Sharon Truelove's blog

20/10/2008

So that’s it, it’s over, finished, done… well for me anyway. Life still continues on for those most affected by Hurricane Ike and they don’t just get to fly away.

It’s been a ‘good-un’ though, as they say where I’m from. Really felt we’ve had an impact and the TCI newspapers are now full of all the hard work the Red Cross volunteers have been doing. Which was one of the reasons I was here. I’ve had photos on the front page and articles in all the main newspapers every week as well as a two-page spread yesterday. Quite a buzz to see yourself in print… can’t wait to show the kids.

Normally I get to walk/fly away from these sorts of jobs full of regret for what more we could have done, but for once, I actually think the needs assessment was better than anyone could have hoped for. Considering we only had ten days on Grand Turk, we actually managed to really get to the bottom of a whole heap of complex problems, some of them even the local officials didn’t really know about.

In the last few days, Linda, the new director of the TCI Red Cross branch and I have had meeting after meeting with civil servants, permanent secretaries and even the governor to help inform them all about the increasingly difficult situation for the families living without adequate shelter in Grand Turk. It’s been a really useful few days and we are really hopeful that we may now have the government approval that we need to go ahead with a cash-for-work programme.

The cash, if the programme is agreed, will help support people as they rebuild their structures. The Red Cross is also hoping to get government approval to support people with cash-for-work to construct much needed sanitation. Other possible activities are still at the discussion stage. It’s just the first step, but it could make all the difference to those struggling to get by.

And for once I feel really good about what I’ve been able to contribute. Really unfurled the wings and totally ready to fly…

12/10/2008

Better than hell?

Winds picking up again. Always does in the evening, and even though I’m staying in one of the best-built houses in town, you can still hear the metal roof creaking around and the howl as it screams through the battered windows. Some nights I stand out on the balcony and look out over the sea. I never saw a sea that made me think so much of the fear and determination of people to get to a land where they hope life will be better for them. I’ve seen the types of boats that Haitians and Dominicans (imagine…my parents went there for a swish all-in holiday!) risk there lives in, to travel here, and its hard to look out and not fear that there is one out there now battling its way through the winds to get here. I find myself thinking about how many go down.

I managed to do a community needs assessment workshop with the Haitians from the two Baptist churches, helped by their two amazing pastors. One works up at the airport, the other just lost the entirety of the second floor concrete apartment he lived in at the back of his roofless church.

The workshop was tough, half French, half Creole, but mostly because everybody, just everybody had so much to say, so many needs, and all the potential answers to their problems have so many problems and complications attached. This was topped off by the lack of electricity, so we were working in the darkness by the end.

It seems most people are just scraping by, but the ones who aren’t are those who can’t get out to work. The hurricane has created a few extra jobs clearing up the debris, but it has also shut down businesses and destroyed the houses that these Haitians used to work in. Now the pay from the initial clean up efforts is dying down, people are beginning to notice they have less money in their pockets to buy water, food and other essentials like nappies, let alone tarpaulins to keep the semi-derelict shack they rent a little dryer.

It’s the elderly I most worry about. One elderly lady used to run a small shop till her house blew away and the roof of the shop vanished. She’s too old to fix it herself, and now she’s lost her stock she’s nothing to sell to make a living to buy the wood and corrugated iron to fix it.

Another tiny little old dear is sleeping on the floor of a tent provided by Shelterbox and Rotary, but you could see from the tiredness in her face that she wasn’t getting much real rest… another lady took the chance to have a lie down on the church chairs for a sleep. And who can blame her, she’s sharing a room with so many people I think they take turns…kind of relay sleeping. Makes you wonder whether they regret risking those boats to get over here! If this is better…that must be hell.

11/10/2008

Don’t worry… be happy.

A cruise ship was back in Grand Turk today, which offered the tourists a chance to whiz around the island on some bizarre moon buggies checking out the boats up hillsides, half houses and tilted phone boxes. But at least it’s a ray of some hope that they may keep on returning and boosting the economy with employment and dollar bills.

Can’t admit to having enjoyed the experience very much myself, but I did take the chance on the way home from the Disaster Management Emergency Operations Centre to get out the Land Rover to take a photo of the biggest moving hotel I have ever seen by a long shot, framed by the bent and twisted roofs of what used to be some of the government offices.

There is a huge pool with amazing looking water slide on the top of the boat, which looked a tonne of fun, but I had to groan when I heard the music playing…”Don’t Worry…be happy.” I couldn’t help thinking that was probably more for the islanders benefit, but I’m damned if I can stop singing the bloody thing now!

