Haiti diary 4: It's hard to imagine
12 February 2010
Karri Goeldner Byrne is the IRC's director of economic recovery programmes and is based in London. She has flown out to Haiti to work on a market mapping analysis designed to help speed recovery and independence for communities after a disaster.
I'm starting to know the local staff well enough that they open up a bit now. My driver told me yesterday that he lost his 5-year old daughter in the earthquake. He said it very conversationally, so that I almost thought that I had heard wrong. He always has such a big smile for everyone, I can only wonder what sadness hides behind that smile. He showed me her picture on his phone, obviously proud, and I realised how very lucky I am that my own daughter is safe at home. I can't imagine what it would feel like to lose her.
Then today, a volunteer who is helping with the assessment told me how his house had collapsed, and that his grandmother had died. She had paid for all of his schooling – he studied to be a translator. When I asked about his parents, he said simply "they aren't able to take care of me, my grandmother was the only one who looked after me. Now I need to find a job." I didn't know what to say.
The quake hit some harder than others. In many ways the middle class has lost most. The poorest had such insubstantial homes to begin with that there was little damage or injury when they fell down. But the middle class had put all of their money into their homes. Perhaps they cut a few corners in the building, because they weren't rich enough to "have it all". But in some cases, the corners they cut were the wrong ones.
There is no system of final inspections on home construction, so there was no one to warn them against those cut corners. Driving down the streets of Port-au-Prince, you can see a building completely destroyed, standing between two buildings that are just fine.
In some neighbourhoods, people have simply set up a tent in the road in front of their house. The car has to weave around them. A lot of schools were destroyed – one level stacked on the next, like a deck of cards. We passed a destroyed kindergarten today, and it made my heart pound. What if my daughter had attended that school? I can't imagine how hard it must be for the parents.
The planting season is three weeks away. And then the rainy season. It lightly rained last night, and the thousands sleeping in open air suddenly realised how quickly it will be here. There is so much to do: people need roofs over their heads, drainage ditches need clearing, schools and universities need to reopen. Although food is in good supply now, the wholesalers are reporting that they are having trouble getting things in through the port. So much to do, and so little time.
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