A woman and child at a temporary camp in Port-au-Prince © José Manuel Moreno/Progressio

People and organisations are getting to grips with the crisis – but there is still much to do, and much uncertainty to cope with, writes Progressio development worker José Emperador from Port-au-Prince.

Meeting needs

The needs everywhere are still more or less the same. Water, food and tents.

Yesterday, some people from Leogane almost stormed one of our trucks because we were giving out food but there was not enough for everyone.

They [the Haitian group] came out on to the road and stopped our convoy, asking for food. One of the Haitian Jesuits spoke to them and calmed them down, but they were really angry and agitated.

There is still a huge need, but much has been achieved. So far, the Help Haiti group which we are part of has helped 52,523 people with food and water, and 900 with medical help (figures on 28 January).

And across the relief effort, the distribution system is getting better. The UN agencies are now working more centrally and the coordination between everyone in Port-au-Prince is improving.

We have changed our system now and are no longer distributing aid from our own “distribution centre”. We are taking our supplies to other hubs around the city that are then handing out supplies directly to people who need them.

Living in camps
 

There are lots of camps and people are living in poor conditions – but bit by bit a sense of “normality” is starting to return.

Now, you see children playing, the traffic is getting mad again (except people are not tearing about at 100km per hour like they used to), there’s a bit of activity at the La Saline market… A tiny bit of normality.

The International Organisation for Migration is gathering information about the camps where people are living so they can add it to other information they have gathered and create a sort of census of who is living where. We are helping, making suggestions about the types of questions they might include and offering information about the camps where we are working as well as volunteers to help with their surveys (these are mostly Haitian university students).

Crossing the border

Everyone here is asking us for work and how they can get to the Dominican Republic.

In terms of the Dominican-Haitian border, I don’t exactly know what is happening there. I do know that the sick and injured from Jimaní [a town in the Dominican Republic near the border] are being sent to Fond Parisien on the Haitian side of the border, where the Dominican public health service has set up a medical base.

The base is being run by a team of North Americans. There are lots of injured and sick people arriving there from the DR and from the medical ship which the Americans have moored near Port-au-Prince.

Yesterday I was in Jimaní – I go there every three days or so, along the road which joins the DR and Port-au-Prince. The movement of people towards the DR is not huge. It seems normal and the border crossing going from Haiti to the DR is not much more congested than it usually is.

What is congested is the crossing to Haiti from the Dominican side, because there are still a great many trucks on their way here bringing aid. And Gloria (from the Progressio Santo Domingo office) did visit another area on the DR/Haiti border two days ago, and it seems there are more refugees there than previously thought…

José Emperador is a Progressio development worker helping to coordinate the relief effort in Port-au-Prince.