Eye on Haiti and back to my focus on wellness matters!

Hello all,

The past week has been an incredible experience for me. Due to the tremendous amount of pain that I tend to internalize regarding disasters, I decided to remain detached from the Haiti tragedy so that I would not suffer from the inevitable post-traumatic stress syndrome. Wrong number -- not for long!

An article regarding comments made by a certain preacher regarding the Haitians got me out of detachment mode. Being the history buff that I am, I researched Haiti's history to have a better understanding of the endemic poverty of Haitians and this island nation that has suffered for so long. 

For the first time ever, I have a better understanding of Haiti -- the first independent black nation in the Western Hemisphere. A nation of mostly poor but proud people with a rich history based on a quest for freedom, liberty, equality and racial justice.

While watching the CNN news report on Haiti, I noticed that survivors had camped at a central park in Port-au-Prince which whatever little possessions they had left. People at the park appeared to be calm despite the trauma that they had just been through. I noticed a lot of youth roaming about aimlessly, and I could not help thinking that this was probably the calm before the storm! I also noticed the lack of sanitation facilities and this raised an alarm in my mind so I decided to get involved.

I contacted my Ecosanres Yahoo Discussion Group to determine the disaster relief procedures are in place in the event of disasters; and to find out the possibility of training Haitians to install Ecosan dry toilets. I was connected with Prof. Dr-Ing. Ralf Otterpohl, a professor of civil engineering and wastewater management expert at Technische Universität Hamburg-Harburg, Germany who immediately connected me with one of Engineers Without Borders students Andrew Larssen, who is based in Salt Lake City. Andrew contacted me immediately, connected me to Permaculture-Haiti -- a group that was put together to coordinate Permaculture's relief and restoration work. We got to work immediately to contact sanitation experts that could fly to Haiti to teach the Haitians to build and install dry toilets.

Andrew, Rodrigo Silvio -- a sanitation expert from Portugal -- and others left for Haiti last Saturday. We will keep track of their progress and developments through the Permaculture-Haiti website.