A Lot of Promises, No Concrete Results
Tue, Jan 19, 2010
Tuesday 19 January 2010:
The last 2 nights we have slept inside the TV room of the hotel across the street. There is a rain front coming over us since Saturday night, so we are lucky the hotel lets us use their space, but we are not able to stay there. They will need their space back soon.
Crossing the street to the hotel
Also up until Saturday there were still many aftershocks and then Sunday afternoon it was said, if your house was not damaged it was safe to go sleep inside. But then yesterday we still felt light shocks, and not all of our staff is comfortable to spend the night inside, even though the hotel is not damaged at all. Almost everybody in Jakmel is still sleeping in the streets.
Plan Parrinage has started to hand out small red Coleman tents. We have claimed the little piece of land across the street from us, that belongs to our landlord and have started to clean it up. We are planning to build a big secure tent there, as soon as we find the materials for it. That will then be our home for the time to come.
We have been all over for help, Minustah, WFP, Plan, UNICEF. So far without any concrete result, only a lot of promises that they will do there best to find a tent for us, or lots of pieces of plastic. Tameko Donatien from UNICEF told us he would do his best to help us, because this is a crisis, but he said normally UNICEF does not help orphanages. I did not know that.
To make life feel as normal as possible for our kids I had asked our school teacher to come back to work and continue school for our 3 girls that are home schooled. For the other 4 kids that are in kindergarten, their school is severely damaged so for them school is closed.
Pazapa, Martin’s school is standing on the front outside, but inside and the back is completely destroyed. Our dog Toutous is doing very well, actually our kids right now have even more affection for her, they are padding her all the time.
All our kids are in very good spirits, Youseline and Estania are playing beauty parlor with each others hair extensions, and lots of beads.
Who would guess by looking at this picture of these 2 beautiful girls that they are orphans, HIV+ and homeless 
They look soooo happy, don't they?
Yesterday I ran into a journalist for the Wall Street Journal, Christopher Rhoads, who took my interview and today I ran into another journalist, Jacques Guillon, of AFP Agence France Presse, and he also interviewed me and will write about us.
Our nurses are continuing helping some hurt people in our neighborhood, and of course “our” patient Wilson.
Digicel, the cell phone company has stopped giving free service to us, we have to buy the cards again, and now it is not so easy anymore to call international. Phone cards are hard to find.
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- Crossing the street to the hotel
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- Crossing the street to go to sleep in the hotel
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- Crossing the street to go to sleep in the hotel
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- Monday 18 January 2010, starting to claim our new land
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- Monday 18 January 2010, first day of our school after the quake
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- Monday 18 January 2010, first day of our school after the quake
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- Tuesday 19 January 2010, continuing the clean-up so that we can build a tent here
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- Our nurse Molene is taking care of our patient Wilson, changing the drip for him
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- Our nurse Molene is taking care of our patient Wilson, changing the drip for him
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- Youseline working on Estania’s hair in their “beauty parlor”
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- Youseline working on Estania’s hair in their “beauty parlor”
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- Who would guess by looking at this picture of these 2 beautiful girls that they are orphans, HIV+ and homeless ;-) They look soooo happy, don’t they?
Tags: abandoned, aftershocks, AIDS, children, coleman tents, Earthquake, education, Estania, Fund-raising, girls, Haiti, Kids, kindergarten, promises, rain, school teacher, shocks, tent, unicef, Youseline
The spirit of the children shall lift the adults! They are amazing!