The Curse of the Lunch Meat

my computer is dead. the Internet, essentially non-existent (except when the UN is around and I can steal some) and the prognosis for access or limited access is not great. so I’m testing out this here app forthe iPhone…if this test works I will try a post with photos.

all-in-all, things have been good. we’re in the final stages of getting a project announcement ready for the world, we’ve secured a base (signing an agreement tomorrow) and are lining things up to bring in vols soon. i’ve been urban camping for the past 3-4 days in Leogane sourcing start up materials. The damage continues to astound me as I explore more of Leogane and an outlying community–Dabon. there is so much work to do and the clock is ticking with the rainy season coming followed closely by hurricane season.

am pumped to get things moving.
more soon.

Within PAP there exists an oasis of flush toilets, plentiful food, shower facilities and an absence of mangy dogs, street vendors and the general haitian populous. The island of abnormality that I’m referring to is the Minustah base located at the airport. This is where hundreds of NGO groups congregate to discuss the business of disaster response—a hub of coordination where multi-pocketed vests and fanny packs are the fashion of the day and ID cards hang around sunburned necks of pasty Europeans, fashionable Italians and dirty Americans. Everyone absorbed in frantic conversation, filing reports, searching for an internet connection or wandering with Satellite phones glued to their ears saying…”how bout now? Can you hear me? I can hear you?…hello? Wait there’s a plane taking off”

The base is also home to hundreds of troops from around the world: Niger, the Philippines, Yemen, Italy, Iraq, Canada, Japan, China, Sri Lanka, USA, Argentina, France, Peru, Uruguay…and on, and on, and on. The amount of firepower is no longer shocking. Guns seem to lay about for anyone to pose with; as long as you have an ID around your neck it seems as if anything goes.

I must stick out like a sore thumb as I fumble through hundreds of acronyms: OCHA, UNDP, CARE, UNDAC, CMOC, IOM, MSF, TSF, MINUSTAH, XYZPDQ, every effort made to try and act the part of a seasoned international relief worker but inevitably failing miserably. There’s a code that I haven’t quite deciphered yet and when someone reads the back of my shirt and quizzically asks: you’re a volunteer? What exactly are you doing here? And I tell them about Hands On, it’s as if I’m the one speaking the code—“so wait, you actually want unskilled people to come and work with you?” I find it kind of comical the way in which cold call introductions are made…add a little music, a little booze and some cheesy music and you could be at any bar:

Aid worker: So what do you do

Me: I work for a volunteer organization that provides a platform for volunteers to work in disaster affected communities.

Aid worker: Wow, how long have you been in country?

Me: about a week {insert more jargon}, so what is it that you specialize in…

wash, rinse, repeat. You exchange cards and if you find the services that the other provides advantageous, you woo them, if not you never speak to them again…

Outside of the base, the people of Haiti deal with living day-to-day in tents on the streets or in overcrowded makeshift tent camps in parks and squares. Imagine if Central Park or Golden Gate Park were filled with families living shoulder to shoulder, eating, cooking and shitting where they could because their homes are no longer inhabitable. The sights and smells of these camps are overwhelming and tough to comprehend, but the bottomline is…that’s life for a lot of people right now. For those who haven’t left the cities for outlying areas and aren’t living in the tent camps (and I use the term “tent” loosely), many have put pieces of rubble in the street in front of their destroyed homes that designates a living space. Driving through certain areas in PAP is hard to do.

We recently spent two days outside of PAP assessing towns that didn’t necessarily receive the attention PAP did, and am happy to say that some areas fared better than others. What surprised me was how the road fared; the shaking tore the road apart, causing unexpected drops or gaps, and the only warning you have prior to cracking an axel or blowing out a tire is a couple of palm fronds or a small boulder or two. The road to Jacmel takes you up through the mountains and at several points landslides either partially or completely blocked the road. There has been no heavy equipment on the road so cars and trucks drive over it. Driving over a landslide in the equivalent to a RAV-4 on the side of a mountain was one of the more “unique” driving experiences of my life, and yet people are riding on the tops of overcrowded buses doing this trip everyday. Thousands of pounds of mountain now covering the road to Jacmel and instead of getting equipment to remove it there are old men and young boys with shovels moving bit by bit. As a car passes they hold out their hands asking for a handout for the work their doing. The amount of work that remains on that road without the help of heavy equipment will takes several months if done by hand.

