Eric and I have not left Port au Prince yet. It is hard to walk away from the need. What I saw today reminds me of the news reels from the Second World War of a bombed out city. One building would be completely collapsed while the next one would look just fine. The amount of damage here is unbelievable. One estimate I heard states that 1000 trucks running 24 hours a day will need 2 years to clear downtown Port au Prince. I think that is optimistic. (It doesn't take into consideration that buildings that are completely collapsed are easier to deal with than buildings that have just partially fallen down.) 
The 'structures' teacher in me sees examples of failure in shear, in compression, and in tension. The father in me smells the decaying bodies of school children and teachers still buried under tonnes of concrete as we drive by a large school. Burned in my mind is the image of a young man squatting alone on top of a pile of rubble, head in hands.
This place could grind you into a pit of depression if there wasn't so much needing to be done. The choice I made is to glance into the darkness but to focus on the light. I spent most of the day in two tent camps--small by Port au Prince standards. The first has about 700 families and is currently being run by a capable 23-year-old young lady from the Dominican. The camp is just below the Red cross building and beside a church mission, both of which are heavily fenced, beautiful, and not doing anything to assist those within the camp on their doorstep. The second camp is being helped by Thor, a professor from UBC who specialized in Haitian studies. This camp has even worse conditions than the first and, thankfully, is smaller with only 103 families.
As I stood on a nearby roof with a non-functioning water tank on one side and a pigeon coop on the other, I surveyed the smaller camp and my mind screamed, "look ahead, look ahead!" This is the situation where I function best: problems that demand to be solved with little money and time. And what I see before me here is definitely a big problem! This will require more than one step and much of the solution is simply not within the capabilities of A Better World or any other small NGO. It would be easy to become overwhelmed and depressed, but there is just no time for that. Instead, we will identify those things that we can do well and make the solutions happen as cheap and fast as we can. Time is working against us; the rainy season is fast approaching, and these tent camps will be a breeding ground for disease and misery.
The tent camps were needed, and a permanent solution is needed as well, but in the meantime (LIKE RIGHT NOW!!!) a semi-permanent solution needs to be put into place. New houses cannot be built where the tents are pitched because they sit upon the city's parks and playing fields--any clear space, actually, public or private. So what can be done? I spent the afternoon in hardware stores and building supply stores, and I am working on an answer. Stay tuned...
P.S. If you are an administrator at UBC, you can help by telling your very useful and capable professor, Michael Burnham, that you will see to it that his classes will be covered and that you are going to keep paying him while he is down here. If you are not a UBC administrator but you know one, you can help best by sending them this blog.
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