Notes from the Field

Somalia - It Happened Again

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 14:04:14 GMT

It happened yet again. This time it was on a Friday evening, just before the weekend. Usually, it happens around the holidays. Either right before or smack in the middle of it. Sometimes you wonder whether it is a coincidence or it is a strategy. Maybe it is both.

Haiti report 3: Birth of a Project

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 18:37:22 GMT

Recently, I accompanied our water and drainage specialist for an assessment of needs in the field. I love these privileged moments, to go in search of those with whom we will work hand-in-hand to develop projects. To form an answer to a problem is, above all, to talk with the people, to understand how they live, to take in their daily existence, and especially, to hear their problems, listen to their needs - to not show up with preconceived ideas.

Haiti report 2: No Comment

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 03:15:34 GMT

Facts

A woman gives birth in a temporary shelter, the bare ground covered in trash.
Without medicine.

Millions of barefooted people in mud laden with sharp objects.
Without shoes.

Haiti report 1: The Punishing Rain

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 20:23:59 GMT

A clammy heat that clings to your skin, a blazing sun that withers you to the core, I’m at the Télecom sans Frontières tent to send the latest news to CARE’s network. At the entrance, an alert announces that a storm system has formed from the ensuing rains and unfavorable winds in the Caribbean area. We have been following the weather development since yesterday, which we hope will not announce its lot of torrential showers on the country.

Time Machines

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 16:29:42 GMT

My first lesson in the realities of poverty and global inequality came on a trip to Guatemala when I was four years old. My father, a doctor, had volunteered for a rural medical project, and brought his young family along.

The country was a riot of unfamiliar colors, smells, and sounds for a child’s senses. The joyfully clattering melodies of the marimba. The bustling marketplaces, where meat came not wrapped in cellophane, but on two or four legs. The destinations called out in sing-song voices by boys hanging precariously from brightly painted buses. “Gua-te, Gua-te, Gua-te-ma-la!” they’d shout, as they departed for the capital. I had no idea that these children, only a few years older than I, worked to help their families survive, at the price of a missed education.