While all of the towns we visited: Jacmel, Petit Goave and Leogane sustained damage from the quake, Leogane was by far the one that looked as if it was absolutely decimated. While the other members of our Assessment team were meeting and greeting I went on a sourcing run with Jacob our interpreter to see if what sorts of things were available in what was left of Leogane. Street after street are pancaked buildings, I’ve since learned that having a reinforced concrete slab roof was seen as a status symbol in Haiti. Unfortunately, the construction techniques used on the walls couldn’t stand the force of the quake and many walls blew out and the slabs essentially pancaked down on top of everyone and everything underneath them. It’s a horrifying thought. This and other forms of building collapse and damage occurred in 85-95% of the buildings in Leogane. Walking around the city it looks as if a bomb went off…

Already Haiti has become a tertiary story as life moves on…but for the people in this country…the story of the earthquake will be a daily reality for the next 5-10 years. Digging out and rebuilding are only just beginning in many areas, there is a severe lack of heavy equipment and much of the focus is on immediate needs getting everyone safe, secure and sanitary.

Over the course of the next couple of days we will traveling back and forth between Leogane and PAP so access to the interwebs will be spotty at best but if you’re interested in getting more timely updates check out my twitter account: J_horan (original I know) or HODRops…both myself and Stefani (the international project director) will be sending out updates 140 characters at a time. and for more photos go to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hodrorg/sets/72157623145410261/

I’ll be brief as the amount that needs to be done is staggering. It’s amazing when you’re without computer access for a couple of days how far behind you can fall. I plan on writing a recap of our Assessment trip tonight and I’ll post it tomorrow or Friday.

Know that the amount of devastation outside PAP is tough to comprehend. We visited Leogane, a city about an 25miles (or an hours drive) from PAP and the earthquake essentially leveled the city. There is so much damage that it all blurs together–street after street of pancaked buildings, schools with walls missing and churches that lay in ruin…Leogane was the hardest hit in my view but all the areas we saw have needs that need to be addressed.

For now though, we work to figure out how/if a project can work given the scope of damage and lack of infrastructure.

Check back in a day or so and I hope to have some photos and a recap.

Thanks to everyone for their well wishes…

We made it! After 48 hours of travel much of  was spend fighting incapacitating leg cramps I am now in Port Au Prince (PAP).

the trip started with an airplane that wouldn’t start and was complimented by a flat tire courtesy of the impeccable road conditions in the DR. Followed by an uncertain entrance strategy (ie: we had no vehicle and 500lbs of stuff) to get to PAP…luckily we found a van in the boarder town of Jimani.

Upon arrival in PAP we found food, water and fuel available in markets. Commerce exists next to the rubble of pancaked buildings. While the devastation is real, wide spread and people have been forced to live in makeshift camps things seem calm and orderly. Transport however is insane. Gridlock. People like Anderson Cooper is so upset that aid isn’t getting out but that’s because the trucks carrying the supplies are stuck in the gridlock with everyone else. trips that take 15mins at night will take an hour + during the day…it’s a real logistical challenge that aid organizations are facing.

Over the next few days we plan on traveling to the coastal cities to assess the situations on the ground: Leogone, Petit Goave and Jacmel…these areas were heavily affected and fell outside the view of much of the news coverage.

that’s all for now…it’s hot here…and I sweat.

anywho…here is a photo of a golf cart towing our plane. a hilarious way to start this assessment: no photo…internet too slow.

more to come…as I got out Wireless network up and running…it’s funny that I did it considering I can barely operate a direct TV remote…

well tomorrow morning we’re off…so I’ve been packing and emailing and doing all the things I’ve been trying to do for the past couple of days but haven’t been successful doing.

anyway, wheels up (like the lingo?) tomorrow morning at 0700 with the goal being to land in Santo Domingo and travel overland by cramped minibus to Jamani where we’ll stay the night and then get back on the road to Port Au Prince (PAP) early Thursday morning.

we have a place to stay in PAP, our trusty translator and all around good guy jacob will be with us and we have a truck and driver…

…so…yeah. I’ve got some butterflies going on right now which are due in part to nervousness as well as excitement…no word on which one is winning out.

I will try and update this much in the same way I did my Assessment in American Samoa but I’m not sure whether or not the tubes have been fixed in Haiti. With that said, I will try to update as often as possible.

wish me luck…

I’m currently in Miami preparing to go to Port Au Prince and other affected city centers as part of an Assessment Team for Hands On Disaster Response (www.hodr.org). The goal of the assessment will be to ascertain whether or not the environment, as it exists on the ground is a place that we can safely run a volunteer project.

Stay tuned as I will try to update this with news on our progress. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous.

I’m going to Haiti as part of an Assessment Team for Hands On Disaster Response–I fly out of San Fran on Sunday and out of Miami on Monday. Between now and then I have a fairly large list of things I need to do, all of which seem to involve using my phone.

