Tales from Rohan

Lots of people have asked me what it is like here in Haiti and at my “post” at the University of Fondwa.

Where’s Fondwa?

Fondwa (Fonds d’Oie in French or “Goose Bottom” in English) is the 10th section of the commune of Leogane in the “Oueste” (West) department. The University main campus is in the mountain village of Tonmgato (Tombe Gâteau in French) on the road between Leogane and Jacmel at 18°22′15″N 72°34′59″W.

Where are you living?

I am in a house in Tomgato right on the main mountain road between Leogane and Jacmel. It is definitely cooler up here at 800m than on the coast. I am sharing a large room with 2 other volunteers (one from Iowa and one from Malaysia) and up to 3 Haitian professors at a time. While the house lacks water, electricity, and privacy, it has a great view (you can see the ocean when it isn’t too foggy).

What are you doing?

I am working at the University of Fondwa—Haiti’s only rural university. When I signed up I thought I would be giving computer classes, but the students don’t have more computer classes in their curriculum until 3rd year, and we only have 1st and 4th year students. Instead, I’ve been working on Internet access (which now works when we have power), arranging for a more reliable source of power, working on the University website, translating stuff to and from French and Creole, and trying to salvage some of the computers that were partially crushed when the university building collapsed on them. (The 34 students went back to class on May 5th in a temporary building with no doors or windows.)

How is the cleanup and recovery going in Haiti?

There is still a lot of rubble and a lot of crushed buildings. In Port-au-Prince, Leogane, Jacmel, and even in Tonmgato, there are still plenty of cement buildings that are sitting in the same position since Jan 12th.

The earthquake cut across rich and poor here. In some cases the more affluent Haitians lost a good deal more but in some cases the more affluent were lucky to build in locations with a lot of solid rock instead of foundation and some of them had the foresight to spend more to build well (they call it anti-seismic and anti-cyclonic here).

Multistory cement buildings built on sand did the worst. This covers a lot of the city center and port of Port-au-Prince, everything near the river in Jacmel, and most of Leogane. In Jacmel, there was a tsunami that took out a lot of houses near the river mouth. Amazingly while a lot of beautiful colonial buildings were badly damanged, many of the very oldest buildings are still standing because they are made of wood and used cross bracing. The construction problems in cement buildings here are numerous, for example scrimping on rebar and not pouring a deep enough foundation. A very common problem is not extending rebar far enough in lintels and using columns that can barely hold up the cement floor or roof above them. There are plenty of completely collapsed 3 story buildings that just look like 4 slabs, one on top of the next with no evidence that there was anything inside.

What is the international aid community doing and how well are they doing it?

The international aid community seems to be doing a good job providing medical care and water in the hardest hit cities and the UN is also improving some of the roads. After that it is really hard to tell. It looks like most people are living in their neighborhoods, staying in a partially damaged house (unsafe and scary) or sleeping in tents and other improvised shelters just outside their old house on the sidewalk or part in the street or on the roof. Some of the groups are working on rubble removal and while you see a lot of good work going on in that department, it is hard to imagine that rubble removal is going fast enough. There are still enormous mountains of rubble and thousands of buildings which need demolitions and rubble clearing. I heard that 5% of the rubble in PaP has been cleared.

In some places, international organizations are starting to build solid temporary housing that can withstand earthquakes and hurricanes. The UN and the largest international NGOs got together for a weekend and decided they should provide a smallish, two room, earthquake-safe and hurricane-safe house for folks who lost their homes. The idea is that everyone gets the same sized house whether rich or poor. Unfortunately there is not much consideration to site size, family size, or if the family is just going to try to add on in an unsafe way, undermining the whole goal in the first place. Much of this new construction uses materials (wood or prefab structurally integrated panels) which need to be imported, and building techniques which are not well understood in Haiti.

More about wood vs. cement

Wood housing has a long history in Haiti. Haiti suffered very large quakes in the early 1700s. After the second quake, the government banned buildings that weren’t made of wood citing earthquake safety concerns. If that ban was still in effect, it would have saved a lot of lives. Unfortunately the deforestation problem in Haiti would be even worse than it is now. Still in most villages there are plenty of traditional wood houses, or houses made with a wood frame filled in with stones (the technique is called columbrage) which also did pretty well in the quake.

Unfortunately, most people that can afford it want to show status and they do that by building in cement. Even many tombs here are built in cement to show status. While it is possible to build a cement house safely here, most people mix in the local limestone as filler and the resulting cement is very weak and practically crumbles at the touch. The worst thing is that many people are rebuilding the same house using exactly the same poor techniques and materials that caused their previous house to collapse.

How safe is it?

I think wandering around and taking public transportation during the day in Port-au-Prince, Leogane, Jacmel, and of course the area where I am living is safe. However at night, even locals seem to retreat to the relative safety of their neighborhoods. Driving adds an additional dimension. If you are driving a car, you are automatically more wealthy and are treated differently. While getting around on a motorcycle has distinct advantages here, it can start raining very hard, very suddenly here and the roads are steep, hilly, slick, and prone to mudslides. As with a lot of places, the most dangerous thing here is the traffic.

I heard Port-au-Prince was really dirty and chaotic. Is that true?

The extremes of good and bad in PaP are tremendous. The worst area of PaP that I’ve seen is a market area on the road toward Leogane. Apparently it was disgusting before the earthquake. Rivers of storm drain runoff and raw sewage, head-high mounds of trash with foraging pigs and goats, and long lines of trucks and tap-taps belching fumes and spraying dirty water mingle with people sitting on the ground selling charcoal, raw meat, and produce.

The Champ de Mars used to be a beautiful park and a place of pride for ordinary Haitians to escape the noise and chaos of downtown PaP. Now there is a massive tent city in the park. However, the streets immediately around the tents are clean and orderly, and there are toilets and clean water available. While the residents lost a lot of privacy and dignity, it is much tidier than some other parts of the city.

Tents facing the street sport small businesses of all kinds: cold drinks, books, food, shoe shining, hair cutting, etc. In general the rest of the city is likewise going about its business as best it can. People living in tents go to work and school dressed in freshly ironed business clothes and school uniforms. Small businesses operate where they can. I saw a barber shop with 6 stools working outside in the front courtyard of their condemned building. There is something wonderful about the spirit that keeps people going after such amazing loses.

Finally, the houses in the hills just south of PaP are enormous and luxurious. These houses usually have parking for several cars, an armed guard, multiple stories, servants’ quarters, cool breezes courtesy of the higher altitude, and multiple balconies looking out over the steep canyon. Most of these homes were built on harder rock with better materials and construction techniques, so they suffered less damage than average. Sadly, because of the shortage of affordable midrange housing, the NGOs are almost all driving around in their SUVs and living in these opulent homes, very much apart from the average Haitian they are supposed to be helping.