'Fortunate' is a relative term

Hilary Atkins, born in the United Kingdom, spent nine years working for SOS Children's Villages in East Africa as a regional editor. Currently working for SOS Children's Villages as a freelancer in Haiti, Hilary blogs about her daily work and experiences in the devastated country.

“You do know there has been an outbreak of cholera?”, the flight attendant whispered to me as I disembarked at Port au Prince after a very long haul from Nairobi. I nodded and replied that I would be careful, and headed towards the crowded baggage hall, where, despite only one working carousel with luggage piling up, people somehow managed to find their suitcases and slowly processed through immigration.


My journey to the SOS Children’s Village Santo took me through Port-au-Prince, a city devastated by January’s earthquake. You could see it in the deep potholes we carefully avoided, and in the half constructed buildings that lined the road; but above all, you could tell by the blue tented camps we passed, homes to those who lost everything, and by the white UN emblazoned vehicles that plough to and from the airport. It reminded me of some parts of east Africa – Mogadishu without the weapons, or Gulu in northern Uganda, where, since the departure of the LRA, NGOs proliferate. But both those catastrophes, though horrific, were man-made. In Haiti the people had no warning as their poorly constructed buildings collapsed on top of them.

The SOS Children’s Village, just outside Port au Prince, did not collapse. Built to high standards it became a refuge for the surrounding population. From 190 children, it took in another 400 almost overnight - children who were found wandering alone, separated from their parents by the disaster. Later, 33 ‘orphans’ were added, rescued from apparently well-meaning, but misguided people, who thought they could take care of these children better than their own mothers. We all know the story. Suffice it to say that SOS Children's Villages has reunited all of them with their families.

Today the village still has over 600 children, most of them living in temporary shelters built specially for them. These little white houses, which accommodate five children and an ‘SOS auntie’ look inviting, compared to much of what I saw on my journey through Port au Prince. I was surprised, considering they are not big, how tidy and clean they are. Of course the bathroom and kitchen blocks are separate which is not so easy in the rainy season. But when I consider the alternative, children living in camps, or on the streets, I see that these kids are more fortunate, if any child who has lost its parents in an earthquake can be called that. In disaster areas like Haiti ‘fortunate’ is an interesting word.

The youth is taking over….

Since our psychosocial advisor Yolanda van den Broek has come to the end of her stay in Haiti taking care of children whose families were either killed in the earthquake of January 12 or can no longer provide adequate care for their children, adolescents from the SOS Children's Village have gladly and proudly taken on the task...

"After the invasion of more than 50 children at the same time a few weeks ago in the ‘psychosocial’ tent, it became clear to me that I was going to be in trouble once the school holiday really started. Some children have very low self-esteem and you can see them flourish with every compliment they get. It is not just the young children who enjoy the activities in psychosocial tent, many teenagers come regularly, too. Apparently they like the quiet concentration created by many children concentrating on their drawings. Four girls aged 15 to 17 came very regularly and I had put them in charge of activities every now and again when I was called away.

They came up with a great idea: “Can we do activities with the children from the shelters every day?” One of them had decided that it would be a great idea to use the same tent. Indeed a very good idea because I would soon be leaving as well. The psychologist promised to keep an eye on the girls.

Ever since the raining season started, our ‘psychosocial’ tent has some difficulties, the rain seeps through the roof and at times it looks like a little pool inside. We asked the construction guys to move the tent to a better place. The new spot has beautiful trees that provide the necessary shade because it gets hot inside during the day. The girls cleaned everything inside and made a little doormat of white stones they had gathered. The first assignment for the children was to make the decoration for the tent; butterflies and flowers are now giving the tent a less clinical and more homely feel.

The girls had asked to work with the children from the temporary shelters. Some of those children had lived with them for a couple of months in their family houses after the earthquake, so it feels like their are little brothers and sisters. The girls had noticed that life has been difficult for the “shelter kids”: some had seen their parents die or getting badly injured, their houses destroyed. Although the children are glad to be in the shelters and they play a lot outside, they need activities to occupy them. Some of the children had never been to school before they arrived at SOS Children's Villages.

