Sophia Lafontant is Oxfam America’s lead Haiti organizer, working on policy and advocacy issues with the Haitian diaspora. In her first post about Haiti—hours after the earthquake—she recounted her profound worry as she tried desperately to learn the fate of family members still living in the country.

Before my 25^th birthday, I hadn’t been to Haiti since I was a girl in the 1980s. My parents were among the second wave of Haitians that left the country in the decade prior and once the Duvalier regime fell there was enough uncertainty that Haiti became an all but distant memory for them. But I held on to my fond and vivid memories of growing up in my grandmother’s house on Avenue Christophe, in the heart of Port-au-Prince, a few blocks away from the famous Olfoson Hotel which counted Jackie Kennedy Onassis and Mick Jagger as some of its famed international guests during its heyday.

While I lived in Boston, MA, I always had a foot in Haiti. Like most children of the diaspora, I felt the need to embrace both places. In the summer of 2007, I embarked on my first trip back to Haiti: it had been on my mind and it was time to return to the place I now scarcely remembered. I will never forget the blast of heat that rushed over me when we touched down; it was like someone was holding a blow dryer to my face.

It’s difficult to explain why, but Haiti instantly felt like home. The familiar foods, music, language filled with allusions and metaphors, the stream of relatives and family friends that trickle in throughout the day to greet and welcome me; the constant color everywhere—on tap taps, sides of buildings, street art and of course the brightly painted houses. It all beckoned me–with so much beauty it’s hard not to smile still.

A friend once asked me what makes Haiti so different from other Caribbean countries. I paused to think about what answer I would give. My response was “the struggle.” The long struggle. Haiti has had more than its share of pain and tragedy. Whether it’s the subjugation and indignation of slavery, 32 coups in its history, harsh and crippling international sanctions and policies, and tense relations with its neighbor, the Dominican Republic, and seemingly endless battles with mother nature, Haitians miraculously dig deep to find an inner strength that escapes most of us. And it is that spirit and determination to make a way out of no way that I find beautiful and admire so much.

It’s been two years since the devastating earthquake. Despite the inactions or action of those in power, Haitians will continue to pull money together to pay their children’s school fees, continue to ensure that their uniforms are pressed and clean, and continue to hope that tomorrow is better than today. It is that seemingly bottomless well of hope that keeps me at my computer late into the evening some nights. It’s what keeps me on conference calls with allies and cranking out organizing plans. All minuscule in the grand scheme of things, and none of which can be credited with saving lives or adding to the meager incomes of the millions of Haitians that live on two bucks a day.

Still, it’s the very least I can do for a nation that has given me so much—so much laughter, color, and so much love.

If you’ve been following the news, you know things in Haiti have been sounding pretty grim of late. Between the stories of the cholera epidemic affecting nearly 20,000 people, and issues of voting irregularities during the recent presidential elections, it can seem like the situation hasn’t improved much since the devastating earthquake that struck the capital last January. When two of my colleagues left for Haiti earlier this week to capture people’s perspectives on the one-year anniversary of the quake, I couldn’t help but worry about what they might find.

But if you look closely, there’s also been a trickle of good news mixed in with the bad. Recently, The New York Times published “Can Microlending Save Haiti?” , a look at how microloans are helping small businesses get back on their feet. While the story noted, rightly, that microlending isn’t a perfect solution, it did capture the resilience of Haitian business owners, many of whom have rebuilt in the face of overwhelming losses.

“I want to make my own money and care for my family,” entrepreneur Marie Ange Joute told The Times about her business selling eggs and heating oil from her house. “I want to provide for us if something goes bad. I know how to work.”

Many of Oxfam’s programs in Haiti are designed around people’s determination to get working again.

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The relief that Oxfam staffers felt after Hurricane Tomas doused Haiti earlier this month was short-lived. They knew it would be, says Julie Schindall, an Oxfam press officer based in Haiti.

