Galwayman to return to Haiti to help rebuilding

A GALWAY man who volunteered with an Irish charity in Haiti last year is preparing to return to the devastated country to help rebuild it from the rubble.

Myles McHugh, originally from Galway city but now living in Oranmore, travelled to Haiti as a volunteer last October with the NGO Haven; which works to build homes for the impoverished people of the Caribbean island.

He was distressed when news reached Ireland last week that a catastrophic earthquake had struck Haiti, causing widespread destruction and a death toll that is estimated to exceed 100,000.

However, the service planning manager with Iarnród Éireann was relieved to discover that his many friends among both the volunteers and the indigenous population had survived the disaster.

“The part of the island that I visited is slightly to the north of Port-au-Prince and was relatively unaffected by the earthquake; although the people there did feel the tremors and are obviously distraught at the plight of their countrymen,” said Mr McHugh.

“Thankfully the friends that I made in the orphanage, in the school and the local people in the houses we built seem to be safe and sound and the buildings that we worked on are still standing.”

He was one of 260 volunteers who raised €4,000 each and succeeded in building 40 houses, a children’s playground and an additional classroom at the adjoining school during ‘Build It’ week in the town of Ouanaminthe last October.

Undeterred by the current chaos and tragedy, Mr McHugh plans to return to Haiti later this year, when Haven will have begun a new project in the south of the island; closer to the devastated capital of Port-au-Prince.

The Irish NGO has suspended its building projects in the wake of the disaster and refocused its efforts on assisting with humanitarian aid. It dispatched two of its emergency response team from Dublin on Sunday, while its founder Leslie Buckley also left for Haiti yesterday.

Mr McHugh described the current situation as “absolutely shocking” and said that the pre-existing lack of basic healthcare facilities and infrastructure was exacerbating the country’s troubles.

“The first thing that strikes you when you cross the border from the Dominican Republic into Haiti is the unimaginable level of poverty. The country already had an almost a ‘fourth world’ standard of living before this horrific earthquake struck at all,” he said.

He said that the makeshift standard of housing that he witnessed when he was there would have offered no resistance to the violent tremors of the 7.0 magnitude earthquake.

“Many of the houses are little more than 15’ by 10’ and constructed of dried mud walls and a straw roof, which would have simply crumbled during the events of the last week.”

Haven has entered partnership with GOAL and is accepting donations at www.havenpartnership. com.

Another Galway man is currently on the frontline of the humanitarian effort in Haiti. Head of External Communications for the International Red Cross, Paul Conneally from Ballinasloe is the main English-speaking spokesperson for the organisation and is assisting in the running of a field hospital in Port-au-Prince.

The Harvard Law graduate is normally based in Geneva but has been working tirelessly on the ground in Haiti since the disaster struck a week ago. He has been sleeping outdoors in the Haitian capital and has reported experiencing heavy aftershocks on the website Twitter.

“This is the single worst disaster in the history of the organisation,” he said. “The aid effort is undeniably slower than we would want but the reality is what it is.”