The girls want to help them to learn other things as well. The activity starts each day at 10 in the morning but the girls make sure that before that time they have tidied up the tent and taken the boxes with materials out of the psychologist's office. They walk around proudly, checking the attendance of the children on a list. And they are very strict…only the 20 children from the designated bloc of shelters can come inside. One of the girls explains what the programme is for the next 3 hours. Sitting outside on a bench while one of the girls tells them a story from a story book is just great to see, those little faces, so concentrated and exited about what happens next in the story.

When the girls paint the faces of the children, they finish the session by decorating themselves as well.

While one is reading a story, the other one is preparing the next activity, often drawing or coloring but games as well…domino is very popular. Fridays are reserved for sporting activities. Although there are many shelters placed on the former football field there is still enough space for a decent match.

The family assistants have their plan ready for the activities during the summer holiday for all the children in the village. A dance and music instructor will start this week and every morning a different group will sweat even harder than they already do because of the normal heat. "

Life in the shelters....

After the earthquake of January 12, SOS Children's Villages constructed shelters on the village grounds to accommodate the children who had been put up in the village in already existing SOS families (see previous report). The shelters have been completed, and the children have now moved in.

Many children of the SOS Children's Village in Santo moved to the shelters a bit reluctantly about 2 months ago. Moving out of the big family house where they were just getting used to their SOS brothers and sisters seemed like a difficult new hurdle to take. To make the transition easier, their aunts from the family house moved with them as well as their biological brothers and sisters. Most of the children staying in the shelter will be reunified within time; some still have a parent left who is living in a tent camp without any means to support the child, let alone send it to school. Some might still have a grandparent, uncle or aunt who is willing to take care of them….if we can find them.

I visited the shelters frequently and could see how quickly the children adapted to their new lives. The aunts now became mothers and each having the responsibility over 5 children instead of around 25 together with the other aunts and mother in the family houses. The children feel at ease and know that they are well looked after. The shelter really has become their house; electricity run the lights and the ventilator. The ventilator is far from being a luxury; it gets hot inside during the daytime. Artificial flowers and drawings from the children make it look like a home.

The children are behaving as children do…. playing football outside on the field, hide-and-seek behind the houses, helping their SOS mothers with domestic chores. Quite a few children have discovered a very interesting game…they build houses on the platforms of the shelter with anything they can find: pieces of wood, a little cloth and some hardboard function as a bed. Even the details like a bedside cupboard decorated with bottle tops have found their way into the model house. Looking inside their shelter you can see the resemblance with their new mothers’ bed. It helps them to rebuild their lives….starting from scratch constructing little houses. Apparently, they feel at home.

Even when they come to the so-called psychosocial tent to draw, little colorful houses with flowers are a favorite. However, some children still draw the people outside the houses; they are gradually making their way back to an emotional recovery. For most of the children the holiday just started, normally the summer holiday starts in June but since the children missed out on school so much after the earthquake it was decided to try and catch up as much as possible by shortening the holiday. Today the children from the shelter came to the psychosocial tent to draw and play again. Normally the amount of children coming is around 20-25, but school closed early today and the children kept on coming…. I had to turn quite a few down because 50 at the same time are more than I can handle.


Together with the family assistants we are making a plan for the psychosocial activities during the holidays. Some children will go and stay for a little bit with their relatives. It is important for their emotional development to stay connected with their roots as much as possible. For the other children who do not have any known relatives, dance, drama, sport and other activities will be organized. Quite a task for more than 400 children….

A "beep" from Merlina…

Yolanda van den Broek, a psychosocial consultant currently in Haiti for SOS Children's Villages, shares her impressions of Port-au-Prince six months after the earthquake that razed the capital and killed hundreds of thousands of its inhabitants.

The town Cap Haitien in the North of Haiti shows no physical signs of the earthquake though everybody felt the earth trembling even this far away. After two months in and around Port au Prince, spending a week in the SOS Children’s Village here feels like paradise. No rubble on the streets, no collapsed houses and no tent camps but an organized town where people go about their normal business.


But the effect is tangible here…just after the earthquake the hospitals of Port au Prince could not handle the immense amount of people that needed help, so people were transferred to various places in the country in trucks and busses. Unaccompanied children also ended up in the north of the country. When no relatives were found even after extensive research,some of the children were brought to the SOS Children’s Village in Port-au-Prince. Around 40 children have found a new family in the village.