Though the storm caused limited physical damage, the rain it dumped has created the perfect conditions for another frightening problem: the spread of cholera, a deadly waterborne disease.

“Our staff knew, after decades of working in cholera epidemics around the world, that we hadn’t actually escaped a disaster after the storm,” writes Schindall in a piece posted with Channel 4 News. “As the floodwaters receded, the cholera outbreak that started in central Haiti in late October began its vicious spread.” Read the rest of this entry »

Hurricane Tomas dumped plenty of rain on the displaced residents of Haiti’s capital over the weekend where countless families continue to live in tents and under tarps in crowded camps scattered across the city. They’ve been there since the January 12 earthquake destroyed their homes. As Tomas churned toward Port-au-Prince, fear of another catastrophe ran high.

But after the storm, Oxfam aid workers reported that damage was minimal to the water and sanitation facilities in the camps where we work—a huge relief (you could hear it in the tone of their messages) since access to clean water and sanitation services is essential in helping to ensure the health of people in the camps.

And there’s no doubt that the preparedness work Oxfam did in advance—including digging drainage ditches, clearing canals, and securing water tanks and latrines—helped keep these critical systems intact.

But there’s lots more work ahead: a cholera epidemic has hit the rice-growing region north of capital. According to the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the Haitian government is now reporting that more than 8,000 people have been hospitalized with the virulent waterborne disease and more than 540 people have died from it. Oxfam is very concerned that all the rain Tomas dropped could exacerbate cholera’s spread.

In Artibonite province, where most of the hospitalizations have occurred, Oxfam has launched a major response to combat the outbreak. We have a team of about 25 staffers working in an area called Petite Riviere, with a population of around 100,000. We’ve been distributing water purification tablets and powder, soap, buckets, and oral rehydration salts to about 40,000 people. We’re also carrying out a massive education campaign on how to prevent the spread of the disease. Good hygiene and access to clean drinking water are key.

“QUELQUES PHOTOS” shouted the subject line of the email.

Someone’s excited, I thought, as my brain registered the caps but stalled at the French.

It was Yves Guillame Chancy, the technical manager of PROBINA , an Oxfam Quebec partner in Haiti, and when I opened his message and clicked on the attachments I saw why. High in the hills of Colora, a farming community several hours’ drive northwest of Port-au-Prince, construction of the small irrigation system Chancy had been overseeing was now finished and he had sent pictures to show me.

“The last time in Belladere you see the men at work—and today an idea of the finished work,” said Chancy in his short, but proud message. His enthusiasm was infectious. I grinned. Watch the work here.

Down below, water would be snaking through more than 60 acres of fields bringing the promise of abundant crops to about 150 farmers. And instead of just one harvest a year, some farmers said they would be able to coax three from their fields now that they’ll have a reliable source of water.

“It means my family will have more food and a harvest to sell and our kids will go to school,” said Laventure Benad. In Haiti, where nearly 8o percent of the country’s 9.6 million people live on less than $2 a day and 38 percent of them over the age of 15 are illiterate, the new reality Benad hopes for is no small feat. And it’s the kind of step forward that will be essential to replicate if Haiti is to recover from the devastation left in the wake of January 12 earthquake. Read the rest of this entry »

Dealing with household waste in the camps for people left homeless by the earthquake that hit Haiti in January can be a big problem. Oxfam’s public health teams are working with locals on ways to manage it, including with children who are doing some creative recycling. Oxfam’s Jane Beesley, a photographer and story-gatherer, reports how in one camp, a young participant has taken that creativity to a whole new level.