10/10/2008

Stig of the dump

What a crazy old day this has turned out to be! Only been on Grand Turk (the island most badly affected by last months twin hurricanes) for three days, and already the clean-up operation is really making a difference, but the more I look closely, the more the worrying signs are evident that really our job here is still not done, and the relief team left yesterday!

Been looking through the potential options of what kind of ongoing recovery work British Red Cross could get involved in here, if we manage to raise enough funds. I’m here to do a tentative needs assessment…kind of a ‘dip the toe in the water fact finding mission’ the volunteers here like to call it.

But nothing is as simple as it seems. What it would be great to do is help the most needy to put roofs over their heads, but the complications of landlords and restrictions on the immigrants mean this is a bit tricky, so I’m busy racking my brain to design something that will fit with peoples needs and knit with government objectives too.

Been looking into problems of water and sanitation today, as well as looking at the growing problem of waste management. Communities are reporting increasing crawling and flying insect problems, to the extent where some are finding it difficult to sleep, and I must admit the three-inch centipedes did not make me want to sleep without a mosquito net. Because so many homes have been completely blown away and seriously damaged, people are having to share already very small rooms, and meeting some of the people you can see the acute tiredness in their faces, especially the elderly.

I went to the areas where flies were being reported, spoke to people who were having to use the scrubland or share overused communal pit latrines. I then followed my nose and found derelict homes being used as communal toilets…this bit you do not want me to describe. It is a real worry though. I made an appointment to see a waste management guy from UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) who says that the two types of mosquito here can be carriers of diseases such as dengue, malaria and Japanese encephalitis which are not currently found here, but which could easily be brought in by travellers.

Its funny, I’ve been reading my oldest son that wonderful old classic story Stig of the Dump by Clive King, and while I was driving down to the dump, I spotted some clothes hanging out on a line right in the middle of the piled-up junk and old cars. I parked up the Land Rover and wove my way in.

I found a small community of young Dominicans living in the back of two old lorries. Actually, their ‘homes’ had stood up pretty well to the hurricane, much better than the flimsy wooden homes in town. And even if leaking a little, Elvin and his friends invited me into their home to talk. They seemed a happy bunch, busy dismantling cars to clear the land for the owner, and though they had lost some electrical goods it seemed their greatest need was probably a tarpaulin and some crockery as they were eating rice and beans out of cut-off plastic bottles.

It’s funny you know, I recon if Elvin had been born in England he’d have probably been a male model or at least had a bit part in a Tarantino movie, but as it was he was busy charming me with his jokes and smiles, in a lorry, in a dump in the middle of the Turks and Caicos islands. Strange world!

08/10/2008

Arrived here on Grand Turk, the island most severely affected by Hurricane Ike and its 135 mph winds, early yesterday morning. I was just in time to get a brief hour’s handover with the British Red Cross relief team who have been here for the last three or four weeks.

The best thing I could do was to put my scruffy clothes on and help as Ian, Nigel and Emily rapidly tried to complete the final count of the last remaining items of goods and donations from the public and shifting everything that remains into one container for final distributions by the local Red Cross Volunteers. Stacking beds and boxes in the baking tin of an airless container certainly loses its attraction pretty quick, but at least it was completed in time for them to catch a slightly later plane than planned back to Providenciales!

The rest of the time has been spent packing up all the Red Cross communications and IT equipment that was needed to run the operation and tying up the final paperwork and washing-up.

So that’s it…they are all gone and I’m completely on my own. The last woman standing! And now it’s down to the real nitty gritty of why I’m here. I spent the afternoon going around the worst affected areas of West Road and North Back Salina with a long standing local Red Cross volunteer who is also the principal of the local community college.

We first visited a Dominican woman who has rebuilt her shack as best she can since the hurricane, but she still sleeps in the Shelterbox tent that Red Cross delivered, as her shack is not waterproof, so it’s really lucky the rain hasn’t been too frequent recently. She’s getting by, doing a bit of work here and there, but she has no real way of replacing what she has lost or fixing her shelter ready for rains in November. I was there trying to find out what she had lost, what the relief effort had managed to provide, and what some of her recovery needs might be.

I must admit I wish I’d had the chance to practice my Spanish recently as my Spanish was really rusty…well would you know what tarpaulin was in Spanish? Fortunately the family that we found after that was a Haitian family, and my French is a whole lot better, so then it was easier to identify the real problems of the five or more households that had lived in and around a compound of wooden houses that had completely been blown away…yep! Wizard of Oz style. Right down the road. They were left with a concrete base and bizarrely, a toilet cubicle but no loo!

They have literally lost everything and the evidence of broken TVs, computers, clothes and baby cots lies all around. Hopefully the local Red Cross volunteers will be able to come up with some of the clothes they need, especially for the 8-month-old baby.