There are roosters crowing and cows mooing. I wake up without an alarm at 6 am, as the sun starts to heat up my tent. After throwing on my shorts, I stumble downstairs, where I start with a cup of (weak) coffee. One side of our kitchen has an open side - sort of a buffet counter. On the counter, some early risers will have set out a big coffee maker with coffee, thermoses of hot water, boxes of corn flakes, canisters of oatmeal, big tins of powdered milk, plastic containers of sugar, a bag of little loaves of bread, a gallon of peanut butter, and several jars of jam. People wake up, wander over, load up on breakfast, then move to the dining area, which is a dozen plastic tables with steel folding chairs.
At around seven or 7:15, there is a bustle of activity, as people begin gathering to head to job sites. We send about 100 people out every day. There are typically 4 or 5 rubble crews, a team going to the Leogane Mayor’s office, one team building prefab emergency shelters, a team of ‘hospital runners’ assisting at the emergency/transitional hospital, a few people assisting with office work or data entry, and a group going to play with kids at an orphanage. Recently we’ve had two new teams. We just received a container with two new Bobcat tractors. A team takes two Bobcats out to selected rubble sites each day to move the big piles. Another new team just started building a school at a site 30 minutes west of Leogane.Rubble crews are 6 to 15 people, with a team leader. At 7:30, team members fill water bottles and gather in front of base to wait for transportation. HODR has four trucks-and-drivers on retainer. The trucks, called tap-taps, are the dominant means of getting around in Haiti. (“Tap-tap” because you climb in, sit on a hard bench in the back of the truck, and tap the window of the cab to say ‘go’ or ‘stop’.) When a truck arrives, the crew loads it up with tools – shovels, picks, sledgehammers, rebar cutters, bolt cutters – and 4 or 5 wheelbarrows. Then the work crew piles in the back – yes, that’s 15 people and 5 wheelbarrows in the back of a truck the size of a Toyota Tacoma. It’s a sight to see.
The tap-tap rolls out of the driveway, and drives to the rubble site. On the way, the locals stare, and the kids yell “Hey you!” When we arrive at rubble site, people pile out and unload the tools. The tap-tap returns to base.
Working on a rubble site –
HODR selects the sites the volunteers are going to clear based on several factors. An owner coming to the base and answering questions or filling out a form initiates the process. Then an assessment team will visit the site and make a determination about its suitability for the HODR team. A site will move up on the list if it is: near the base; the residence of a family with children; the residence of a family that has lost some members in the quake; and a family that has a reasonable likelihood of moving forward once the slab is cleared. A site moves down on the list if it is: dangerous – i.e. if the building next door is leaning over and ready to crumble; or is a demolition site (versus a rubble site) – that is, it would require skilled technicians to bring down a precarious and dangerously unstable structure
The site may look like a garbage pile – mounds of broken concrete block and plaster, twisted and rusting steel bar sticking up here and there, a mattress poking up on one side, and a pile of clothing over there under a broken slab of concrete. One thing we try to keep in mind is that this was someone’s home a short time ago. We are preparing to turn what remains of that family's home and belongings into a pile of trash. It's a tough thing, but we try to be sensitive to the family and to the neighborhood. Every now and then you are brought up short by unearthing a doll, or a pair of baby shoes. HODR is not, however, working on any sites that contain human remains. That is for other teams, other NGOs.
The team wheels up to the site with its wheelbarrows. There is one runner for each wheelbarrow. Barrows are deployed around the site, and the crew starts digging. The goal is to get down to the floor slab, so the family has a fresh start. They can return to their site from a tin shack in an IDP (internally displaced persons) camp. With a clear slab, the family can erect a tent or other temporary shelter, and begin to rebuild their lives, with the help of other NGOs. The grand plan is to get the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, of people out of IDP camps and back “home”.The crew breaks concrete with sledge hammers, and cuts rebar. They shovel 1 or 2 hundred pounds of broken concrete block, crushed concrete, and twisted rebar into the wheelbarrows. Then the runners wheel it out to the street and dump it in a big pile. One of the finer points of rubbling is to build a good ramp up the rubble pile – one that allows very heavy barrows to roll cleanly and easily, and dump along the top of the pile. The Canadian Army Corps of Engineers, or other NGOs that have heavy equipment, periodically pick up the piles of rubble along the road.