The 13-year-old Merlina was with her aunt at the epicenter of the earthquake, and her world changed completely. Her mother did not survive and Merlina was seriously injured. She remembers the helicopter taking her to the hospital in Milot. “I was afraid and I did not know where they were taking me”, she says. She stayed on her own in the hospital for 2 months before she was brought to the SOS Children’s Village. The first weeks were very tough on her, she could only cry and avoided making eye contact with the other children. Merlina thought that they would make fun of her because of her partly amputated foot. Her new SOS mother accompanied her patiently, and gradually Merlina showed her beautiful smile again. She is now playing with the other children and looking forward to go to school in September. But I also notice that she is always outside the house, walking around a lot and trying to find ways to distract herself. I see her sitting on one of the benches outside, she holds her phone tightly and I am wondering if she is, after six months, still hoping that a family member will contact her. She tells me that this phone is the only thing she has left from her mother besides her memories.



Merlina keeps coming back to me, shyly at first but becoming more confident little by little. Sometimes she sends me little notes through her new SOS brothers and sisters and other times she wants to talk. She tried to block her grief for a long time but she is allowing it to go bit by bit now. “It really makes me sad but I do feel better and stronger now”, she said.



Although I am back in Santo now there is still frequent contact, she “beeps” me with her phone….lets it ring once so it will not cost her anything. When I call her back we talk a bit; she feels encouraged and tells me her plans for the day. It is just the little extra attention that makes her feel special again…..and that is what she needs at the moment. I am confident that she will get through the difficult times and will enjoy life again.

Au revoir Ayiti

After several months in Haiti on assigment for SOS Children's Villages, the time has come for Line Wolf Nielsen to say goodbye to a country still struggling to recover from the disaster that struck on 12 January 2010.

The time has come for me to leave Santo and the work as press officer with SOS Children's Villages' emergency programme here in Haiti. It's been 3 brutal and beautiful months, with many tales to tell - big and small.

Will I miss the American ready-to-eat military meals that have been a staple in our diet here? Not in the least little bit. Nor will I regret to return to more private living quarters with reliable availability of water, electricity and freshly ground coffee.

I have shared a room with four different people and said hello and goodbye to upwards of 50 colleagues or so, who have been lending their expertise to the groundwork here in Haiti. You get close when you live and work under such special conditions - a truly rewarding, exhausting experience.

In order to grasp my time here I recently read through some of the first emails that I sent home. Four days after my arrival mid-February this is what I shared:

"We had an emotional evening last night, when it became clear that the driver who had been involved in a serious accident was never going to walk again. All formed a circle with a candle in the middle, said prayers in different languages, and friends and colleagues spoke about him. In its own way very beautiful. I think the outpour of emotions also stems from the stress and overload that everyone faces here. If you are local you have most likely lost friends and family, if you're international you work non-stop in an emergency situation and do not get enough sleep or proper food."

 A week later I wrote "On Saturday I went to the centre of Port-au-Prince and saw the crumbled Presidential palace and the sprawling camps all around. It was quite strange to have to embrace the amount of destruction: the completely pancaked churches, hotels, banks, colleges - where no doubt dead people are still buried - and also take in the sense of calm, everyday life that seemed to have resumed. As much as is possible in tented camps, that is."

I will not forget the mixed emotions of children and SOS mothers that marked the day in March when we could re-unite the 33 children who had been taken by a group of American missionaries with their families. Saying goodbye after six weeks in Santo was hard on everyone involved.

Then there was a day-trip to the mass burial site, some pleasant Sundays chilling at the rocky beach and mornings spent eating breakfast under a shady tree branch. I also have mental snapshots of Sonson, the malnourished boy who began to smile after five weeks in the village, and the 12 year-old spirited girl who had lost both parents but nonetheless considered herself lucky to be alive.

It is still too early to share what will be truly lasting memories, but for sure I will have many!

The Dominican Connection

Line Wolf Nielsen, currently on assignment in Haiti for SOS Children's Villages, explores the relationship between two countries that share an island.

It is true what my guidebook says: although both are situated on the Island of Hispaniola, Haiti and the Dominican Republic are very much not alike.

In Haiti people speak French and Creole, in the Dominican Republic it's Spanish and there is a decidedly European-colonial flavor, whereas in Haiti the African roots from the times of slavery is ever dominantly visible in, say, voodoo religion and facial features. Also, there's the difference in political stability, levels of GDP, education and standards of living.

