Bonswa!
Today was packed and productive! We started out around 9 am and were planning on visiting DINEPA, (Direction Nationale de l’Eau Potable et de l’Assainissement – National Direction for Drinking Water and Sanitation), the organization under the ministry of health that is in charge of water treatment and public health messages. On the way to their office which is located in a very wealthy part of town, Petion Ville, we stopped on the roads to take a look at some of the public health posters put up by DINEPA and admire the artwork. We saw a lot of paintings on the streets, some abstract, some very traditional, all very colorful and creative. Among the all of the paintings there were two that were particularly interesting. One was of the presidential palace, post-earthquake, with jagged black cracks and slumped white walls. The other was a picture of a bunch of people gathered around a store, with fear visible on their faces, and in the bottom the date January 12th 2010 was inscribed. After stopping in this street filled with artwork we continued to take our minibus towards DINEPA. Along the way we stopped at CAMEP, an agency that focuses on water distribution within Port-au-Prince. Since it was an impromptu visit, the engineers at agency refused to talk to us without permission from their higher ups—although I tried to convince him engineer to engineer.
From there we continued to venture up the hill towards the mountains. On the road up to the mountains we could see the shanty-towns which were severely destroyed by the earthquake. Once we got up into Petion Ville, less and less of the houses here were seemed to have been effected by the earthquake. Unlike the center of the city where we are staying there wasn’t much visible damage. We saw the German embassy and other very nice looking houses. We stopped to collect a sample of water from a pipe on the side of the road. The people collecting water from there said it was a CAMEP distribution site. In the midst of this residential area there was a pristine looking building which turned out to be DINEPA. At DINEPA we met with 3 people, who graciously made time for us even though we had showed up at 10 am (despite the fact we had a 1pm appointment). They gave us a couple of maps and talked us through DINEPA’s role in Haiti. One interesting thing they brought up is how there is not enough focus on transitioning to a permanent shelter situation. Jess and Anila presented the water testing kit and the head of water treatment was very keen on working with the technology. We are planning on meeting up with this group again for a WASH (water and sanitation hygiene) meeting lead by UNICEF on Wednesday morning.
On our way out of DINEPA I noticed a sign on the opposite house which read International Radio, I asked if we could go in and see if someone would talk to us because I’m interested in looking at how effective the public health messages were. I walked in and to our surprise the owner of the radio was close friends with one of our professor’s brothers. They were extremely happy to show us around their brand new studio. They originally had a studio in the center of the city which had collapsed entirely during the earthquake. We could see the recovered CDs and furniture spread throughout the entire first floor and parts of the basement. They very graciously invited us into their studio, gave us a tour and asked us to return Wednesday to record a few informative broadcasts for their TV broadcast.
We then headed out for lunch, stopping briefly at an embroidery shop. By the time we got to lunch it was already 2pm and we had spent much of the morning as investigative journalists.
After lunch we made a quick stop at a crafts store and on the way back to the hotel stopped by Professor Dale Joachim’s cousin’s house. She welcomed our group of 12 into the house and showed us her power setup—complete with 12 car batteries and an inverter. Towards the end of our meeting I got a chance to ask her husband, a Dean at the state university about where he was during the earthquake. He shakily described that he was meeting with a group of engineers on the second floor of a building. The second floor collapsed onto the first and he described trying to take the stairs down to the street. He then walked home for a half hour and he described emotionally how once at home he had to wait for 2 hours for his wife to come home and he had no idea where she was, if she was okay, etc. After the earthquake they did not have government supplied power for 5 weeks.
We then returned to the hotel to meet with a group from Waveplace which is working on using a program called E-Toys on the One Laptop per Child machines. They are working on a pilot program with 40 students and 10 mentors and wanted to introduce themselves tonight. We will be visiting their school tomorrow.
We then had dinner and then tested part of the water testing protocol poolside.
As you can see it’s been a long and productive day, we definitely met a lot of people and I hope tomorrow is just as exciting!
