Travel Blog Posts
January 7th 2011
On 27th December the Director General of the mayor's office approached All Hands to help with a project for the city. The 1st anniversary of the earthquake in which 250,000 people died (in a country of only 6 million) is 12th January. Between the Cemetery in Leogane and the highway is a mass grave where 2000 people were buried in the weeks following the earthquake. The site is marked only with a peeling sign and a small cross. There is nothing else to distinguish the site from any other road verge. When I went to site buses were using it to drop off passengers and two people stopped to take a pee against the cemetery wall. Could we, the Mayor's office asked, do something to enclose the site and tidy it up before the 12th January? ... read more
January 3rd 2011
Happy new year! We had another long weekend, downing tools at lunchtime on Friday after a roasting hot week of hard labour. A group of us jumped in a taptap to head to Jacmel, a beach town on the south coast, for the weekend. As we crawled out of Leogane we bought lots of Haitian rum and bottles of Coke from street vendors to while away the hour long journey and as the taptap climbed into the mountains we were already well into the new years eve spirit............... Four hours (and a lot of rum) later we had jumped out to push the taptap twice, stopped to refill the radiator once, changed tyres twice and finally ground to a very definite halt half way down the mountain to Jacmel with a tyre blow out. Happily a ... read more
December 29th 2010
I've realised that almost all of our posts so far have been either about life at the All Hands base or the projects we do so I want to tell you about Leogane, the town we're staying in. Leogane is about 20km from the capital, Port-au-Prince, though that means a 3 hour drive because the road is so bad and congested. It's a pretty sizable town and it was at the epicentre of the earthquake. Other than the main highway and a few stretches of road the majority of the thoroughfares are massively potholed dirt tracks and whilst there are a few buildings still standing a lot of them have been condemned so most people live around the ruins in tents or shanty town shelters made of tarpaulins. Life is pretty much lived on the street ... read more
Have yourself a very Haitian Christmas
Published: December 26th 2010Central America Caribbean » Haiti
December 26th 2010
Well we may have travelled across the oceans but Christmas was still all about cooking. You can take the boy and girl out of Hackney but you can't keep 'em out of the kitchen! A 6am start (it's too hot to stay in your tent long after dawn) saw us making mincemeat for mince pies with Gilla and Kate much to the bemusement of all the Americans....."so it's a pie, for dessert, full of ground beef?". Then there was all the veg peeling, chicken seasoning, cookie making, stuffing preparing, salad slicing, frittatta mixing and cranberry sauce stirring to be done. There was quite a mean team of us in the very basic kitchen, whipped into shape by Max from Alabama (insert dodgy accent here). Everything went into the oven at midday so a few beers in ... read more
December 24th 2010
It isn't always easy to pitch offers of help successfully. Does someone want your help or not? Do they want what you have to offer or something else? Are you offering any help you can give or do you have your own agenda? Building a primary school, should you try and control the process to deliver what you believe you can, or should you involve the local community and thereby release some control? If you have a team of American builders who can erect a timber frame in a day should you do that or spend as long as it takes to train up locals to build it? And then there's the language barrier, and cultural barrier, and wealth differential and the fact that you're flying in and out of people's lives and communities. I spent ... read more
December 20th 2010
So on Sunday we made a christmas tree. It was our day off and it was raining so it seemed like a bit of creativity was in order. The base is newly bristling with the fruits of the 3 days last week that everyone was on lockdown which unleashed pent up creativity into building armchairs and sofas, a step up from lying on piles of lumber. It started off as a pile of cardboard but soon morphed via the comments and suggestions chipped in by everyone passing by. Soon the cardboard was long gone as a timber and wire and tube base was adorned with 8ft palm leaves cut off the trees on the track next door. Cayla lent us her machete and Helen cut quite a figure with it slung over her shoulder in its ... read more
December 19th 2010
Well you'll all have little sympathy as I understand that the UK has ground to a snowy halt again, but it's our first day off and it's raining hard. I think it may be our fault as we chose to do laundry thismorning. At least it's still warm though so not all bad. Having rubble cleared for our first day we spent Fri and Sat building a school. The slab had been poured and timber frame erected before we arrived so we joined teams fixing trusses, louvres, ventilation panelling and fitting tin roofing. It's a satisfyingly speedy process with a team of around 15 including a few of the local boys with whom Tom did some sterling tutoring in French. We'll be back on Monday to do more. Last night a load of us went down ... read more
December 16th 2010
We arrived safe and sound yesterday evening in time for a warm welcome from everyone at All Hands Volunteers. The drive from Port au Prince was fairly crazy, though after driving in Kathmandu a few years ago it was tame (no brushes with death at all....pah!). It was pretty harrowing seeing the utter destruction of the place. None of the press photographs we've all seen over the last year really prepared me for it. Tent cities are everywhere, semi-collapsed buildings line every street and rubble covers pretty much everything. Having said that everyone is just going about their lives with quite incredible stoicism and resourcefulness. Our tent is pitched up on the roof of the All Hands base with amazing views over Leogane to the mountains which we glimpsed at dawn thismorning. Luckily jetlag knocked us ... read more
December 13th 2010
All Hands Volunteers tell us that all is calm in Leogane and Port au Prince thismorning, and has been for the weekend so we're catching our flight tomorrow morning. Hoooooooray! We'll spend tomorrow night in New York with friends and will fly to Haiti first thing Wednesday morning. We'll be in touch to let you know we've arrived safe and sound as soon as we're able to. The election recount is scheduled to be done on Wednesday so you may hear things in the news about it. If there is any more unrest and we get stuck in Port au Prince All Hands have arranged for us to stay with another volunteer organisation based close to the airport. Helen & Tom x... read more
December 9th 2010
Hello there, We haven't even begun and we've already stopped....(is that possible?) Post-election rioting in Haiti means that they've closed the airport in Port au Prince and are warning that it's not safe to travel. Haitians believe that the election was rigged by the ruling party. Check out the situation as it was last night here: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6B70HJ20101208 We've rescheduled to fly out next Tuesday so we're crossing fingers that it all calms down by then. Very frustrating; we're really hoping we get there eventually. Tom & Helen... read more
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