As to how things are now compared to about a year ago, it would certainly depend on where you were standing. Some places, while many empty lots remain, much of the rubble has been cleared. Other places, Port-au-Prince in particular, they say only about 5% of the rubble has been cleared. In some places there are bodies yet to be recovered. There are more foreigners than ever here. Organizations from Switzerland, France, Columbia, Germany, Italy, Spain, South Korea, USA, Canada, just to name a few dot the countryside with various projects. Some help has been useful, some, not so much. Some organizations have already packed it in and gone home. Most of these orgs are not coordinated together for various reasons. One reason is that they have different ideas on how to fix things. Another is the basic and fundamental lack of a Haitian government infrastructure. Different towns are at different stages, and nobody has much going on in the way of permanent rebuilding going on yet. People are getting various types of help, but I do not see anything that resembles a new and better built Haiti rising up from the rubble at this point. It may happen down the road, but most of what we see being done at this point is labeled “temporary”. One fear that I had before, that is now being realized, is that too much help would get dumped into PAP, the capital, and draw many people who had left, back to the massively overcrowded cesspool of humanity. One hope after the earthquake and so much destruction in PAP was that maybe a decentralizing process would begin. Development outside of the capital. More roads, schools, hospitals, electricity, etc. But this has not been the emphasis yet, and there are reportedly more people living in the capital now than there were before the earthquake. Of close to 300,000 people that perished in the quake, I would guess at the very least, 230,000 were in PAP. Also there were estimates of that many more fleeing out of the capital to find refuge with relatives in the countryside and in areas not ravaged by the quake. Then came the “help”, some well planned and organized, much not so well planned. So much AID was dumped into PAP, and little by comparison was getting out to the other towns, like ours, that was also rocked in the quake, before long people began pouring back into the capital. Haiti was desperately poor before the quake and anytime you start handing out tents, food, medicine, etc., it will draw people in. Ironically, many have worked in slums to try to reduce the suffering and by that, the slum population grows because people in the mountains are nearly totally neglected. It’s a complex problem and I don’t have all the answers by any stretch, but one thing for sure is that there must be much, much, much more development outside of the capital. Ironically as well, because so much help has been given there, and so many people have flooded in from all over the country, the work gets overburdened and bogged down. There is much notably less progress in PAP than in most of the smaller towns. Our town, Petit Goave, has come a long way in clearing the rubble. Temporary homes of all shapes, colors, and sizes are everywhere. Many of our tent cities are gone now. We, Missionary Ventures, have mostly been involved in building and rebuilding permanent housing. We have several churches and a couple of schools that we are building, mostly via Haitian labor, and thus creating jobs in communities. We are still doing a lot of food distribution, and we are trying to pour more resources out in the mountains and villages that have for so long lived under a rock. Many people are at least thankful to be alive after what seemed like the end of the world. Many feel that the Lord has left them here for a reason. There is a sort of sense of destiny. So much of the destruction is still present with us, the rubble, the missing buildings and landmarks, etc, that though a year has gone by, we are still stuck on Jan 12. So, in a nutshell, what has happened in a year, everything. Some people are more miserable and destitute than ever. Some have found jobs working with NGOs. Some are hopeful. Many are just waiting to see what will happen next. Overall, as a country, the rebuilding has not begun. Before that must come the clean up and the clean up has only barely begun.
Take care and God bless……Ed Lockett
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