Right now I'm back in Cambridge in my dorm room and it feels weird. It's been such a packed trip that sitting at a desk with my laptop seems odd and I keep running through all my pictures and videos from this trip (over 200 videos from my flipcam and 300 stills from my camera).
Friday, our 6th and last day in Haiti started off with an 8:30 breakfast meeting with Dr. Charles MacArthur, a doctor who runs an HIV/AIDs clinic in Port-au-Prince and wanted to use the water quality testing kits. Thankfully, 90% of his patients are still returning to his clinic after the earthquake. But he did acknowledge some of the problems mentioned in a New York Times article that I had looked at before regarding members of the TB hospital being dispersed into the tent cities and spreading resistant TB because the hospital is completely destroyed. I asked him about how effective he thinks DINEPA's add campaign for hygiene is and he said not much. I brought up the issue of illiteracy and using words and he brought up the point that when he makes campaigns to promote taking drugs at the correct time he uses pictures of the moon and sun to highlight what time medications need to be taken. Jess and Anila demonstrated the water kit by the pool and Marvin, Daryl, Professors DeGraff, and Vercoe headed off to Carrefour to check on the pedal-power generator.
I then headed for some art shopping with Jess, Anila, Asha, Clinton, Professor Joachim and his cousin. The traffic was crazy because the next day (Saturday) was a national holiday for agriculture and the banks were closing at 2:30 and everyone was running errands. We saw one line for a bank wrap around the building. After picking up a few souvenirs Anila, Jess and Clinton returned back to the hotel and while the rest of us were waiting for the car we had a conversation about what we were seeing and some of the points that we were discussing the night before regarding the Haitian populations lack of input in the reconstruction process. One model that Professor Joachim came up with was a supply and demand model where the supply is contracts for reconstruction and the demand comes from all the competing NGOs. It is kind of weird to be thinking about NGOs as companies competing to work in certain areas on different projects but that's what we have been seeing over this past week. On the drive back to the hotel the traffic was still ridiculous but it may have been due in part to the huge UN tanks and armored vehicles and patrol cars clogging up a lot of the key streets and commanding everyone to drive slow. We also drove past the house in which Professor Joachim's aunt lived and was buried under during the earthquake.
I grabbed a bite of Anila's Akra for lunch and then Jess, Anila and I headed towards the airport to meet with the German Federal Agency for Technical Relief where we were met on the street outside a huge CAMEP facility by Heinz, the team manager. The setup was AMAZING. In one area they had a housing tent where all the group was staying which included a washing machine and dryer. It was an amazingly equipped setup that I think everyone could learn from. In the other end they had a lab with incubators and quantitative machines for running biological and chemical tests on water and a laptop with internet (with google translate pulled up for easy communication). The staff included both Haitians and Germans and I have to applaud the dynamics of the situation. We tried to demonstrate our low cost kit to one of the lead technicians by setting up an experiment where we looked at the ground water and the water the Germans are supplying to the camp across the street from the airport. I was extremely impressed by their entire setup and more so by the staff, most of whom have volunteered for this posting and spend 2 weeks to 4 months in Haiti and live and work in a very contained environment and still maintain a very positive outlook and attitude.
On the drive back to the hotel we passed by some very very crowded and vibrant tent cities/ camps. People were bartering left and right. Back at the hotel we left at 7:15 to meet with the President of the State University. By this time night had fallen, and this was our first look at the city at night. It was really a different sight. Jess and I have traveled to other countries but this was unlike anything I have ever seen before. It was pitch black, there was practically no electricity and any light we saw came from burning trash or candles. Once in a while there would be a small store with one light bulb on and a radio which would draw a small crowd of chatting people. As much as I had seen this week, I was still unprepared and shocked by the site of so many people living in tents with only a single candle for light. We were originally supposed to meet with the President of the University at a restaurant but he was attacked early Wednesday morning and was uncomfortable leaving his house.
At his house we discussed what type of partnership could develop between MIT and the state university and what the university needs to do to rebuild. The president of the state university also introduced us to his father who is 92 and was pulled out from under the rubble. His wife of 65 years was also in the house when it collapsed and she did not make it. The state university president also mentioned that the agencies providing funding at the moment do not seem very interested in rebuilding the higher education system, although that is what is necessary to move the country forward. He also brought up a very similar perspective on NGOs to what we had been discussing this morning in stating that the NGOs will be challenged when Haitians can take the future into their own hands.
After our meeting we took a shot drive to a restaurant filled with live music and dancing where we had a very late dinner. We bumped into a group from USAID with workers who had been in Haiti since January 14th. We headed back to the hotel exhausted, and peering into the darkness seeing some of the shanty towns lit by only one candle each. Somehow packing and chatting about our trip led to it being 3am and we were up by 6 to make our 6:30 departure to the airport.
On the plane I sat next to a Haitian doctor whose children go to school in Rhode Island. He was curious about our trip and I about what he saw on a day to day basis and what he thought about some of the issues that we had been seeing on a day to day basis. He mentioned that the number one thing he thinks that people should be working on right now is a way to manage security.
When our flight landed in Ft. Lauderdale we were a bit short on time because the computers in customs were malfunctioning and then Anila was missing her checked luggage and we had to go through customs and immigration and recheck our bags. It was a mess and we did not think we were going to make it onto the flight-- it was 1:35 when we were at security and our flight was scheduled to leave at 1:40.
We got into Logan around 5 and in the cab back to MIT, Jess, Anila and I could not help but comment on how different it was here. Pointing to the Charles and the park next to it there were no tents. The roads were paved. It just feels weird being back here because the atmosphere there is so different.
