About this blog

Last time I flew into Santo Domingo eight or nine years ago, I headed due east in a cab to Punta Cana for a week at Club Med.  A buddy of mine invited me to join her on a family vacation.  I played tennis every day, we swam with dolphins and we had fruity drinks with umbrellas. It was around this same time of the year.

On the one-month anniversary of the Haiti earthquake, I’ll fly American Airlines into the same airport and head in the opposite direction: I’ll take a puddle jumper to Port au Prince where I’ll be for a month.

Here’s how it started, I got this message on Facebook on Jan. 27 from a former APCO Worldwide colleague:

…an urgent request for a field communications officer in Haiti, working on behalf of an international NGO. He/she must be experienced in writing, media liaison and speak fluent French….It is a one-two month assignment, beginning asap.

In less than a week, I’d been hired by a UK-based nonprofit called HelpAge International which advocates for and serves older people in developing countries.  Since then, it’s been a breathless race to wrap things up for current clients, purchase supplies like mosquito netting and water purification devices, and get up to speed fast on this wonderful organization.

My charge?  Tell stories.  Feed facts, information, photos and case studies back to the home office for their donor communications and additional fundraising efforts.  Of course, if I trip over Anderson Cooper “in his “form-fitting charcoal T-shirt”, I’ll urge him to do a story on air.  And I’ll be seeking someone to take over this field communications role in Haiti permanently on behalf of HelpAge.

Of course I’m anxious about all the unknowns.  I’ve never been anywhere near an area that suffered a disaster of this magnitude so recently.  I’m worried about disease, the smell of death, the intense grief the Haitians are experiencing, the stress of getting through each day.  But I stumbled on a local Louisiana TV story about a surgeon there set to take off for Haiti.  He said essentially if you have skills that are needed there, how could you possibly say no?

What I hope to do on this blog is give a glimpse of what it’s like to be a communications officer on the ground there, which in some ways must be what it’s like to be a journalist.  What are the challenges to “getting the story”?  How balance personal dignity/privacy with the importance of getting information out to potential donors and decision-makers?  And how are the aid workers in general dealing with the stresses of being on the ground there?

I welcome questions and comments.  I’m sure it’ll help enormously to feel connected to you, to know that folks back home are still engaged in what’s happening there.  I’ll keep in touch as best as I can, promise!