Jericho: “The Incident”

Yesterday was tough, although it started promisingly. It was our first day without the volunteers (sevadaars) from Toronto and our team handled the cooking and the packaging of the food like seasoned veterans. However, the distribution of the food was challenging to say the least.

The usual setup is that we go to one location that has been scouted in advance and all of the meals are distributed there. The scouting team has a number of considerations in mind when deciding whether or not to approve a site for the distribution of meals. Chief among them is security. When determining security, many factors are important: whether the site is a closed environment (e.g. a church or an orphanage), number of people expected and the reputation of the area.

Yesterday was different. We did scout one area for distribution and it went well although only a quarter of our meals were ultimately distributed there. Word of our arrival was not adequately communicated to the people in that area. We scrambled to find a second location which also went well although we still had around half of our meals left at that point! At this point, our Haitian Police escort abandoned us even though we told them that we still had half our meals left to distribute. We pleaded with them and also with the United Nations Military Police but no one was willing to escort us. Although we were uneasy about pressing ahead without our security escort, we had no choice; the meals had to be distributed.

Finding people who are hungry in Port-au-Prince is not difficult. One of our Haitian volunteers took us out to the streets to hand out the rest of the meals. We stopped at one location and after we distributed a few meals, things got unruly. Things started out well with children lined up at the beginning of the line although that superficial order quickly fell apart. One crazed man went right up to our truck and began throwing the meals at some of our volunteers and also onto the ground. Without a security escort, we had no choice but to quickly leave that site as things were quickly becoming dangerous. We later found out that he was upset because we were delivering hot meals rather than raw goods that he and his associates could steal and then sell for a profit.
 
 

 
 
We still had a few hundred meals left at this point and one of the Haitians in our team guided us to the fourth and final site for the day. Right away we should have known that going to one of the major shantytowns in Port-au-Prince was not a good idea, especially without a security escort. I guess all of us were just tired and we wanted to go back to the camp and so we were not at our sharpest. Right away we were bombarded with hundreds of desperately poor Haitians who were literally fighting with each other for the meals. We felt sick at what was going on but we were helpless in our attempts to instil order. We saw old men steal meals from children, a woman steal a meal from a pregnant woman and many other shocking sights. Eventually, we distributed all of the meals and departed back to the camp without any serious problems.
 
 

 
 
We learnt a lot of lessons from yesterday. Mostly, we will strive to be better when it comes to scouting locations for the distribution of meals. We will never again head out to sites that pose any potential for danger. Lastly, we found out the crucial need for having a security escort in a country such as Haiti where law and order is not a given, especially at a time such as now.

We are not deterred from our mission here. We are not letting one bad experience ruin our mood and we are certain that today’s distribution will go well! We are heading to a UNICEF camp and have had satisfactory assurances about the security situation there.

Take Care,
Team Jericho