A Week-In-The-Life of Kirsty: Volunteering in Haiti

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Kirsty left Canada in 2001 and has been traveling, working, and volunteering abroad ever since. Of the past two years, she has spent 11 months doing disaster relief work in Bangladesh, Haiti, and Indonesia. Please enjoy a week-in-the-life of Kirsty as she returns to Haiti to volunteer her time with Hands on Disaster Relief (HODR) in the aftermath of the recent earthquake.

This post was originally published in 2010. It has since been updated for accuracy of links and content. 

Monday

Departure Day! Monday was the day I was to start my journey to Haiti, although not until 9pm at night. I spent the weekend at a friend’s house in Queens and she was at work on Monday. This gave me the entire day to be a nerd and I decided to finally release my e-book called The Underground Guide to International Volunteering. It has been three months in the making and my goal was to get it out before I headed off to Haiti. Mission accomplished.

I released the e-book early on Monday morning and spent the rest of the day hitting refresh on my inbox like a psycho, hoping for sales with each click of my mouse. I did end up getting a load of comments on my blog, a few sales and a bunch of emails that kept me busy until I left my friend’s apartment for the airport at 5pm.

I arrived at La Guardia but wasn’t able to check in for my Spirit Air flight because I couldn’t show a return plan ticket. I bought a return journey separately, but with American Airlines so I had to carry my back-breaking bag (filled with snacks to save me from the rice and beans menu in Haiti) all around the airport in search of AA’s ticketing desk. Of course they didn’t have any record of my trip and of course La Guardia doesn’t have free wi-fi so I had to buy 24 hours worth of wi-fi just to get my airline booking code. Eventually it all got sorted out and I was allowed to check in but it was an annoying start to my journey.

To add to my airport frustrations, the flight was delayed by an hour and a half which wasn’t so bad considering my connecting flight wasn’t until 9am the next morning. The longer my delay, the less time I would have to sit in Fort Lauderdale. It turns out there wasn’t much open at the airport overnight and I sat on my computer soaking up the free wifi and watching movies.

Tuesday

At 9am, after a sleepless night in the airport I finally boarded my plane to Port-au-Prince. It was a surreal feeling to be returning to Haiti and it only really hit me that I was going back once I was actually on the plane. Once I cleared immigration and had to fight my way through giant crowds of people in a free-for-all grab for checked bags, I knew for sure that I was back in the wonderful chaos of Haiti.

With my backpack in hand, I fought my way out of the airport, found my ride and joined two other new volunteers on the trip to Leogane, the epicenter of the earthquake. I was able to see the damage first-hand. The streets of Port-au-Prince were as chaotic as always but the surrounding buildings weren’t where they should be. We drove past the Presidential Palace and it looked far worse in person than on the news reports. Tent cities were dotted all over the cities, some with shelters made only of sticks and bed sheets. It was a sad scene.

We arrived at the project base in Leogane just before the work crews were to go out for the afternoon. After a quick lunch of rice and beans and an orientation tour, we joined a rubble crew. The work itself is incredibly physical and the heat is oppressive but teams of around 10 or 15 people can get a lot done in a day. To complicate matters a bit, the houses are reinforced with rebar and pulling it out is time-consuming and frustrating. The idea is to whack the concrete until the rebar is free enough to be able to untwist the ties and then pull it out in one piece to be reused later. Salvaging as many useable materials for building a temporary structure is key and whole cinder blocks are saved and stacked.

After work I headed back to base, helped put the tools away, had a cold bucket shower behind a piece of tarp and chatted to people as I waited for the nightly 6pm meeting to start. These meetings are a major part of life as a volunteer and it’s where new people are introduced, leaving volunteers say their goodbyes, the work for the day is summarized and any announcements are made. They’re long and often boring but it’s a great way to get new volunteers immediately up to speed with what’s going on.

I know a lot of people through HODR projects and a bunch of them are here in Haiti. After the meeting we all headed to the bar next door to catch up. Some people I had seen recently in Indonesia, but others I hadn’t seen since the last project in Haiti a year earlier. It was a great night, I drank too much rum and I was happy to be back in Haiti.

Wednesday

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! The work day started bright and early at 7:30am but I woke up at about quarter to six in the morning. People here get up early and there was even someone jogging around the courtyard doing his morning exercise as I lay in bed wondering what time it was.

I joined the team of a friend from previous projects who works harder than anyone I have ever seen. His teams are tough but I was eager to get back into it and to get fit. I spent the morning pushing a wheelbarrow, sucking up dust, and getting my arms sunburned. It was great! I started the morning not knowing how to even approach the pile of rubble and twisted rebar that lay before us, but by the end of the morning, we were making some serious progress. It’s amazing what a motivated team of volunteers can accomplish.

At the end of the day I was exhausted but it was St. Patrick’s Day and I accompanied my Irish friend to celebrate with a big gang of volunteers. We have a 10pm curfew and there’s no drinking on the base so we finished up the last of our drinks and shuffled back home just in time. We had to be quiet at that point so the people who wanted to stay up to chat usually ended up on the roof, as far away from the tents as possible. There are a lot of cool people here and time spent on the roof is usually worth a few laughs.

