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Notes from the Field
Rice is not enough
by Rick Perera, CARE Media Officer in Haiti Monday, March 17, 2010 I love watching the humming machine of the Haiti relief effort in action. CARE has more than doubled our local staff since the January 12 earthquake, and the well-oiled supply chain is cranking along. Our huge new warehouse buzzes with workers loading and unloading, trucks rolling in and out. It's a sight to see.
Yesterday, I visited our largest-yet distribution of non-food items – a massive and well-run operation. At the seaside district of Village Gaston, overflowing with makeshift shelters, nine trucks arrived at 4:30 a.m. By 6:00, nearly 1,700 women had started lining up to collect crucially needed materials: tarpaulins for protection from the impending rainy season; blankets; mattresses; jerry cans to store water; and hygiene kits – brightly colored buckets stuffed with items to help families keep clean and healthy. Smiles broke out as each recipient reached the front of the long queue and deftly balanced supplies on her head. The machine chugs even faster when it comes to food. At our last food distribution, in Delmas district, 2,500 women walked away with big bags of rice in just a couple of hours. As of this week, CARE had reached some 278,000 survivors. Along with other humanitarian agencies, we have supplied emergency shelter material to 50 percent of those in need, and the speed is increasing daily. Given the unprecedented scale of this crisis, and Haiti's limited infrastructure, that's faster than we could have hoped. And yet, it's still not enough. Once people's immediate needs are met, they naturally start thinking about the long term, and they're worried. You meet them at Place St. Pierre, a public park just steps from CARE Haiti's offices where several thousand survivors are sheltering. The residents are so grateful for our help that they've named the camp "CARE Village." Many now live in tidy tents, and there's food and clean water. But they need more. Pierre Richard Bayard, 47, has a wife and six children. He's fed up with just being fed. "They always bring rice, rice, rice," he says. "But we need work. Our children need to go to school." There's no shortage of work to be done as Haiti struggles to get back to its feet. CARE is mobilizing to create jobs. As a start, we're about to hire more than 300 local workers in the hard-hit community of Léogâne, in collaboration with the Haitian Department of Agriculture. They'll clear roads, clean irrigation canals and plant trees to prevent erosion. There's plenty of work to be done on Haiti's farms, too. Even far from the earthquake zone, rural areas are overwhelmed with people fleeing greater Port-au-Prince. Last month I visited the northwestern province of Artibonite, which has absorbed more than 160,000 newcomers. Many of the host families were already struggling even before the quake to grow enough food. CARE is seeking funding to distribute tools – such as hoes, machetes and shovels – so they can increase their yield. And there's work to be done, on our part, to raise the funds still needed to ramp up the recovery effort. The world has been extremely generous with support for the immediate relief phase. But I fear that finding money for longer-term reconstruction will be harder, as Haiti fades from the headlines and attention turns elsewhere. Sometimes I get discouraged, when I see all around me Haiti's deep poverty, so tragically worsened two months ago. But I also feel a spark of hope for the future, above all when I spend time with my dedicated Haitian colleagues – working so hard for the sake of their country.
Pierre Richard Bayard at "CARE Village." Photo: 2010 Rick Perera/CARE
Send This | Categories: Aid, CARE, Children, Disaster, Earthquake, Food, Haiti, Haiti Earthquake, Natural Disaster, Relief, Shelter, Women
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