You may ask why we use sledgehammers and wheelbarrows, why do we not use heavy equipment to clear rubble from home sites. It’s simply because every tractor, every CAT, every jackhammer, every dump truck, every grader, every backhoe in Haiti – even all through Florida and up the Eastern Seaboard – is already at work. There is nothing available. As a little snapshot, in the past 3 months, the price of a wheelbarrow in Port au Prince has gone from 20 dollars up to seventy dollars US.
The job site is a beehive of activity. Wheelbarrows are rolling back and forth to the street. Guys – and gals – are standing on top of slabs of concrete, breaking the concrete away from reinforcing steel with sledges. After the concrete is broken out, somebody comes in and cuts the rebar away, and people with shovels load up the wheelbarrows. Often the owner of the house is working right along side the HODR volunteers. We also have a number of what we call Local Volunteers – people from Leogane who have offered to donate their time to help us. And there are always children. Some of the team leaders joke about the benefits of using child labor on a job site. However, the founder of HODR feels that allowing the children around is a very good thing. The interactions between Haitian children and international volunteers may produce some (granted, impossible to quantify) benefit for the future. It exposes the children to something new. It may make them curious about foreign countries. In addition, it lets them see a bunch of white people who talk funny working very hard to help their little neighborhood.
Mid-day, the tap-tap shows up at the job site for the return trip back to base. The crew loads everything back on the truck, because to leave tools is to lose them. We ride back to base for a hearty lunch of rice and beans and one tiny piece of meat per person and a few leaves of lettuce and one tomato slice per person. Yum. After lunch, there is a long break during the heat of the day. People catch up on email or nap or relax. Then at 1:30, the whole process starts again. Load the wheelbarrows and the team back in the tap-tap, and return to the rubble site. Since the temperature is often around 100 degrees F, and this is such hard work in full sun, there is a mandatory 15-minute water-and-rest break every hour after 45 minutes of work. Even with that, HODR has had frequent cases of dehydration, and occasional cases of heat exhaustion.
Eventually we clear enough rubble to get down to the slab near the front of the house, and begin to work our way toward the back. After a few days, the slab is clear. HODR moves on to the next site. And the family has the opportunity to begin reclaiming some rough outline of life they had before this unfathomable tragedy.
At 4:30 or 5 pm, the tap-tap comes back to the site to pick up the team. After returning to base, there is a little time to get cleaned up before dinner. Then it’s another delicious meal of rice and beans. Or perhaps tonight it’s spaghetti, with a delectable marinara sauce that comes out of plastic Heinz squeeze bottle. Mmmm!
At 6 pm every night (except Sunday), we have an all-hands meeting. The agenda is always the same. First, introductions of new people who have arrived today. Then reports from each of the teams, including rubble sites that have been finished, or special milestones at the Mayor’s office, or reports of new babies or other events at the hospital. Next, it’s an overview of work for the next day – a description of each of the teams going out tomorrow – so people can decide where they might like to work. After that, we have Meeting Notes, which are agenda items from the various HODR volunteers -- things such as: I lost my camera, Clean up after yourself, Was that an aftershock last night?, There is a trip to the beach on Sunday, etc. Then we have signups for chores -- washing dishes and cleaning the floors. Finally, there is an opportunity for people leaving the base tomorrow to say farewell.
After an hour or so, the music gears up at Joe’s. It’s a bar next door, owned by the same man who has rented us the casino building. He started the bar after HODR moved in, and he’s made a pretty good profit. Joe’s has been a great place to blow off steam, get to know the other volunteers, and sometimes mingle with people from other NGOs. Prestige beer is the drink of choice. Sometimes people buy little bottles of Bakara Rhum. A couple of days ago, the rain started falling hard about 8:30. The music was loud and good, so everyone moved out from under the roofs into the open court and started dancing with their beers in the warm rain. A very nice way to end a day of digging in rubble.
There is a 10 pm curfew at the base. Every night Joe shuts off the lights at 9:50. People finish drinks and wander (or stagger) back to the base, and slip in before the gate is locked at 10, and head off to bed.
