Haiti's long, long haul out of the bottleneck
They call it the bottleneck. The strangled connection (or is it disconnection?) between the world’s outpouring of support for Haiti, and the delivery of aid to the three million people on the ground here who need it.
On any previous disaster where generosity has failed to deliver, we have found people to blame. In Haiti, it is different. Technically, America is doing what America does: heavy lifting, boots on the ground, choppers in the air, heavy lift at the airport. Technically, many other countries have muscled in behind.
Haiti was already a UN administered entity – if not de jure, certainly de facto. And this was yet another of the world’s NGO-dominated economies.
Last night the full force of the problem came home to me when I interviewed Yolande Etienne, Oxfam’s manger of operations in Haiti. An able, resourceful woman, she has fulfilled this demanding and difficult role for 14 years.
She was doing so a week ago today, at 4.53pm, when her world fell apart. Her office survived. But when she went home to check what had happened, she found her mother – with whom she lived – dead, and her home completely flattened.
I didn’t know this as I probed her about the “bottleneck” in the aid crisis here. Tears welled in her eyes as she recounted coming into work to start Oxfam’s response to the enormity of what had happened to Haiti and then going home to “bury my Mum in the garden”.
What happened to Yolande Etienne is what has happened to Haiti. In 45 shattering seconds the world here has been blown apart. Every family, every aspect of infrastructure, every shop, every military unit, every thing, has been more than touched by it, it has been disabled by it.
So that there are no trucks, no buses, no means of going to work, if you are still alive, and often no work when you get there. The Americans send to a barracks for a Haitian army unit and find it destroyed and most of the men dead or missing.
Nothing exists completely here. Every aspect of life has its own bottleneck – be it loss, malfunction, or destruction.
And in the absence of holistic action, there is anger, despair, and activity from people so close to abject nothing, that to injure, or kill to live, is a small decision.
I cannot think of a human dislocation so total anywhere in the world. Many more people are bound to die, of injury, disease, starvation, before this thing is through.
Haiti will be a very, very long haul, and when she needs our help even more than she does now – to start again after this phase of “rescue and survival” – we shall have forgotten. Or shall we?
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There are 22 comments on this post
An excellent blog. All of the factors you highlight, commpunded by the earthquake mean that the next few weeks are going to bring more terrible stories of suffering for the people of Haiti.
I hope that the international community who, for the moment, are focusing on Haiti can cope with that and keep the focus and determination needed to help the most vulnerable people.
No, we surely will not forget?!?
But you’re right Jon- bet we do.
Uk so consumed by more important topics- price of petrol,drop in temperature, Celebrity Big Brother.
Haiti – you’re on your own.
So sorry
You are dead right – in a monts time it will be dead news – waht do u hear now about the Plight of People of Gaza – to mention just one – their situtation is desperate – yet forgootten by many – inc. that Obama charcter .
Just been on the ward doing supply, C4 news was on. I talked to a couple of rels next to the box saying do you know there are now 250.000 feared dead.
One women “I shouldn’t bother, why can’t the NHS supply more denture pots?
” then in a demanding manner re a very confused man “you are ignoring that man when he has asked to go to the toilet” He had been taken to the loo 3 times in the last 5 mins.
Her husband ” it’s not worth it , the Country doesn’t look after its own.
Then another “my mother asked the doctor 10 mins ago for Intravenous drugs to stop her being sick” I said never mind I will do it, so cannulated her and gave her an antiemetic . But I want a doctor not a nurse.
They all turned away and started talking about nail polish… do you wonder why we are frustrated and want to help somewhere we are needed.
Try working on the District, they’re even worse. The arrogant demands from some patients and their relatives leaves one wondering like you. The Nurse takes a huge amount of crap from patients on areas not even related to care. They are rude, arrogant, ungrateful, and the Nurse (who is actually better than the Doctor in many areas) is seen as an inconvenience by some. The amount of time wasters that attend Doctors appointment for little darlings with a pathetic ‘cold’ or some other trivial complaint beggars belief.
Those injured both physically & mentally in Haiti, are what nursing & care is all about.
£31 million raised in the UK so far. Let’s hope it gets there soon.
I know, I am a nurse practitioner in GP practice , have been a sister , staff nurse, manager, lecturer, work P/T on the district, can prescribe now from the whole BNF within my own professional scope and am treated like a cretin., by all and sundrie , including docs and nurses.
Might has well have worked all my life to fetch and bring cups of tea , without thanks.
Margaret, someone once said to me that ”all the darkness can’t put out the light of one small candle’.
A Nurse is the candle. Surrounded by the seemingly dark side of human nature but still, she goes on undeterred, for she is the light of life.
One small voice, like a needle in a Haystack, calling out for help, brings out the quality of a Nurse and, words of thanks are the reward that keep ‘her’ going.
Thanks for that, Jon. It’s so easy back here to get frustrated that things don’t seem to be happening as fast as they should. But of course, we can’t see the problems.
Some of the interviews, like the one with Yolande and Sarah Smith’s tonight are heart-breaking. And they are just two of thousands
We must be in this for the long haul. We’ve been in Iraq for years on a much less worthy mission.
Agree completely about the two interviews mentioned above. The dignity of the father interviewed by Sarah Smith was particularly humbling.
Understandably, faced with the immediate overwhelming situation, the blogs haven’t yet, I believe, mentioned Aristide, effectively overthrown in a US-backed coup. We’re told that Hilary Clinton and her entourage, whose arrival at the airport led to a delay in landing emergency supplies, were invited by the current Haitian leader. But surely the only leader with a popular mandate is the ousted Aristide?