There have been decades of animosity and periods of war, but when the earthquake hit Haiti, the old foe immediately opened up airports and border crossings to allow for humanitarian assistance to flow. In fact, the morning after vans full of water, food, medical supplies and field hospitals were on their way across the border, on direct orders from the Dominican Government.

Also, in the border town of Jimaní several emergency aid points were quickly erected and local hospitals were emptied of non-essential patients in order to make room for those Haitians who had managed to make their way out of the quake-affected area.

For SOS Children's Villages Dominican Republic, the emergency work in Haiti has meant something of a constant extra workload. A steady flow of SOS co-workers travel in and out, en route to Port-au-Prince and I imagine the SOS drivers know their way to the airport very well by now!

Buying cars, vans and food for the emergency operation has been an added task for the national office, which has also had to deal with customs paper work, flight logistics - and unaccompanied children arriving across the border from Haiti.

On a recent visit I got to meet 16 children from Haiti, now in the care of the SOS Children's Village Los Jardines in the Dominican Republic. They where all sitting on the front porch of a house learning Spanish and did not seem to mind being far from home in the least bit. In fact, when asked most said they felt reluctant to return to Port-au-Prince.

"In Haiti there is not much of anything. Here there are many schools and toys to play with," a girl of 10 told me - in French - before she skirted off to play with a new Dominican friend on the playground. I overheard the two girls communicate in Spanish - proof of a healthy and speedy integration - and later saw her share a tight hug with the SOS mother in the house she lived in. She will have a hard time leaving again, I am afraid.

All the Haitian children await investigations into their family situation and will, in due time, be repatriated to Haiti either in order to be reunited with family or - if fully abandoned or orphaned - to be enrolled in one of the SOS Children's Villages in Haiti for long-term family-based care. Whatever their situation, I hope they will think of the Dominican Republic as a truly good neighbor in Haiti's hour of need.

Like a holiday

Line Wolf Nielsen, currently in Haiti for SOS Children's Villages, spends two days in a part of Haiti that offers luxury goods that simply can't be found in Port-au-Prince: a steady supply of water and electricity - and silence.

I have just come back from a few days visiting the Northern city of Cap Haitien, where there is another SOS Children's Village. When asked how it was up there, my short answer was: "a bit like being on holiday."

The Northern part of the country has not had to deal with the direct impact of the January 12 earthquake. When you see the city of Cap Haitien, it is not a heap of crumbled houses and tents on every single plot of land. You are not overwhelmed by the sense of there being just too many people on too little land, and the ratio of affected and traumatized children and families is much lower.

Still, everyone is very much aware of the problems. Local hospitals have taken in countless wounded people and many left the capital Port-au-Prince in order to seek shelter, work and refuge from the horrible conditions there.

In the SOS Children's Village of Cap Haitien, 40 children have been admitted since the earthquake, but as opposed to the village in Santo, it has not been necessary to put the kids up in tents. The 22 families living in the children's village at Cap Haitien have been able to absorb and integrate the new faces into their existing families. Grass fields are not dotted with big tents and children, flowers prevail over empty plastic bottles and the staff is not sporting black circles under their eyes after months of heavy additional workloads.

In addition, there was no need to share a tent with colleagues. I was lodged in an actual guesthouse with a steady supply of water, electricity, home-cooked meals and silence. In short: there is calm in Cap Haitien, which the village of Santo and our living quarters there cannot provide. After tree months on the ground in Santo, such things seem like such a luxury that two nights equal a holiday.

Such benefits aside, the main reason why I thoroughly enjoyed my trip was because it re-fuelled my hope for Haiti's future.

I met some cool SOS co-workers who really knew what they were doing and what they wanted to achieve. At the community centre I saw both fathers and mothers in charge of cooking and cleaning - workloads being shared between the genders are not a given here - and I spoke with young people with dreams about starting their own businesses. It was good to be reminded that not all of this country's human resources are bogged down in earthquake-emergency related work, but that other priorities do indeed exist and prevail.

In the long term goals and dreams will be needed just as much as tents and latrines are at present, at least in order for the reconstruction to take root in "building back better" - to put it in UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon's words.