Attor­ney Jayne Flem­ing is lead­ing a legal/medical del­e­ga­tion work­ing out of the BAI office to pre­pare human­i­tar­ian parole appli­ca­tions for earth­quake vic­tims need­ing treat­ment in the U.S.

Good morn­ing!

It’s a new day here in Haiti. Holly and I camped out at the BAI, which was quite com­fort­able. The air mat­tress I brought along this time is the best invest­ment I have ever made!! Far bet­ter than sleep­ing on cement!  Even the roost­ers could not wake me at their usual 4:00 am.

I slept until 5:00 and now I’m show­ered and ready to get to work. I need cof­fee, but have to wait for one of our inter­preters to get here at 8:00 to escort me to the cafe around the cor­ner! I could prob­a­bly order cof­fee in French or Cre­ole (one would hope), but the street scene is a lit­tle chaotic and still intim­i­dates me in terms of walk­ing alone.

Yes­ter­day was an extra­or­di­nary day.

The sense of shock I felt dur­ing the week I was here in March has dimin­ished, not because con­di­tions have improved, but because the dev­as­ta­tion around me now reg­is­ters in my brain as the norm. What a tragic reality.

In fact, con­di­tions here are on a steady decline. The rains have come, at least at night­time. Still, mil­lions are with­out tents. Con­di­tions in the camps are unbe­liev­ably harsh. Ani­mals live bet­ter. The largest camp in Port au Prince has more than 18,000 peo­ple. There are more than a thou­sand camps in the coun­try, most in the capital.

Now, I am told, all aid to those camps in the cap­i­tal tar­geted for clo­sure has stopped. The appar­ent plan is to starve peo­ple so that they will be forced to migrate to rural areas. There does not appear to be any reli­able plan in place for this decen­tral­iza­tion. Poor peo­ple sim­ply need to move on, find their own way, get out of the way. The re-builders are com­ing with their bil­lion dol­lar con­struc­tion plans, which don’t include low-income housing.

Given the tragic human­i­tar­ian sit­u­a­tion here, how can I describe my day as extra­or­di­nary, you ask? Well, first, I recon­nected with the lead­ers of Kofa­viv and Fav­ilek, our grass roots women’s groups. It was won­der­ful to exchange hugs and tell them about the dresses and per­fumes and gifts we brought for their groups.

I also met with Mario Joseph, the leader of the BAI and a leg­endary human rights lawyer. I am incred­i­bly hum­bled to be work­ing in an office across the hall from him. I do not speak Cre­ole, but we def­i­nitely speak the same social jus­tice lan­guage. His com­mit­ment to the poor is deeply inspiring.

Later in the day I met two of Holly’s amputee clients who  have new legs!

Get­ting them pros­thet­ics is a major achieve­ment in this hor­ror scene. The clients were radi­ant! Hope­ful. Restored. If we achieve noth­ing more in this project (and we will achieve more), their hap­pi­ness makes it all worthwhile.

Finally, I met up with the lovely green-eyed girl who stole my heart in March (the child who was induced into a hor­rific pros­ti­tu­tion scene and escaped). It was great to give her a hug, take her emo­tional tem­per­a­ture, and give her some gifts.

The day was good. Very good.

Today the hard work begins. I have 27 clients to see in five days. More than half are sur­vivors of gender-based vio­lence. The lead­ers of Kofa­viv and Fav­ilek tell me that vio­lence in the camps is increas­ing. The level of impunity is at an all time high, the gov­ern­ment response at an all time low.

The most vul­ner­a­ble ones, young girls with no fam­i­lies, are lambs to the wolves.

We are try­ing to sup­port the women’s groups, but what is needed is an awak­en­ing on the part of those in power. Right now they appear to be in a coma, at least when it comes to gen­der issues. But the women are incred­i­bly strong and united, which is rea­son for hope.

I’d bet­ter wrap this up for now. I have to get the inter­view sheets done for our NY team. Then I am going to find coffee!!

All the best,

Jayne

To sup­port the work of the BAI, con­sider mak­ing a tax-deductible dona­tion here.