Photo by Ani Chitemyan
Photo by Cecil LaguardiaWhile his parents are at work, Manyanda watches over his siblings Nema (8), Nziku (4) and Kulya (2).
Manyanda has been a World Vision sponsored child for three years and wants to become a driver someday. Limi is very thankful for her son's sponsorship saying it has allowed him to continue his schooling despite the family's difficulties.The wider community has also benefited from World Vision's assistance. The aid agency built a water pipeline to the village back in 2009.
Last time I flew into Haiti, I was reading Ernest Hemingway’s "The Old Man and the Sea". I finished it just as the plane hit the tarmac of the broken-down Port-au-Prince airport. As I closed the book, I looked up and realized why it had resonated. The protagonist and his struggles at sea reminded me of this fascinating and broken place I’d come to call home — a country where work happens, struggles continue, and yet “success” or any kind of respite seem so often out of reach.It’s now been two years since the largest earthquake to hit the country in 200 years shook the life out of Port-au-Prince, causing chaos, destruction, death, and leaving more people homeless than the wrecked city could cope with. Journalists have come and gone, and the visiting groups of beaming, t-shirted volunteers have become less and less frequent. The work of aid agencies, the private sector, and the government has continued, with varying levels of success amid swathes of challenges, for 24 long months, and will continue for as long as there is the will, funding, and available resources.
Sometimes I find it difficult to discuss progress in Haiti, especially with people at home in Australia. I’m always quizzed about reconstruction: What has been rebuilt? Shouldn’t more be rebuilt by now? For me, “rebuilding” is not the issue. You can’t rebuild the home of a family who never had one, or a school for a child who never had the opportunity to go.
The reality is that Port-au-Prince is a challenging city, and for so many, life remains harsh here.
This is what “progress” means to me. I regularly meet people who tell me their stories. I’ve sat with mothers who were helped to leave a camp and move into a safe apartment with their children via World Vision’s camp transitions program, who’ve told me I cannot possibly understand what it means to them to feel “dignified and beautiful” inside their new home — to not have to share everything they have with strangers, and to sleep in the middle of the day without feeling that they are putting themselves and their children at risk. Women who’ve told me that without World Vision’s psychosocial support, they likely would have taken their own lives. Children who religiously visited World Vision’s Child Friendly Spaces in camps because it was a place where they could “feel safe.”
The presidential palace may not be rebuilt by now, but burdens on some of Haiti’s most vulnerable have been reduced. Shelters, healthcare, water, education: When you work for an aid agency, these so easily become mere words, but what they have meant to so many, shared with me in honest and teary conversations in the sweltering heat, is difficult to describe.
Meg Sattler at a CFSI can’t claim to be an expert on the Haitian public. Of course, there is still anger and dejection here, and there should be. But I do know that Haitians are a people who can stand up and sing in a street that has fallen down around them.
Personally, I put great hope in children and youth — in young people who may indeed want to leave here and study in Miami, New York, or Montreal, but who then want to come back. Or in teenage girls I meet time and time again, who have fires burning inside of them and want to help this place — the place they call home.
I never feel that Haiti is a lost cause or a hopeless nation. It’s a country that fought for its independence at great sacrifice — and established a language and a rich and intriguing culture that never ceases to interest, amaze, or confuse me. In an odd and broken way, it’s beautiful.
Two years ago this week, too many lives were crushed by the very land that formed so much of their identity. To honor these people, Haiti doesn’t need to be “rebuilt” now to what it was. It needs to become the place it deserves to be — that it wasn’t, before the quake. A place where children all go to school, where healthcare isn’t a privilege, and where safe shelter for families is not the stuff of dreams. This is idealistic, probably naive, but it’s what keeps me here. It’s what I’ll be thinking about on the anniversary of that fateful day.
- Meg Sattler is a communications officer from World Vision Australia living in Haiti, documenting humanitarian work there for the past two years.
Destruction: When a 7.0 magnitude earthquake rattled Haiti's capital Port au Prince just before 5pm on the 12th of January 2010, the city was reduced to a pile of rubble in a matter of minutes. More than a million people were left homeless and an estimated 222,570 died. Before the dust settled, World Vision began the biggest single country humanitarian response in the organisation's history.
Providing food: In the days and months after the quake, World Vision helped feed more than 2.5 million people. This woman is grateful to receive a bag of dry food to sustain her family.
Water: Over the past two years World Vision has provided over 600 million liters of water to families in need. Over the past six months the organisation has phased out the delivery of water in favour of more sustainable solutions such as water catchments and digging boreholes.
Medical care: Danielle Archile lost her home in the quake however she was more concerned about having the means to care for 3-month old Amadou. She and her son were among the 54,000 people who received attention at World Vision's health clinics.
Smallest survivors: World Vision set up 20 health clinics specifically for babies and toddlers. If children were malnourished staff gave their parents a course of therapeutic food to bring them back to health. Parenting courses were also offered to educate about the best foods for young children and how to prevent sickness. 
Protecting kids: While physical damage was easy to see, emotional scars were not. World Vision provided young earthquake survivors with a safe place to continue their education, play and access psychosocial support.
Health and hygiene: The earthquake damaged Haiti's already poor water and sanitation infrastructure, with people living in close, unhygienic quarters.
Containing and preventing cholera: A cholera outbreak in October 2010 claimed thousands of lives and risked millions more. World Vision responded immediately, deploying medical teams and equipment to affected areas.
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New homes: Marceline Philibert and her daughter Sabin pose happily outside their new World Vision built home. The organisation has built 2,700 transitional shelters and provided secure housing for 14,000. Providing permanent housing solutions to hundreds of thousands of people still living in tents has been slow due to Haiti's land ownership complexities and disputes.
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Reuniting families: Many children were separated from their families during the earthquake and its immediate aftermath. These children were particularly vulnerable to trafficking and other forms of exploitation. For two years World Vision has worked with local agencies to find interim care for separated children, while endeavoring to find their families. World Vision successfully reunited 1,042 children with their families.
