Haiti After the Earthquake (56 page)

I am at a compound called New Missions talking to Boga, a Haitian man who says that he is in charge of regional NGO coordination. I think Boga might have something wrong with him. Who stands around in the middle of an earthquake saying they are coordinating, though it is clearly evident that in the ten days since the earthquake he has not coordinated a damn thing?

I introduce Boga to ten motorcycle taxi drivers—all of whom he already knows by name—and explain that they are here to run errands and transport medicines, messages, and people between the different hospitals. “If the doctors need anything, you send these guys.” Then, getting a little ahead of myself, I tell him that DART will help us coordinate. Boga is delighted. I introduce him to the driver of the van I hired the day before, put him in charge, and then head back to Port-au-Prince where I can report to DART and start working on pulling together the coordination effort.

On my way home, riding my 400 Suzuki, I calculate the tasks that have to be accomplished. I will begin by circulating a text message explaining that this is a coordination of aid efforts to best manage the resources and not duplicate efforts. I will explain that everyone should direct requests for airlifts to DART. DART will surely set up a switchboard where doctors, paramedics, and other aid workers can direct requests so that we don't inundate one another with e-mails. It's a no-brainer.

On the median that divides the road are makeshift tents of sticks and deteriorated plywood boards with bedsheets hung over them for cover. My phone starts buzzing. It's the director of MSF hospital in Léogâne, and he needs to evacuate someone. I call Joseph, who is with the DART guys. They make some calls and then Joseph tells me everything is taken care of. I feel good because things are happening. Taxis, evacuations. I'm helping.

When I get back to Port-au-Prince I text DART but get no response. In the morning, still no response. I head back to Léogâne.

The first thing I see when I get to the mission compound is our taxi van pulling out of the compound, headed for the X-ray machine. It is full of wounded and bandaged people. A leg wrapped in fresh white plaster sticks out a back window. The side door is open and I can see people sitting on one another's laps. Despite all the inertia and my ineffectiveness that first week, I now have something to contribute.

But who is going to pay for this? There's plenty of money. Wyclef Jean and Hollywood just collected sixty million dollars. The UN released some thirty-six million. The European Union gave an enormous sum. Obama released one hundred million. My friends and family have been calling, asking which organizations to send money to. All I need is $300 per day.

I go back on the road, back to the city, to find money. I pass an aid vehicle. No one but the driver is inside. A line of colorful buses and trucks comes down the highway, their roofs piled high with furniture. People are fleeing the city, leaving crumbled homes and dead family and friends behind. As I travel down the asphalt edge of an earthquake-cracked stretch of road, I see a piece of plywood propped in the middle of the road, scrawled with the words, “Help us. We are people too.” It occurs to me that the sixteen-mile stretch between Léogâne and Port-au-Prince, an area punctuated with collapsed buildings, has not a single field hospital. They're all in Léogâne.

All I need is $300 per day. That's less than the per diem for UN employees. Any one of the rescue workers is making twice that. It's just a matter of explaining the situation to the right person.

“No problem.” The guy is telling me on the phone.

Bingo!

“I am the country director,” he explains, “I will authorize three weeks' pay for the taxis.”

I was speaking to Randy Wortenson, the U.S. director of World Wide Village, an organization that is in the process of erecting one of the largest medical facilities in Léogâne. He's glad to help. “That's what we're here for.”

I explain to a group of the paramedics and doctors that I have talked to their head guy, Randy Wortensen, and that we have an okay for them to pay. “You don't have to take my word for it,” I tell them, “he'll be calling you.”

“Man, that's great,” A big muscular American guy named Shane shakes my hand. “This is exactly what we need,” Shane is saying, “We got guys coming out of here with busted femurs and they lay out there by the gate for days. No way home.”

Now aid workers and surgeons are asking if we can get other stuff, such as supplies and transport to the airport. Boga and Shane are already coordinating the taxis. A surgeon explains that he has a woman who he needs to evacuate because he doesn't have the equipment to operate. “She is going to lose her leg,” he tells me. Then he tells me about the supplies he needs and asks if I could talk to the DART guys about having the surgeon come down to look through what they have. Of course I can! The DART guys sent me over here. And this is important.

Shane and the surgeon walk us partway to the gate. One of them introduces me to the guards there: “He's going to be coming in and out.” The guards smile and nod. The three Haitian motorcycle taxi drivers who have been following us around stand at the gate beaming. The sense of mission is thick, and everyone knows their part.

Just then, one of the American aid workers runs up behind me. “Chris needs to talk to you.” I return to where I was not two minutes before, but something is different. The surgeons and Shane have scattered. A handsome thirtysomething doctor named Chris is telling me, “I misunderstood what you were saying. We don't need anything.”

“What?”

“Yeah, we have everything we need.”

“What about the taxis?”

“We have five vehicles.” He is taking the blood pressure of a Haitian man. “They are all out in the rural areas right now, scouring for patients.”

I don't have time to figure this out, not at the moment. “What about the surgeon and the surgical equipment he asked for?”

“I am in charge here,” Chris snaps, “not him.”

I leave. Dejected.

I've tried to find the money but I can't. I called and e-mailed Randy but he didn't respond. The Germans said, “We have no money.” The Canadians told me, “We pay for our own taxis.” DART at USAID never responded to my messages. I don't even know if they received the information I collected for them.

Now I am sitting with Joseph asking him what the hell I am going to do. Like many people in USAID, Joseph started in the Peace Corps. He set out to do compassionate, good things for people, but after thirty-two years he's been tempered by the reality of the bureaucracy and geopolitics. In recent years, an institutional division has come up between his bosses at the State Department and their confidence in USAID. USAID, of which DART is a part, has come under heavy fire. They've been blamed for undermining the Haitian economy, for failing to create effective development, and for failing to make NGOs accountable. Then, in the past year, before the earthquake, a switch in politics has left the USAID high command sitting in the cold, under a continuing resolution, meaning without money to do anything but keep things going. Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department has been rewriting our policy toward Haiti, with little input from the experts in the field.

“They're all managing up,” Joseph tells me. “Writing briefs for the bosses in Washington. No one has time to focus on the guys below them, the ones who are actually out here doing the work.” I've been hearing about USAID getting sidelined since we first became friends. Joseph's brow narrows. “The vultures are circling. They're picking our bones.”

We're two weeks after the earthquake, and every night is the same. More stories of ineptitude, failure, fear, aid-lock at the airport.

Joseph is one of the most seasoned officers in USAID, and he can't get money for taxis. USAID actually has a taxi service contract in place but we've been unable to access it.

“Look,” he stands up. “Here,” pulls his wallet out of his back pocket and starts counting off twenties until fifteen of them are on the table. “You understand my dilemma. I usually program millions of dollars, but I can't pay for two weeks of taxis.”

The next morning, I get to New Missions in Léogâne to pay off the taxis. I get off my bike. One of the motorcycle taxis pulls up next to me; the driver wants to collect his pay. A Cuban doctor comes out and starts hollering at him. She wants to know where the hell he has been, why he is shirking his job when they have patients here, dying, patients that need to be transported to the X-ray machine. They need medicine from MSF. I intercede. “No one is paying him.”

She stops and looks at me blankly, “Oh,” she says and walks off.

I go into the medical tent, and see an attractive young woman with a freshly bandaged stump at the end of her arm. They've just cut off her hand. She is sitting there, on the end of the bed, listening to the doctor's advice as if they just removed a mole. No tears, no hysteria. She nods and asks the medic a question in broken French.