Frustrations

Today was just plain frustrating.

The day started with the sad news that my old training partner (from my slightly more serious running days) had died on a run on Saturday afternoon near Stawell, Victoria. Ray was a great friend. He was a generous spirit, a community-minded individual, and a man that not only taught but modelled respect. He is survived by his wife Alison and their four sons - teenagers. I am saddened that I can't attend his memorial this week, but hope Ange can get there. I was honoured to hear that Alison had asked for me to help with the service and wish I could. Encouraging to know when we've been a good part of people's lives.

Then I had a guy at our camp get really angry with me. He has every right to be angry. The rains are miserable and most of the people in the camp are living in mud. We have plans to drain the pitch and make it better, but we are waiting on all sorts of things before that can happen. In the meantime it rains. Some people are standing all night because they can't lie in the mud. One lady said that she has been sitting on a bucket all night with her children on her lap. It is miserable and I know that every day when I get to the camp I will get another mouthful about how no-one is doing much... and I can't blame people for being angry when we are there, but things take so long. I keep telling our team that if we were in their position we would be angry, too.

Then I went to the UN for a cluster meeting. I was five minutes late so I didn't get into the room (which is horribly small) and had to try and hear from outside. I then tried three gates to get out of the compound, only to be continually sent on. There has been some unrest in the capital - nothing serious, but all of a sudden the UN are on a higher security level. I finally got out of the compound (when I found the right exit, complete with metal detector etc) and got stuck in a traffic jam.

By this stage I was angry and gave a colleague a mouthful he didn't deserve about how the UN can get their security upgrade almost overnight, but I can't get a tarpaulin so that a mother can sleep at night. He understood my current frustration. (For the record - it's not getting tarpaulins that is an issue. It's getting enough - 5000 for my camp alone - that is an issue).

Then this afternoon I had a partner NGO state that they wanted to return to pre-earthquake service delivery asap and will take on no further commitments in the camp.

Then... well the other frustrations are things we'll work through.

Please pray for the people of Haiti. 1.3 million people are still displaced. 500,000 are still physically wounded. Almost all government buildings have been destroyed and over 1300 schools and 50 hospitals were lost in the earthquake. The whole nation is grieving the 300,000 that died.

Now we struggle to get anything in place to help as it is monsoon season and will probably rain non-stop now until late June, early July.