Recently I gave a talk about Oxfam’s work in Haiti. It was the fourth or fifth I’ve done since returning to the UK. Among the many stories was one that seems to capture everyone’s attention—the story of Jeanot Dossus, a 15-year-old boy in Don Bosco camp. The public health tent there was filled with children absorbed in a variety of activities. In the middle of the tent sat Jeanot, totally focused on what he was doing. With meticulous care, he was folding strips of cardboard wrapped with pieces from empty crisp packets then weaving them into what is obviously a bag–a glorious green basket-weave bag. Read the rest of this entry »

A sea of tents, blue everywhere, greeted Sophia Lafontant when she arrived in Haiti a few weeks ago. The longing she had to see the two grandmothers there with whom she shares a close bond—“I wanted to hold them, to have conversations with them,” she said—had grown to an ache in the endless months since the January 12 earthquake ravaged the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Lafontant is a senior organizer and training specialist at Oxfam America where she works on the CHANGE Initiative, a student leadership and advocacy program. She also works with the Oxfam Action Corp, a program for community organizers. In August, Lafontant will become the lead organizer for Haiti based in Washington, D.C. And she’s worn other hats in the five years she’s been with the organization—but not the ones that would have allowed her swift entry into a disaster zone.

But she finally made it in June for a reunion with family members  that was both joyous and sobering.

“It rained every single day while I was in Haiti,” Lafontant said. “I could only imagine living in a tent under those circumstances.” Read the rest of this entry »

Hurricane season started on Tuesday—another mark in the grind of time for the people of Port-au-Prince. An estimated one and a half million of them in Haiti’s capital and its surrounds remain homeless since a January earthquake destroyed great swaths of their city. Sheets of plastic—seas of it stretched across rubble-strewn neighborhoods—are all that many families have for shelter as they face another cycle of uncertainty.

What new misery might Mother Nature have in store now?

It’s bad enough that each morning for nearly five months residents of Port-au-Prince have woken from sleep only to stumble back into the same nightmare: the camps—estimated to number more than 1,000 now—teeming with people, their din, their detritus. Twisted with muddy paths and smelling of latrines, these spontaneous camps are no substitute for home. But home they have become and, many fear, home they will continue to be for years ahead.

I was in Port-au-Prince about two weeks ago. It was my second visit there since the quake. And I marveled at the stamina of its residents, trapped by disaster day after day with little hope for escape—either physical or psychological. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, kids living at the Petionville Club in Port-au-Prince created paintings with reused materials–part of an Oxfam program that teaches kids in Haiti’s camps about health, hygiene, and recycling.

Once an exclusive golf course, the rolling hills of the Petionville Club now house thousands of families displaced by the January earthquake. Three professional artists, two of whom live in the camp, were given the challenge of coming up with ideas for recycling common trash items to make toys. Among their ideas were these paint pots, made from recycled plastic bottles:

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Oxfam America’s Coco McCabe is in Haiti this week, where she’s reporting on the latest from the rebuilding process in the wake of January’s devastating earthquake.

For a moment, it looked like the family of five might have to move again.

Their shelter—a blue cube made of plastic sheeting—stood on the muddy ground where a team of engineers from Oxfam and Allied Recovery International was now considering installing a pair of septic tanks for a new bank of latrines. The old ones at the back of the camp were slowly filling, and having flush toilets would be a welcome amenity for many who have had so few creature comforts since the earthquake destroyed much of Port-au-Prince.

“Hmmm,” said church supporter Magda Pierre Paul, a worried look on her face. She shot the Rev. Jean Jacques Frederick a questioning look. The discussion concerned Delmas 75, a camp of 165 tents across the street from Our Lady of Perpetual Help, a church that had collapsed into a heap of rubble.

Rev. Frederick studied the plans: two 1,600-gallon septic tanks, eight flush toilets—four for men, four for women—and a well to provide water to make the whole enterprise work smoothly. In the small camps that have cropped up across the city, where shelters stand almost on top of each other, space for essentials such as latrines and bathing stalls is at a premium. Any patch of empty earth is also a place a displaced family could pitch a tent, pitting the critical need for protecting public health against the equal imperative of shelter. And now, the engineers were asking for a call to be made in the camp his church had organized.

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