Local Santa Barbara volunteer David Chapman recently spent a week in Haiti as part of the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Habitat for Humanity Work Project. It was an intense, moving, wonderful, hard-working week. Over the course of the next month we hope to share more stories and pictures with you as David shares his experiences in Haiti and the vast amount of rebuilding which still needs to take place. Below is a glimpse into David's first moments in Haiti, in his own words.
"The road
from the airport, through the outskirts of Part-au-Prince to our camp provides
a review of all the images of disaster that we have seen on television, in
newspapers, and in the brochures and letters which come to us urging financial
support for the recover and re-build effort. These sights, the temporary
shelters surrounding the city of Port-au-Prince,
are built on whatever kind of space was available – where buildings once stood,
where agriculture might have flourished.... any kind of space that people could
place scrapes of wood, tin, plastic sheeting and, sometimes after aid had arrived,
new tarps or canvas and perhaps plywood. And it has remained so since the
earliest response....
The road we
traveled was lined, often on both sides, with such camps that went on, one
after another, for as long as the eye can see. The materials occasionally
changed from tin, to canvas, to plywood, all possible combinations of the same and
repeated over and over and over. Many of the camps had parallel-running
drainage channels with some water and much waste- human and otherwise. In
places, we saw the distinct uniformity of a deliberated created tent village –
tents identical in color, size and organization into neat rows. On occasion, we
saw bright colored plywood structures (similar to those we would soon build)
which marked the present of a NGO (Non-Government Organizations).
Soon, I put
the camera away... there were simply the same images, mile after mile after
mile..........."
Additional reading: Carters dedicate 100 homes with joyous Haitian families
