The rainy season

As I write, it is raining, and has been for the last fifteen minutes -- absolutely pouring rain. The kind of rain that normally, we all might enjoy listening to as it pelts the tin roof above. Except that now, here in Port-au-Prince, such a downpour means a potentially wet night for the thousands who continue to sleep in make-shift tents or on the street.
Four weeks after Shenandoah's last trip to Haiti, there are already signs of change. The Saint-Fort family has started spending more time in their house, although they continue to sleep outside (in a Rotary Shelter Box tent) -- a sign that the post-earthquake anxiety has yet to go away. But there are obviously others who have now begun to sleep in their homes. This evening as we drove through Pacot, there was not a single tent set up in the middle of the road -- whereas a month ago, there would have been a dozen just in this neighborhood. Some roads are now passable, as the rubble has been cleared. And it seems that on every block, another store has re-opened -- sometimes inside, other times, out on the roadside.
We spent this morning in Deschappelles at the Hopital Albert Schweitzer. Again, their enterprise is impressive. The prosthetics lab is completely up and running, and in its first month, has served 140 people. Lee and Matt did an assessment of the hospital's energy needs, while Mark, Tracy, Dan, Rachel and Willio toured with the HAS director, Ian Rawson.
While we continue to be very security-conscious and are taking precautions (including a police officer with us at all times), all of us have noticed -- and the Haitians have been commenting on -- that the level of lawlessness or insecurity is considerably less than had been expected.
But if the security situation is better than anticipated, the communications and "plan" is clearly beginning to fall short of expectations. The widely-held perception among Haitians seems to be that everyday, the plan for what to do about transitional housing, where to put the internally-displaced, and how & when to re-build what changes. More than ever in Haiti, who you know in the government or NGO community is the only way to get substantial help: whether you want to have the rubble of your home cleared, a large tent to set up a temporary school, or permission to begin re-building.