Back in Gonaives – curiously enough a city I mentioned in my previous blog as I was watching news of hurricanes battering the Caribbean just a few weeks ago. Well, Hurricane Ike left a bit more than a mess here – 16 feet of water, and an estimated 2.5 million cubic meters of mud. If you’re wondering how much that is – don’t look to me for witty analogies. It’s a lot. To give you an idea, one UN staffer estimated it would take 200 trucks, working seven days a week, one full year to remove it all from the city. And since I’ve seen about five such trucks in my three days here so far, I’m guessing they are going to have to tweak that estimate a bit.
This city sufferes in the best of times. Electricity, even when there hasn’t been a hurricane, is available for only about 8 hours a day. There has been none for weeks here now, and it’s not likely coming back any time soon. I’m writing this from the UN compound in Gonaives, though I better write quickly before they find out I’m American and hold me hostage for a few billion in UN dues teh US owes. Touchy subject. The work here is slow, and difficult. People are desperately poor, anxious, and increasingly angry, and that’s a bad combination for food distributions, which can spark some trouble if you’re not very careful in how you carry them out. Most convoys of food go out with UN security attachments. CRS has been distributing sort of on the QT from the Missionaries of Charity and other out-of-the-way sites without security, and that’s worked well so far.
I know aid workers are supposed to be neutral, and since I don’t consider myself an aid worker, perhaps I don’t have to be. But Haiti is just hard – a hard place to work, a hard place to shoot photos, and hard place to live. It’s not one of my favorite places. If that’s me, writing from the electrified and well-fed compound of the UN, imagine what it is for 350,000 Haitians living in Gonaives, with a few hundred tons of mud beneath them.
September 28th, 2008 | by David in Humanitarian Aid
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All Material © 2008 David Snyder
