Brian Monteith: Trinidad shows how to help Haiti

Published on Thursday 21 January 2010 08:49

I was sitting on the bus on my way back from a rather informative lecture on project management in developing countries (honest) when I received a worried text from my sister in Bathgate. "R u ok? Watchin sky news and there r reports of tsunami, where u r?"

This took me aback. Of course I was okay; although I was in Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad, it was oppressively hot and dry, there was no storm or even a breeze, so I replied positively to reassure her and said I would try to find out more.

I've been working off and on in Trinidad and Tobago for the best part of a year now, providing advice on communications to the government and what is now rather trendily called civil society, after 18 months of doing the same in Nigeria and Botswana. It has been an interesting and sometimes adventurous time, but that has usually been to do with the trials of international jet travel, rather than encountering a natural disaster.

Using my cell phone I was quickly able to get on the internet and establish there had been a powerful earthquake of seven points in Haiti and that consequently a tsunami warning had been issued to all islands south of that unfortunate former French colony once ruled by the evil despot, Papa Doc.

Such is the speed of modern telecommunications that I immediately read that the tsunami warning had been rescinded, although being sheltered by Trinidad's overhanging northern coast, I and the majority of the country's inhabitants would have been spared any deluge.

I walked into Trotters' sports bar and soon established the facts. Up amongst the myriad of televisions showing an American baseball game, the Coventry versus Portsmouth soccer match, some recorded American football footage, and an Italian soccer match were four screens relaying CNN and BBC World 24 News.

The tickertape flashes revealed the extent of the devastation in an already devastated island. Devastated by a long list of abominable rulers that have achieved the unbelievable feat of continuing to make things worse, and devastated by one natural disaster after another, Haiti is one of the poorest places on this earth. It needn't be that way, for the country of Haiti shares an island almost 50/50 with the Dominican Republic and its standard of living puts Haiti and many other Caribbean nations to shame.

Put it this way, when you fly over the large island you can always tell which country's which, for the Dominican Republic has opulent green jungle but Haiti has bare parched land – the trees having been cut down by the poor locals for firewood.

Trinidad is also relatively wealthy, an oil-based economy, the average income is over $10,000 a year compared to the meager dollar a day most Haitians manage to eke out for a living.

The first news reports, bizarrely, were suggesting there had at that moment been no casualties, but it did not take long for this to change. By the next morning they were talking of maybe twenty thousand, a week later and they are speculating that this might increase by a factor of ten.

Immediately, and almost without thinking it was then that I witnessed Trinidadians adopt something which, previously in my company, they had only paid lip service to – a sense of regional identity.

Supermarkets started to roll out large bins for donations of food, any event that was already organised (mostly in preparation for Trindad's biggest annual jamboree, the Carnival in February) now had stalls asking people to donate money and clothing – and new events were being initiated as fundraisers to help their Caribbean cousins.

Trinidadians started to behave like Scots might do for a catastrophe in Cornwall or how Brits might do for some cataclysm in Corsica – only on a scale I've seldom seen. Posters went up in the office toilets, in the windows of all shops and any electronic transaction would carry a request to make a donation.

The government did what governments do and started making arrangements for relief both directly and in concert with other Caribbean nations (I was invited to introduce it into the role-playing of the crisis communications seminar I was delivering).

Just as typical was some of the cynical reaction to the government's offer of two billion Trini Dollars as relief aid (about 200 million – a lot of money for any wealthy nation, never mind Trinidad and Tobago) when my taxi driver said "We don't even have a proper hospital worthy of the name here and now we're giving money away."

I understood his point, although relatively wealthy, Trinidad does have its own problems as people protesting about a lack of water supplies since Christmas showed on Monday.

Also understandable has been the locals bridling at the level of control the United States has taken over the relief arrangements, including a refusal to let aid flights from Caribbean countries land at Haiti's sole airport that it has taken charge of.

Trinidad aspires to be a fully developed nation by 2020 – and in its response to Haiti's nightmare it shows it is fast getting there. It's such a tragedy that Haiti shall probably take a whole century to enjoy such a standard of living.