Having spent the last year doing a house renovation, and one that’s involved a fair amount of demolition, I’m naturally intrigued by the conversations around the rebuilding of Haiti post-earthquake. We hear yesterday that they’ve begun to tear down the damaged buildings in Port-au-Prince, even though an official demolition plan is yet to be announced. [...]
How to evaluate volunteer opportunities in Haiti Excellent post that everyone should read before considering volunteering in Haiti (or any other developing nation, for that matter). Makes the important point that "by working for free volunteers undercut the local labor market. For the cost of a round trip plane ticket a local construction worker could [...]
Grand Rue in Port-au-Prince, Haiti is one of the city’s most disadvantaged neighbourhoods, but also home to a vibrant community of artists who create works of art out of the discarded materials they find in their environment. The area was host to the first Ghetto Biennale in December 2009. This video highlights the impact of [...]
We went into downtown Port-au-Prince again yesterday. We’d via Twitter that food was being distributed near the National Palace, followed by reports, from Carel Pedre and Karl Jean-Jeune, of UN security “spraying gas” and “throwing tear gas”. Examining the footage posted to YouTube by Carel Pedre back at headquarters (ie his apartment in Barcelona), my [...]
I noted in an earlier post that Haiti was among the countries that we at Global Voices have generally found it difficult to cover. Before the earthquake, citizen and social media activity inside Haiti was sporadic. Since January 12, however, we’ve published 24 fine articles focused directly on the citizen media activity taking place within [...]
Only managed to sort out reliable Internet access yesterday evening, so lots to catch up on. — We arrived in Port-au-Prince on Saturday afternoon, after a long but uneventful drive from Santo Domingo. As we approached Jimani, on the Dominican border, we began seeing probable evidence of the situation on the other third of the [...]
To supplement the tutoring I’m getting via the Byki iPhone app, I’ve been having Alice coach me in Haitian Creole, using some rather unconventional course materials. The only printed Creole resources I have on hand are copies of Kote ki pa gen doktè (the Creole version of the health education classic Where There Is No [...]
At my hotel in Miami, catching up on email and the latest news over coffee, trying to prepare mentally for the days ahead. I didn’t sleep well last night: overtiredness, strange bed, anxiety that I wouldn’t hear the alarm and oversleep and miss my flight to Santo Domingo, dreams that. Matt Abud from Internews, with [...]
January 21, 2010 6:00pm I’m finally on my way. I won’t make it to the Dominican Republic tonight as planned, but American Airlines will put me up in Miami and I’ll catch a flight in the morning that should get me into Santo Domingo by early afternoon. After the frenzy of the last several days [...]
If everything goes as planned, I’ll be heading to Haiti at the end of this week. I fly into Santo Domingo on Thursday, and will make my way overland to Port-au-Prince in the company of a couple of colleagues. And yes, I am going there on behalf of Global Voices (GV). I’ve read about Haiti, [...]
From: Carol Fipp cfipp@bellsouth.net UPDATE as of Sunday, Jan 17, 3:40 pm Eastern Time: We received 5 patients via a single chopper about an hour ago. We received 4 patients yesterday. We have a total of 9 patients. We are ready and capable to handle *100* injured people. We have a full-service hospital with two [...]
I could not live without lists. I make and keep them for all sorts of purposes: to-do lists, lists of items to take along on my travels (I keep three, separated by category), lists of talking points for presentations, fun lists, the occasional top [insert number] list. Umberto Eco, himself an inveterate list-maker, recently described lists [...]
Have spent most of today following the aftermath of yesterday’s 7.0 earthquake in Haiti. A few observations and links: – Many people there, concerned about the continuing aftershocks, will be sleeping outdoors tonight, some in public areas like the Place Jeremie. “We’ll sleep in the driveway,” tweeted Richard Morse, the hotelier and musician (he’s the [...]
My Flickr page has long been a far more accurate record of my life than this blog. This year Flickr was dominated by images of my ongoing house renovation, but from time to time I did manage to point my camera at scenes in which drying mortar wasn’t a central element. Here are a few [...]