I never had an issue with Verizon Wireless and their service–I could get calls anywhere–it was amazing. Unfortunately, I switched to AT&T for work–I now loathe AT&T. AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Having to deal with customer service is bad enough, jumping through their automated hoops and having to over enunciate for the man with the handsome voice, who no matter how slow and precise you say each letter or number will apologize repeatedly for ‘not catching that’ until you want to scream. Then finally when you are connected with a human being and they either repeatedly tell you to hang up because they can’t hear you because your service sucks or the call is dropped outright…I almost threw my phone against the wall twice this morning.

rage is ugly. i have phone rage. all I want to do is make a phone call from my apartment…apparently San Francisco isn’t a big enough market for AT&T to really invest in adequate coverage.

more to come on the trip to Haiti…but not until I make some phone calls…it could be awhile.

I’m talking about snow here people.

that’s right, all the complaining about how it doesn’t feel like winter has finally paid off because the cold weather has arrived. If you haven’t been paying attention it’s been snowing in Tahoe…a lot, i’m talking like 3+ ft of snowing in Tahoe…and it’s that dry Colorado/UT powder. Not the greatest considering that there is essentially no base at a lot of the resorts but snow is snow and I am pumped.

Temp ˚F/Precip% EVENING Temperature ˚F

Greater Lake Tahoe Area – Weather at a Glance

Today

Tonight

Wed

Wed nt

Thu

Thu nt

Fri

Fri nt

Sat

I head back to Tahoe this weekend to see just how amazing it is…the first trip over Thanksgiving was fun…it was nice to get back on my snowboard…separated shoulder be damned, and by the looks of it snow will be on the menu–Sah-weet!

today I experienced something that I’ve had many a close call with but never had the unfortunate pleasure of experiencing first hand–today I got ‘doored.’ The urban dictionary defines it as:

Riding down Embarcardero (in the bicycle lane I would like to point out) at around 3:30 this afternoon I started to pass a line of cars waiting at a red light, there was quite a back log so I’m assuming that the light had been red for a bit so why this woman chose to wait as long as she did to illegally exit the drivers-side door is beyond me…but she did. The link below will take you to the scene of the accident (sorta)…where the white truck is parked is where it all went down:

View Larger Map

Re-enactment (with words):

Cruising down the bike lane (which you’ll notice is pretty narrow) when a door swings open about 10ft in front of me, with little time to react try to veer out of the way of the door–long story short I was unsuccessful. I was successful in clearing my bike of hitting the car but not my body. My shoulder slams into the door taking the brunt of the impact and sent me flying onto the right of way between the tree and green electrical box. Thankfully my helmet did it’s job and protected the ol noggin but my body got some road rash…total bummer brah!

Then as I get my barings this girl gets out of the car and is overly apologetic siting her reason for illegally exiting the car as “I’m running late for work.” I didn’t yell (much)…I tried to calmly state that her idea sucked and that she was an idiot but it was weak sauce because the shock and the sharp shooting pain in my shoulder required my attention.

But all was not lost…after the melee of on-lookers asking if I was alright had dissipated and the driver needing to move her car had got the panic stricken idiot back into her seat I noticed that she couldn’t close the door. I hit the door with so much force that I dented the car and broke the door so that it will require work being done…so they limped off with the woman clutching the door and I tried not to look like I was in too much pain.

So I spent the rest of the day icing it and trying not to move…waiting for my Physical Therapist friend to come tell me how bad it really was…good news: nothing is torn, nothing is broken but there is a pretty bad bruise…all-in-all a palatable result.

Conclusion: Riding bikes is awesome and I will continue to do so…hopefully this woman learned to look before doing something so stupid again–and she will do it again…because she’s an idiot. Also, helmets rock…and getting ‘doored’ blows.

–The End

Is there anything as cool as a scab or scar? I understand it’s a very 5 year old thing of me to say but one that I find true. I recently ate shit longboarding and my elbow absorbed most of the impact, as a result I have a sweet scab that has reminded me of what it was like growing up…

my legs growing up were always a mess…streaked with dried blood and scratched up from playing in the woods and the best part was that I was proud of it. For some reason the cuts and resulting scabs were some sort of validation that I was out kicking ass and taking names. It’s the same for my feet, gone are the days of feet so callused that blacktop in the heat of midday wasn’t a problem…It’s not that I’m getting fragile…no, far from it…my body is used to taking abuse, but it’s just weird that this new scab can be worn like medal of honor, something to be proudly displayed to the world declaring that I’m an idiot…or awesome…

I think I’m going to go with awesome…