Jon,
CNN are reporting that La Paz Hospital in Port au Price is operational. Video on their website posted today shows a team of Canadian doctors who’s field hospital is impounded in the airport have thrown their lot in behind the Cubans running La Paz Hospital. Scenes of calm efficiency, patients being treated, surgeries going on. Canadians don’t know when their equipment will be released but are happy to be gainfully employed treating Haitians.
Any chance you could follow up on this report? It looks like a good news story from Haiti – at last.
My total admiration, will always be those who help the less fortunate.
The bottleneck? Well that should have been averted a long time ago, well before this devastating natural disaster.
Haiti, being a country on the brink for many decades now, should have been at the top of agenda for rich countries. Instead, as I see it, Haiti has been forgotten as there is little, if any more money to be made there. France, Germany and the U.S.A., have had what they wanted from this tiny country.
A pre-quake survey put unemployment at 60% and then there is the living your daily life, on less than $1 a day.
The U.S. federal reserve bank must be abolished because it only works, for the so called “fortunate” and not in the interest of something called HUMANITY.
adzmundo CND
Sadly, I believe we will forget. The US will, as I suspect it is already doing, be driven by its desire not to see large numbers of people fleeing to its shores…hence the concern with security on the Island. Then it and we will want to see how our companies can benefit from the supposed rebuilding of Haiti. Until western governments are driven by forces more important than the material benefits of their commercial enterprises it will be so. Look to reform of our systems of government before we can be trusted to really deliver help elsewhere beyond the sticking plaster and the feel good headline.
Regrettably , of course we will forget and consign the disaster to history.It is easy to be pious,with words and even actions,giving towards help, but it is the likes of the aid agencies that will battle for months maybe years to help the Haitian population .The reporters will move on to fresh news , fresh disasters.Us bloggers will follow them.Unfortunately it is a fact of life, one rarely dedicates one to a particular topic for long
Sarah Smith and Jonathan Rugman are doing an excellent job in Haiti with their calm, controlled, humane coverage of the disaster. Why was it necessary then for Jon Snow to fly out with the expenditure of resources in getting him to Haiti and maintaining him there.
I think he needs to ask himself what value he adds beyond his colleagues’ expert reports.
The US Forces are only good for Destruction of Third World Countries with advanced technologies.
Why aren’t you reporting the work done by Third World countries in the Caribbean and Latin America despite the US Military.
Amy Goodman of Democracy Now in her report yesterday spoke about the valiant grassroots efforts of Haitians to look after their neighborhoods and injured despite the lack of help. She dismissed the US and UN claims of “Anarchy”, she said “I think we’re talking about Anarchy of the Government, but incredible Communal Strength of the Community.”
Good you picked up on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now reports.Naomi Klein’s reports on the US -Disaster Capitalism- is worth a read, and how the Heritage Foundation changed their statement on Haiti.
Bill Quigly and Randall Robinson interviews with Amy expose the historical background to the Haitian tragedy.
It’s a tale of the worst excesses in human greed and egoism, financial debt and exploitation.
Will Obama allow ousted Haitian President Aristide to return ?
My apologies for my first comment are due.
What I meant to say, was that Central Banks worldwide, must be abolished.
They produce their countries money but then lend it, with interest, to other financial institutions, hence the poor getting poorer and the the rich getting even RICHER..
I have just one other question.
Why do religious orders not pay tax?
Oh yes sorry, it’s because the money people innocently donate, believing from the depths of their spirits, will go to helping the less fortunate.
With all the money the catholic church has in its coffers, the present pope should have been in Haiti the day after the quake. My reason for him not going?
Haiti doesn’t generate enough money for the catholic church.
adzmundo CND
Tonight, your report mentioned the lack of morphine and pain killers for the victims of the earthquake ,We have hundreds of people in the west abusing the very drugs that would be of some use,release all the confiscated stuff held by police now.
Just thinking about the bottleneck effect . At present it is not forseeable to estimate the amount of people who will survive.,, even those who have been rescued risk the ongoing complications of disease , infection, deprivation, irrepairable psychological damage, increased poverty., many of the toddlers who were up for adoption have been rushed out of the country, those who will be left without parents will probably go the same way.
How many people of reproducable age in sufficient variation will be left to continue.?
At present it is too difficult to assess total healthy population. The land because of its instability is not an attractive prospect for non Haitians.
Perhaps you are right in this respect,
Would you offer your ‘care’ out there?
However your ‘instinct’ to want to ‘care’ is, the one major problem this world faces is, there are places along the San Andraous fault line that will result in many other deaths in the future. On top of this is, the ever increasing exponential population growth.
This world has far too many people.
I may be the first to seem very callous but,
the sooner we can adopt the Chinese policy of one child per family, the better!
I would improve exisitng life wherever it may be, my instinct to nurture and reverse pain will always be there whether it is my profession or not.
The world as you say is overpopulated , particularly in urban areas, but controls did not work for the Chinese (in their eyes).
Nature does have a way of controlling population , but looking at the way the civilised world has developed, its greed , selfishness, violence , I wonder why the innocent with trust and love seem to go under first..although we do know that answer.
The dead people I do not find distressing ., they are out of their misery. It is those who are alive and hold their arms out to be helped and there is no one there.
Countries are doing what they can, The USA above and beyond, what can John Snow do? Report the negatives!! Can he file a report on what we are doing to help and not just criticise? Troops have to be depoyed for aid to be distributed fairly. Come on John, we know its horrendous over there but the world and especially the USA are doing their best!