At 4:52 pm on January 12, 2010, Kesnel Tondreau’s life was following its normal routine in the small village of La Vallée, in southeastern Haiti. Thirty-five seconds later, his world fell apart. “I was at home – I had just got back from school. I heard a noise, and suddenly, my house fell down. I started to run, looking for my brothers and sisters. I went to see my grandfather, who had a disability. He was dead. A cement block had fallen on him.”
At the same moment, as they were every day, the capital, Port-au-Prince, and the Léogane and Jacmel regions were bustling. Children were still hanging around at school with their friends, parents were running their final errands on the way home, and others were caught in the endless traffic jams. The shock was so sudden and brutal that it can barely be imagined. The capital, home to a million people, was over 75% destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of people were dead or injured, caught wherever they were when the earthquake struck. In a few minutes, millions of people were homeless, forced to find some makeshift shelter or go to relief camps.
This was five years ago. That day, the idea of extreme vulnerability acquired its full meaning for Kesnel Tondreau, “We were cut off from everything. There was no water, and everyone was out in the open.” The tragic event revealed how fragile and vulnerable his community was. His first thought was to help those around him. He naturally thought of the Red Cross.
Long before the earthquake, Haitian colleagues of the Canadian Red Cross and the Haitian Red Cross were already at work in the field, setting up community programs. In a country where the risks of flooding, hurricanes and other climatic disruptions are legion, reducing the impact of disasters and setting up health programs were and remain a priority.
Today, in the Canadian Red Cross office in Jacmel, an entire team is working in such sectors as healthcare, violence prevention and risk management to carry out projects that will improve the lives of communities in southeastern Haiti. Kesnel, a community facilitator and Red Cross volunteer, and Marie‑Mercie Brissault, senior officer, community healthcare program with the Canadian Red Cross, took us 27 km out of town to meet with families living in the administrative centre of La Vallée. We climbed to an elevation of 800 metres in a land of green mountains and deep ravines.
Kesnel is a local. It was here that his house collapsed. Since then, he has been visiting families in the community every month, and sometimes more often. He knows them all by their first names, and is familiar with the problems they face. When we visited, he took the opportunity to remind them about hygiene rules, and the need to make sure that the water filter was properly used. We met Douge Baselais and Lucienne Pierre Saint, for whom life in the country is a question of mutual assistance: “Youn ede lôt – each one helps the other”, which is part of the DNA of the people who live in La Vallée. Gertrude Printemps is typical: she has been a Red Cross volunteer since 2005. “I can’t claim any credit,” she says, “I come from a Red Cross family. My husband was the first coordinator, and held the job for eight years. For me, helping people comes naturally.”
The roads up to the mountain peaks where many communities are located are often hard to reach, and families have to devise their own solutions to problems. The Red Cross has set up a pilot project to promote sharing and comparisons of best and worst practices with respect to hygiene and the use of latrines. In the vanguard of this initiative are the Haitian mothers known as mamans leaders, or “boss mums”; Marie-Mercie has organized a training session for ten of them. We go into a large multipurpose room that boasts a view that takes your breath away. In front of us, ten mamans leaders are sitting quietly, ready to share their knowledge. Each is responsible for nine other mothers they refer to as their “girls”, and they visit them regularly to remind them of basic concepts in relation to the use of latrines, water and food.
The learning method involves flash cards and songs whereby the message can get through to mothers unable to read or write. The maman leader identifies a problem, using pictures, and calls upon “the girls” to suggest solutions. They all sing together: “dlo se lavi, fok nou pwotejé si nou pa vle li nan detwi lavi – water is life, we have to protect it if we don’t want it to destroy life.”
The mums meet regularly with the Red Cross facilitators to make sure they understand the messages they are to share with their “girls”. The work they do as volunteers is important to them. Feeling useful motivates them, particularly as they often have to walk for hours in order to attend meetings.
Kesnel does not talk only about health matters when visiting families in his community. The January 2010 earthquake and the recurring floods are other reasons for warning people to stay alert. In 2011, a program called Kouri di vwazen (warn your neighbours) was launched with support from the Canadian Red Cross. The general idea behind the project was to set up a relay system to alert communities to impending disaster, and thus allow them to prepare. A whole range of tools – leaflets, radio spots, streamers, calendars, posters, megaphones – are in place to provide an early warning for people in the danger zone.
Risk management includes constant awareness, and being ready even before disaster strikes; William Toussaint, an assistant with the Canadian Red Cross risk management and disaster response program, gives frequent briefings in the schools. He uses a game called Te Male (Calamity country) that involves a teaching aid in the form of a 4-metre-square carpet and a giant dice. The game even provides an opportunity for exciting competitions between schools.
Kesnel Tondreau is one of many Red Cross volunteers who decided to give back to their community following the earthquake. Over the last five years, he has taken many training courses. In addition to being a Red Cross volunteer and community facilitator, Kesnel is also an agronomist, a teacher and a statistician, and the director of an association that helps children. Today he is a father, with children aged 18 months and two months, and while he does not know what his children will decide to do when they are his age, one thing is certain: he will pass on his knowledge so that they can continue his work of raising awareness. “I will pass the torch to my children, and give them the values and principles that guide the Red Cross, because I am very proud of them.”
Read more about our work in Haiti.