I’d like to say I hit the ground running here on my fourth disaster relief excursion, but really, it was more like I hit the ground stumbling. Demolition and clearing rubble definitely lends itself to a lot more minor injuries than construction does.
“I have standby tickets, I could get out of here today,” I thought, as I sat on the concrete floor of my hut at Grassroots United, a nonprofit in Port au Prince where I’d spent the night, which happens to be 10 minutes away from the airport. It was few days after New Year’s, and I was tired of Haiti. Tired of the chaos, tired of the heat, tired of the treacherous insanity of the roads. Tired of the pushing and shoving, of everything being crowded beyond capacity, tired of the dust that is everywhere. Tired of having to explain, in a language I barely understand, that I know the taptap costs 15 gourdes, not 250. Tired of feeling like an outsider, of not knowing how things are done or how to get what I need. Tired of everything being uncomfortable and difficult.
When I left Léogâne in March, I can’t say I was optimistic about its future. Roads were still lined with rubble, the town square and the meridian of the main road were packed with makeshift shelters, and the task of rebuilding seemed too daunting to contemplate. The Haitian government was holding things like excavators and solar panels up for months in customs, waiting for bribes or wading through their own bureaucracy.
I wake up in the dark, something inside me knowing it’s 5:30 a.m. already. I want to roll over on my air mattress on the bottom bunk of “2nd Street” -aka the 2nd row of bunks–and try to sleep a bit longer, but I know I shouldn’t. I pop out my earplugs and listen for