Our museums and galleries house fascinating collections, from living bugs to The Beatles, fine art to photography, the Titanic to ancient Egypt.

Follow us online: Facebook Twitter Flickr

National Museums Liverpool Blog - Rainy season in Haiti

 Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Rainy season in Haiti


Tuesday 22 June 10

rainy street in Haiti full of post-earthquake debris

Here's Clare Wolfarth's 4th weekly update from Haiti, where she has been helping out Oxfam on a sabbatical from her usual job at National Museums Liverpool:

"The main thing to report from Haiti this week is the rain. We are now well and truly into the rainy season which means that for three or four hours every day, and occasionally the whole day, it absolutely buckets down, often accompanied by thunder and lightening. For Oxfam and for many of the other agencies operating here, this change in the weather represents the second phase of the emergency response. Even though the tents and the plastic sheeting provide some shelter, the ground is saturated and each time it rains there are floods or landslides to contend with. Port au Prince is built in a valley surrounded by hills and many of the roads become impassable during these storms, even in our four by fours.

Oxfam’s engineers and public health teams are currently working around the clock to ensure that adequate sanitation is maintained and to create drainage in the large camps where people are living. The mosquitoes are thriving but for the 1.2 million people left homeless here after the earthquake, life is pretty grim at the moment and is set to continue this way as hurricane season officially starts in June.

On a brighter note, I have continued to be able to make the most of my time off here. Last Sunday I went to the Oloffson hotel (pictured below) for lunch which is the hotel that Graham Green’s novel, The Comedians, is set. It’s an incredible decaying old colonial building full of character and wonderful art. Each room is named after a famous occupant including Mick Jagger, the Haitian Voudou art collector Virgil Young and Graham Green himself.

There are also many signs of people returning to some sort of normality here. Thursday was a public holiday to mark the feast of Corpus Christi and there was an enormous book fair held in a park where the Sugar Cane Museum is found. There were literally thousands of people there, most of whom had dressed up for the occasion and who mingled and drank juice and held hands in the heat of the midday sun. It was inspiring and quite humbling to see local people enjoying themselves and using culture as a way to come together after all they have been through.


Posted by Sam | 22/06/2010 15:26   | Comments [0]

Posted in: international slavery museum
Tagged with: Haiti

Post a comment

All comments require the approval of the site owner before being displayed.
Name
E-mail

Comment (HTML not allowed)  

Enter the code shown (prevents robots):

Live Comment Preview

By posting your comment you have agreed to the terms and conditions below

Terms & Conditions

National Museums Liverpool welcomes your comments. All comments are moderated and will only be published if they adhere to the following standards. The editors reserve the right not to publish comments which they deem inappropriate:

  1. Our Maritime Archives and Library deals with enquiries relating to all aspects of Liverpool's maritime history including ships, passengers, seafarers, shipping and maritime companies. Their web pages describe the information they hold and how to get in touch, along with useful research guides on popular subjects such as tracing seafaring or emigrant ancestors. Please do not submit requests for this type of information as comments on this blog.
  2. Specific enquiries, as opposed to comments on blog posts, should be submitted using our contact system. Please note that we do not provide valuations.
  3. Posts must be text only and under 1000 characters (including spaces). Html code, links or multimedia are not permitted.
  4. We will aim (but do not guarantee) to publish approved comments within 72 hours although there may be delays over weekends and during public holidays.
  5. Please do not post anything that is libellous, abusive, obscene, prejudiced or unlawful.
  6. Do not contravene any rights to privacy (such as personal contact details), copyright or trademark legislation.
  7. Please do not spam or post commercial promotional information.
  8. By posting you agree that you are wholly responsible for the content that you post. Although the blog comments will be moderated National Museums Liverpool will publish comments in the good faith that they comply with the law.
  9. By posting your comment you agree that it may be reproduced by National Museums Liverpool online or in print without compensation.