29 January 2010: The real work is now happening yet media leave in droves. Others hand over. We are among them and 2 colleagues come in to relieve us.

There is so much yet to be done. I tell Jo-Ann, who heads Plan Haiti programmes, staff must rest. She laughs and tells me they cannot, will not. Their drive is again humbling.

Plan’s strategy to use youth volunteers and community reps bears fruit. A test in central Croix-des-Bouquets. Familiar young faces and warm exchanges ease tension. Outside the compound in the form of grinning, machine-gun toting UN Jordanian soldiers help too. We get a few hundred family kits out to the needy relatively easily. This will be scaled up in the coming days.

Protecting the vulnerable

Trafficking and child protection are high on our agenda. Staff conduct reviews of camps, the most vulnerable are highlighted and referred.

We wait at one settlement. A crowd of children and adults forms. No-one speaks French or English, only Creole.

I find myself giving an impromptu English lesson to the kids. Counting to 10, colours, animals, ‘my name is…’ etc. A year teaching Japanese infants comes in handy at last.

We leave, waved off by smiling mums. Cost zero, small impact tangible. The president says schools will open in 14 days. Locals tell me 2 months is more likely. I muse that teaching in these poor communities may be more beneficial than me pushing stories to fickle journalists.

Memories

And so we go. So many snapshots, dark and light flash through my memory. The immediate aftermath, close colleagues fighting back tears as they work and failing. A young man polishing his boots in a squalid inner-city camp. Laughing children temporarily forgetting their pain in games.  Skinny, scarred Madeline falling asleep on Shona and me in the car - exhausted, gently snoring. The bodies of 2 young men sprawled in the road one evening - earthquake survivors only to die in a motorbike crash 5 days later. The resulting silence in our truck. Orphaned Johnny sleeping rough with his little sister.

I shed no tears on Haitian soil. It would be an insult. We make many vows to come back soon, with hopes of better times.