A difficult day kicking off ...

Haiti, Day IVX - 18 March 2010:

A challenging street clearing contract in the PaP neighborhood of Trugeau. A 0700 start became 0930, equipment broke & a dump manager wanted his "cut."

Business in Haiti is not unlike other places in the works. However, historically its government and other public officials are known to "misuse" their office and "misappropriate" public funds. I witnessed this today, as a manager of a government-run landfill (which would be a superfund site in the States) wanted money from us to use what was otherwise a free site! Needless to say our bi-lingual discussions were spirited and somewhat tense as a crowd gathered around us from the local squatter's camp at the dump. We won that round and a good project began.

A major difficulty is our expected continual discovery of human remains. Twice today became somber moments of reflection as we discovered that which once lived still trapped by rubble in the January 12 earthquake's death grip. With respect and deference, remains are recovered and processed by military Mortuary Affairs personnel or the volunteer non-governmental organization (NGO) White Helmets of Argentina. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Helmets Sadly, we have been told to expect more than 50,000 sets of human remains in rubble which will need be bagged and tagged. All of this in addition to the already estimated 250,000 dead.

http://www.kodakgallery.com/gallery/creativeapps/slideShow/Main.jsp?token=184757359308:2031150874 (cut and paste)

(CAUTION: Pictures contain human remains)