Thursday

Today kicked my ass. We had to push really hard to get the site done by the end of the day and we all worked like crazy. Unfortunately, the need to rush coincided with a ridiculously hot day under the cloudless sky but we all sucked it up, busted our asses and got the job done. The house was a mangled pile of concrete and rebar supports when we started and, at the end, it was a clear foundation where the homeowner could start anew. The streets, on the other hand, were lined with rubble for a few hundred meters on each side of the road.

At lunch, I was so tired that I passed out in my dirty clothes onto my bed (a choice I regretted later when I was met with a dusty, dirty sleeping bag) straight after eating. After dinner and the 6pm meeting I wanted to pass out again but managed to stay up until 9pm, a time I deemed acceptable to go to sleep. After chatting to a friend who arrived that day and meeting a few new people, I conked out at 9pm as planned. It’s always a satisfying feeling when your body is sore and you can’t keep your eyes open any longer.

Friday

My attempt to sleep in until 6:45am failed, yet again. I should have come with a watch so I know how much longer I have to sleep because guessing wasn’t working for me. I was up before 6am and chatted with some familiar faces and some of the new arrivals over a peanut butter and jam sandwich. It rained all night and continued to rain all through breakfast but stopped as we started work. This was a relief to us, but having seen countless shelters made only of twigs and bed sheets, the rain is bad news for a lot of people and is something I hope I don’t see too often.

We headed out of town 15 minutes by tap tap (a modified pickup truck used in Haiti to get around) to a more rural area where people have been put into temporary camps. Some major NGOs have arranged to build houses here and we were clearing the damaged houses to help make this happen. The site today was damaged but the heavy, concrete roof was still in place which presented the problem of how to get it down. The task looked daunting at first but people were on the roof in no time, raining down with sledge hammers to knock the roof down from above. It was great to see the progress we made on a site that, at first, seemed like an impossible task. The people on my team were absolute machines with the sledges and it was another amazing day at work.

After the nightly meeting I headed to the kitchen where it was my turn to do the dishes with a team of two other volunteers. Doing dishes and housecleaning is part of the deal and we cleaned up for 100 people. My hands were more gross after dealing with that than they were after a day of moving rubble but it’s all part of life as a volunteer. I was in bed by nine reading my book and asleep soon after that. It’ll take awhile to get used to this regime of tough manual labour.

Saturday

I was curious to see what the plan was to bring the damaged house from the previous day to the ground, so I signed up for the same team. As it turned out, he didn’t really have a plan that went much beyond whacking the crap out of it with a sledgehammer. But his non-plan worked and we had another successful day at the office.

David Campbell, HODR’s Executive Director and the guy who started the organization back in 2005, was back with us in Haiti for a week. He gave a talk at our nightly meeting about all things HODR-related and about the Haiti project specifically. He’s a great speaker and listening to his vision for the project and the organization overall is always inspiring.

After a couple of drinks at the bar next door with about 30 volunteers and zero locals, I was craving an atmosphere that was a little more like actually being in Haiti. A couple friends and I hit the streets and we found a guy selling Prestige, the local Haitian beer, at the side of the road. We sat down next to what is probably a drainage ditch to chat and enjoy our drinks on a dark, dusty corner which is much more my style.

Sunday

Day off! Thank goodness. My body was sore and I was in need of a rest. A few trips to nearby beaches and mountains were organized but I decided to spend the day chilling out. I’ve seen Haitian beaches and mountains already and I’ll have plenty of Sundays to spare so a day spent catching up on work, doing laundry, and playing a bit of basketball was in store for me.

I didn’t accomplish the laundry task but I did participate in a brand new sport called ‘HODR Ball’. It was dreamed up after a few people were kicking a ball around and it got stuck up on a tarp we use for shade. To get it off, someone grabbed a long cardboard pole and knocked it down and an idea seemed to pop into his head.

Minutes later, four teams of two were lined up under each side of the square tarp. Each person had a pole and the idea was to poke the ball from underneath so it rolled off of the tarp. When it rolled off on your side, you lost a letter from the word ‘HODR’ and once all your letters were gone, you were out. Imagine eight people running around under a tarp with giant cardboard poles, attempting to poke at a ball above. In short, it’s ridiculous and really fun.

Exhausted from HODR ball and a week’s worth of shovelling, wheel barrowing, and sledge hammering, I collapsed into bed and was ready – and excited – for another week of hard work.

Kirsty has amassed her international volunteering experience into an excellent e-book called ‘The Underground Guide to International Volunteering‘ that she hopes will inspire other travelers to give their time as they travel the world. (As extra incentive, she is sharing 50% of her profits with Hands On Disaster Relief. You can read a review of her book here).

Kirsty is headed shortly for South Africa to watch the World Cup, and plans to see as much as Africa as she can over the following year. However as is the case with many travelers her plans are relatively open, and she will avail herself to do more disaster relief work if the occasion arises. You can follow her travels on her blog Nerdy Nomad.

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