Sunday 4 July

Arrived here Thursday. From the air Haiti looks the idyllic island in the sun, like the Bahamas and Cuba as we flew over them. But as you get lower you can begin to see the enormous clusters of tents and shelters, and as the plane prepares to land the scale of the destruction and chaos in Port au Prince is staggering.

Getting out of the airport has similarities with Bombay 15 years ago!. Fortunately we're not working in PAP, but in Leogane about 20 miles away. The "shuttle" from the airport takes 2 hours to cover that. Leogane is (was) a town with a population the size of Swindon - 30,000 people died in the quake so it's now a bit smaller. 80% of the buildings have either collapsed or are totally unsafe. It's hard to imagine what it must have been like here immediately afterwards. 6 months on it's hard at first to see that there's much recovery in progress, although most people seem to have shelter of some sort. Just hope the hurricane season passes Haiti by this year.

The HODR base is a bit like a PGL camp complete with the smell but without the PGL refinements. Most of the 125 people here are strapping 20-30 year olds with a smattering of less strapping middle aged people of all sizes and a few of us wrinklies - the current oldest member is 71. 100 or so are volunteers with a few paid HODR staff and also some local non-resident volunteers. As well as the majority Americans, so far I've met some "awesome" people from Canada, Tazzy, Phillipines, Vietnam, Ireland (father and daughter), Scotland (father and son), 2 people from Oxford and one from Blandford.

Friday was straight into work. There is an impressive range of projects in progress but most of us are on "rubble", which generally means demolishing a collapsed building back to the original slab. The project I signed up to is a kindergarten which is trying to cope with 60 3 to 5 year olds in an area smaller than our garage and covered with a tarpaulin. Friday was the hardest days work I've ever done in my life, shovelling, pushing wheelbarrows, sledging concrete and cutting out reinforcing bar. But seeing the children there every time you stop keeps you going. I'm going to stick with this project until we finish it sometimes next week, then try something else.

Some of the other projects are:

- foundations and timber frame building for school no. 4
- digging trenches for a clean water supply (all clean water comes in by tanker or in bottles)
- teaching teachers how to deal with disasters and fallout (e.g spotting children's trauma symptoms)
- mapping the town (there were no good maps even before the quake) and marking where the 200 schools in the area were or should be. Then contacting the schools to try to find out what state they are and what is needed
- working with the hospital as runners, admin support, etc
- driving 2 bulldozers to help shift the rubble ( I fancy having a go at that)
- teaching English to the local volunteers and mentoring them so that they can apply for jobs
- organising after school clubs and play
- helping the mayor's office create some civic order and system

and more.

The amount of work reported at the end of day meeting is very impressive.