good camps. Some enterprising people have converted their shelters into variously stocked shops which offer the necessities of life – and, amidst this colourful and aroma filled canvas life goes on.

On the Way

I am sitting in Miami International Airport watching CNN tell me that the world is failing Haiti - that despite the huge outpouring of sympathy and money people are dying as the money fails to arrive at the places where it matters.


It is easy to fly expert commentators in and say nothing is happening; to show images of dying children and debris strewn streets and to make bold statements that suggest that Aid/NGO Agencies are failing to make any difference. I think we may need to stop and define what 'success and progress' looks like.

To import key activities and outcomes without contextualising them is a mistake too often made. And from a person that has still not arrived in Haiti that sounds like it may be the case in Haiti. So in about 4 hours I will land in Port au Prince, and God helping me I will make a difference.

Haiti Disaster Recovery

I'm off to Haiti for eight weeks where I will be joining the International Emergency Services team in Port-au-Prince.

Just in case you forgot: the earthquake hit in January 2010 and The Army has been invloved in recovery programs from the first day. At the moment we are running an Internally Displaced Peoples (IDP) camp for about 20,000 people and running a number of other programs throughout the country.

I'll tell you more in a while.

When people's sense of injustice is engaged, mountains can be moved.

I'm not an environmental scientist. I don't pretend to understand all the intricacies of climate change but I'm not blind either, and like you I have noticed that there appears to be a number of 'extreme weather' events that could be a result of changing weather patterns; which could be a result of a 'rich humanity's' exploitation of the environment; and which seem to impact most, the poorest and most vulnerable.

Climate change and its impact on the world is not just a scientific debate, it’s primarily a social justice issue. But until now all the rhetoric and argument has been presented as a problem of collective guilt. ‘We’ must repent and mend our ways.

This assigns blame in a way that mocks democracy and pretends that the poor and the rich are somehow equally responsible for the political gamesmanship that drives the agenda of governments and multinationals. Meanwhile the real crime – the very existence of rich and poor – continues to create havoc.

There are rich and powerful interests who will be quite content if social justice stays out of the climate change debate and no doubt will fight (as Copenhagen suggested) to keep it off the agenda. There are also climate change activists who seem to care little about the rights of their fellow humans, let alone their happiness.

But we had better start taking an interest because until the grievous infringements of dignity that most of humanity endure are addressed there will be no answers to climate change and its increasing influence on our world.

I am a Human Being

It was 'revealed' this morning that a number of Asylum seeker families have been 'detained' under security in a suburban Motel in Queensland - without the knowledge of the locals. But now that it has been revealed that their neighbours are asylum seekers they are not happy.

One of the residents interviewed suggested it was 'not right, who knows what is in that hotel'!

It reminded me of the hysteria whipped up in the wake of the Tampa incident when Australians objectified the situation. With our capacity to blur out the individual faces and ignore our shared humanity we are able to depersonalise the story and claim that we are only protecting our own.

The human tendency to prejudice and xenophobia is born and grows in a climate of ignorance, selfishness and unwillingness to learn.

The unfounded and irresponsible reporting of the TV journalist further inflamed the situation when she claimed that the hotel borders on 'a playground, a school and a main road'. What was she suggesting: that the 'asylum seekers' (let's keep them faceless commodities) 'were paedophiles looking for a quick get-away and an opportunity to silently melt into our community'? And what made it worse apparently was that the school is one of the areas most respected.

This kind of irresponsible reporting will result in tragedy. I hope I am wrong, but I bet this is not the last we will hear of the small motel in the suburbs and the frightened parents that have sacrificed a huge amount in an attempt to provide their kids with a new, safe and hope-filled life.

Be A Lifesaver

Australia has a proud history of helping refugees fleeing war and persecution. But in 2010, in the lead up to a Federal election, our politicians are trampling on this record and punishing these most desperate of people to score political points.

On Saturday 8 May, people around Australia are gathering to form human life rings, and show our politicians on all sides that they've got it wrong - Australians do care about saving lives and we won't accept punishment of people to win votes.

JOIN US on SATURDAY 8 MAY to create a human life ring, wearing your brightest red and yellow clothing.

SYDNEY - Bondi Beach11am - 1pm
For more details - http://www.amnesty.org.au/nsw/event/22927/

MELBOURNE - St Kilda Beach- front of surf lifesaving club11am - 1pm
For more details - http://www.amnesty.org.au/vic/event/22926/

BRISBANE - King George Square1pm - 3pm
For more details - http://www.amnesty.org.au/qld/event/22928/

ADELAIDE - The Human Rights Wall, Barker Gardens, Corner of Prospect and Alpha Roads,1pm - 3pm
For more details - http://www.amnesty.org.au/sa/event/22925/

Australia is a lucky country - most of us don't have to worry about persecution or the horrors of war. But do we care about people who do?

This event is supported by:
Actionaid - http://www.actionaid.org.au/
Amnesty International Australia - http://www.amnesty.org.au/
Asylum Seeker Centre - http://www.asylumseekerscentre.org.au/
Asylum Seeker Resource Centre - http://www.asrc.org.au/
Australian Council for Tamil Refugees GetUp - http://www.getup.org.au/
Hotham Mission - http://asp.hothammission.org.au/
Human Rights Law Resource Centre - http://www.hrlrc.org.au/
Jesuit Refugee Service - http://www.jrs.org.au/
National Council of Churches - http://www.ncca.org.au/
Refugee Council of Australia - http://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/
Uniting Justice Australia - http://www.unitingjustice.org.au/
Rise (Refugee Survivors and Ex-detainees) - http://riserefugee.org/home-page
Union Aid Abroad (Apheda) - http://www.apheda.org.au/
Liberty Victoria - http://www.libertyvictoria.org/