First Few Days in Haiti

No Strings Ireland Director and intensive care nurse Afric McGlade has been seconded to GOAL to work for a month in Haiti. This is the latest from her diary:

We went to the area around the palace today, quite incredible all the collapsed buildings. Very little clearing has been done to date. There are thousands in the camps and refuse is everywhere. Not sure which organisation has responsibility for that area. It is flabbergasting the way people have just picked up their lives and live in immediate proximity to these collapsed buildings. So many have sheets of concrete hanging precariously over the people subsisting below. Street traders cover most of the available footpath space, alongside the rubble of collapsed buildings. a lot of scavenging is evident and these truely innovative people are out with anything from welders to rock breaking hammers to fashion some utensil, tool or shelter. This was truely a city with millions of people a eking out a living in truely awful conditions. The city is built on the side of a mountain with millions of people living in shanty areas that comprises most of the city. Massive irritation drains are evident throughout the city, literally filled to capacity with refuse and decaying matter that assaults the senses. Much of this was here before earthquake. When the rains truely start ( it was raining heavily there now) it will be a catalyst for  another disaster. There must be thousands of bodies within the rubble of collapsed buildings and with so many hundred of thousands of people living in such proximity to these area, it will spread disease rapidly. 
One of my housemates, Mo Mo, from Senegal, has colleagues that he knows from previous missions working in both UNICEF and WHO, so I met the UNICEF guy today and he chairs the WASH cluster meetings. There is a Hygiene sub-cluster meeting on Tue, to do with training and posters for hand washing…etc.. in Creole. I share a house with Mario, Mo Mo and Tom. A new man arrived tonight, a Cork man, very interesting. Spent a lot of time in S.Sudan
I have a nice big room of my own, double bed ( although they want to close this house down and move us to a new place closer to the other houses and where the curfew is ten, not eight like here, so not sure what status will be like then.) Big living area and patio, but two big rottweilers and their 3 pups are roaming the grounds and sometimes the house.It is difficult to stay healthy as the hygiene practices are appalling, but I will work on that!
 I have my net up and tuck in at night with all my wee gadgets; torch, clock, olbas oil, tissues..etc.. Have been sleeping well and now I am going to sleep because I am exhausted. 

Afric

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