After one month since the earthquake struck, we find ourselves living in tents and still shaky from the ongoing powerful aftershocks. Even though there are no bathrooms or showers or a kitchen, there is a spirit of hope among the small band of Hands Together people who are working together to help the people in Delmas and Cite Soleil.

Fr. Tom views the cleared away rubble from the residence. 

Several weeks of demolition and cleanup work cleared away the rubble of our fallen headquarters and we can now begin construction of a new residence and volunteer center. Our temporary operations base is crowded with vehicles, equipment and supplies. But there is a lot of activity as we prepare food and hygiene kits, send our water truck to several sites per day, run two mobile clinics each day, and work to reopen our school campuses. By March 15 we hope to open some of our schools provide a much needed structure and a daily meal for the children and the elderly.

The people are still very much afraid to live in buildings, so you will find them all over living in tent cities, using cardboard, sheets, tin and whatever they can to build some shelter. These areas are so crowded that people are practicing “peel sou peel” – a Haitian term describing many people sleeping with limbs intertwined. Fr. Tom and I visited several of these areas and could hardly breathe because of the stench of human waste and garbage. It rained for the first time since the major quake on February 13 – signaling the beginning of Haiti’s rainy season where it can downpour every night for weeks.  We need to work feverishly to create better shelter and sanitation before the heavy rains come.

• Base camp: Crowded with tents, vehicles, storage conatiners

The January 30^th structural assessment report conducted by the Army provided us with the foundation for our school rebuilding plan. Four school buildings need demolishing and the remaining ones need serious repair and reinforcement. The school rebuilding will take many months and during reconstruction we will use temporary classrooms and provide as much education as possible. Whenever we can, we will employ the parents and community members to provide some much needed income. The biggest obstacle to all of this is the instability created after the Port-au-Prince prison collapsed and many of 4,000 escaped inmates returned to their Cite Soleil homes. Fighting between different neighborhoods has started up again and some of the escapees have made threats to our staff.

Tent city: all open areas in PAP are filled with crowded tents and makshift shelters

 What we need most right now is hope and perseverance. St. Francis de Sales tells us that “Hope is the opposite of fear.” He counsels us to “serve God well today; God will provide for tomorrow. Each day has its own burden to bear; do not worry about tomorrow, for the same God who reigns today will reign tomorrow. And if in God’s goodness he had thought, or even known, that you needed more assistance than was readily available, he would have given it to you.”

Below is a list of accomplishments and ongoing outreach activities.

Initial and Ongoing Activities – as of February 20, 2010

Here is the current summary of our initial response and our ongoing outreach: