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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: The rebels in Libya haven’t had a lot of time to prepare for the challenges of government.  Their rebellion only began in February and they didn’t have a lot of time to train as a military force either.  One cigar-chomping American who helped them is Jerry Erwin.  He’s an army veteran who worked with the rebels at a training camp near Benghazi. Erwin joins me now from his home in Vancouver, Washington.  So you really went on your own?  You bought your own ticket and training gear, why did you go, Jerry?

Jerry Erwin: Yes, I went on my own.  I went for a number of different reasons: 1) I’d always wanted to do something like this, go overseas and fight a war.  It was almost like a teenage dream.  These people had their backs against the wall and they had no military experience or training, so I went for that reason.  And I also wanted to go because I started a small business as a survival preparedness, self-reliance consultant.

Werman: You’re an army veteran, what is your experience in battle?

Erwin: Actually, I’ve had none.  I’ve never gone overseas in the military and that was part of my reason for going.  I’d never been overseas and I’d trained mentally and physically a good chunk, pretty much all my adult life, for war.  I felt like it was almost a destiny to go over there and try to help these people.

Werman: So tell us what you saw.  You ended up at a military base that the rebels were using for training.  What did you add to what they were already doing?

Erwin: Yeah, I got extremely lucky.  I got hooked up within a couple days of my arrival there.  Yeah, I was there at the Dhubat al-Saff base for about three weeks living with the officers there and spending my days with the troops.  Anything I did was very informal.  I mean they were constantly getting weapons familiarization training.  You know, you only need to get that once, you only need to learn how to disassemble and reassemble a weapon once, but these guys were getting it repeatedly on the same weapons, which didn’t make any sense.  So you know, I scrounged around the compound and found some rags, and I just you know, had a small group together for instance, and said okay, you’ve been getting all this training in taking them apart and putting them together, this is what you’re supposed to do in between.

Werman: Mr. Erwin, you said that you didn’t just teach weapons handling techniques to the rebels, I mean you taught other things.  And I’m just wondering what was the one thing that you think really had an effect on the rebels that you shared with them?

Erwin: Well, they needed just to be taught very basic, simple concepts.  A lot of times, the younger people there were so open to learning that you could just demonstrate in front of them.  So I just tried to teach them individual battlefield survivability techniques.  You hear weapons fire, then get on the ground, on your stomach, get behind cover, see if you can return fire.

Werman: Was there any animosity about you being there?

Erwin: No, they, word spread faster than the internet in that country.  When they found out that I traveled there at my own expense and that I came there to help, they loved me.  I mean it was weird, I had this call to personality.  I mean I wanted to give a good impression of America.  I was almost thinking that a good article name would be like Jerry of Libya, or something.  I mean at one point just talking to a group of these guys, they actually put me on their shoulders at one point.  I’m not kidding!

Werman: Wow.  I mean how do you deal with that sudden kind of acceptance because I mean you’re there helping the rebels.  That’s a pretty good calling card, but how do you deal with that?  I mean it’s their war after all, not yours.

Erwin: Yeah, well I thought it was great.  The Libyan people themselves as a culture are very inviting, they’re the most inviting people I’ve ever come across.

Werman: You know, a lot of people who know Libya pretty well say they really never expected the rebels to kind of get to Tripoli.  They didn’t really have it in them to take Tripoli.  Did you think that when you were seeing how they were getting trained?  What did you think?

Erwin: Oh, the rebel soldiers were so motivated and there was so much unity of effort.  It was a pleasure to be around these folks.  And you know, whether it was back on the Benghazi base or when I was in combat, when I traveled to Misrata and was in combat west of Misrata, I mean the unity of effort among everybody, not just the soldiers, but the people themselves, everybody was helping every way they could.

Werman: Did you make friends amongst the rebels and do you think you’ll go back?

Erwin: Well, I made friends that’ll probably last a lifetime over there.  I think Libya is going to be a very livable country in the future.  I’d love to go back to Libya.

Werman: Jerry Erwin, you returned to Washington state in July.  How do you feel now knowing that you know, even in a small way you contributed to what’s happening in Libya today?

Erwin: Well, I feel good about it.  I mean it really was a just fight.  I mean Gaddafi had not done anything for Libya.  One of his mechanisms for staying in power was to have everything done there by foreigners.  I mean anything that involved any skill, any organizational skill or work.  And now that he’s going to be out of there, the Libyan government, they are sincere about rebuilding Libya, but doing it with Libyans. Yeah, I feel good about it.  If I didn’t feel good about going over there I wouldn’t have gone in the first place.  I think this is the most noble fight so far this century against a tyrannical leader because all the things that the US was making up about Saddam Hussein, part of the Iraq war, they were real about Gaddafi. I mean he really did support terrorism.  He exported terrorism and funded it.  He killed Americans and you know, he wasn’t doing anything for Libya.

Werman: Jerry Erwin of Vancouver, Washington, who helped train some of the rebels in Libya, thanks very much for speaking with us.

Erwin: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Renee Krueger (Photo: Eric Niiler)

By Eric Niiler

Early on a cold fall morning, a dozen volunteers gathered in a waiting room at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research outside Washington, D.C. They had come to test an experimental malaria vaccine.

The volunteers included college students, Walter Reed employees, and a 41- year-old single mother from Baltimore named Renee Krueger.

Krueger said she had volunteered because she wanted to help people at risk for malaria, including U.S. troops serving overseas.

“Every medicine that we have, whether it’s over the counter or prescription, somebody had to be willing to try it,” Krueger said.

Right now, there is no clinically available vaccine for malaria, although there are some experimental ones in the works. Walter Reed researchers wanted to test a new vaccine they hoped would protect against Plasmodium vivax, one of the four major strains of malaria parasite.

Col. Chris Ockenhouse, director of Walter Reed’s malaria vaccine research program, said the volunteers would permit a quick test of whether the vaccine had promise.

“If you had to do this same process out in the field,” he said, “you may have to vaccinate tens of thousands of individuals and wait a year or two to determine whether your vaccine worked or not.”

Here, the research would take just two weeks. The scientists would vaccinate these volunteers and then intentionally infect them with the malaria parasite to see if they got sick.

The stakes were high. It had taken six years of lab work just to get to this stage of vaccine development. Col. Ockenhouse said he was “cautiously optimistic” that the vaccine would fully protect at least some of the volunteers from malaria.

The Test Begins

“I hate mosquitoes,” said Renee Krueger as she rolled up her sleeve.

Krueger had already received the experimental vaccine. Now she was about to become infected.

She joined the other volunteers around a table and placed her bare arm over a small screen-covered canister. It held five mosquitoes that carried the malaria parasite.

Krueger couldn’t leave until she had been bitten by all five. That took close to an hour.

“They’re starting to itch a little bit where the mosquitoes bit me,” she said. “But other than that, I’m fine.”

With the protection of the experimental vaccine, Krueger hoped she would stay fine. But some of the other volunteers knew that they would not stay healthy.

Army First Sergeant Joe Civitello was in the “control arm” of the study – a comparison group of volunteers that would not receive the vaccine.

“I’m going to get malaria,” he said with a nervous laugh. “Somebody’s got to do that part too, right?”

After being infected, the volunteers headed home. They went back to work and to their families.
Meanwhile, the malaria parasites were moving through their bodies. The parasites infect the liver then reproduce and move to the bloodstream, where they attack red blood cells.

It takes at least ten days before any symptoms set in. So, on the ninth day, the volunteers returned.
This time, they checked into a hotel, where Walter Reed doctors would monitor their health.

Waiting for Symptoms

It was a Friday night, and Renee Krueger felt great. In fact, she had brought her two daughters for the weekend.
“They’re excited,” she said. “When they go to the hotel, they think we’re on vacation.”

On Saturday, Krueger took the girls shopping and to the hotel’s indoor swimming pool. That same day, Sergeant Civitello got sick, just as expected.

It started with achy muscles. “Then the headache and the fever and the diarrhea started to kick in,” he said, “and you’re like, uh, this is not fun.”

Doctors immediately treated him with two kinds of anti-malaria medicine.

Meanwhile, on Sunday morning, Renee Krueger still felt pretty good. Then, that afternoon, she got a call from the doctors. They had been testing her blood, and they found malaria parasites multiplying in her body. She needed to go on medication.

“I was a little surprised when I got the call,” said Krueger. “I was a little tired but I just thought that was from being lazy today. But I guess maybe that’s why I’m tired.”

Over the next several days, Krueger developed the typical symptoms of malaria – achy muscles, nausea, and fever.
The fact that she and others who were vaccinated got sick suggested the vaccine was not working. But Major Jason Bennett, who was running the clinical trial, tried to remain optimistic.

“The main goal of this trial was to test the safety of the vaccine,” he said, “[and] we know that the vaccine is safe.” He said it would take more analysis to determine how effective the vaccine was. Even if vaccinated people got sick, Bennett said the vaccine might have delayed symptoms.

Four days later, on Thursday, the trial was done. By now, Renee Krueger had recovered from malaria, but she looked exhausted. And she was disappointed.

“We wanted it to work,” she said. “It would have been nice to be part of something that could have been life-changing for a lot of people. It could have saved a lot of lives.”

Failure is the norm in early vaccine trials, which is why researchers are working on other approaches to immunizing people against malaria.

Those experimental vaccines will also need to be tested on humans. Walter Reed’s doctors say they will be looking for new groups of volunteers later this year.

• BBC coverage
• American aid for Pakistan
• BBC program for flood victims

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

KATY CLARK: I’m Katy Clark and this is The World. The battle between Mother Nature and aid efforts in Pakistan has been going on for more than two weeks. Unfortunately, Mother Nature seems to have the upper hand. Pakistan’s worst floods in decades continue to wreak havoc. The floods have killed up to 1,600 people. Another two million have been left homeless. And up to three-and-a-half million children in Pakistan may be at risk from water-borne diseases. The BBC’s Lyse Doucet has been monitoring the devastation across the country. She’s back in the capital, Islamabad. Lyse, you’ve been travelling through some of the worst hit areas of Pakistan. What kind of aid is getting through to people there?

LYSE DOUCET:  Well, I happen to be in the country and happen to be actually in the northwest of Pakistan, the area first hit by this extraordinary disaster. Yesterday the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was here and I had the opportunity to travel with him and Pakistan’s president Asif Ali Zardari. We went by helicopters over the part of Pakistan that should be the food basket of this country, but the province looked like it was a series of lakes swallowing up the valuable crops like cotton and sugar cane and wheat. And yet the UN officials who we were travelling with said to us that they still haven’t even reached 50% of the people who need aid immediately.

CLARK:  And why is that? Is it just because this is such a huge disaster or…? I hope it’s not that the intent and the care isn’t there for the people in Pakistan who are suffering right now.

DOUCET: I’ve had so many discussions with aid people, some of whom I’ve met frequently in the field whether it was covering the Asian tsunami of 2004 which, of course, affected some 13 countries across the Indian Ocean or here is Pakistan for the Kashmir earthquake of 2005. And both of them we saw massive outpouring of both sympathy and solidarity. What is it this time? Well, some say, even senior UN officials say, that an earthquake has a shock effect. It attracts people’s interest immediately, but this kind of a flood situation evolves very slowly over time. And therefore it takes a long time for people to try to wake up. And then there’s questions, of course, is it because it’s Pakistan? There was actually a news conference in Geneva today where a UN spokesperson actually said that relief agencies are having trouble obtaining funds because the country suffers from an image deficit. Whatever it is, it is truly consequential because this is a crisis with so many dimensions. It’s a monsoon crisis, it’s a food crisis. And today I was speaking to Pakistan’s foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, and he warned the world it’s also a security crisis. He said we don’t have the resources to fight floods and the insurgency at the same time.

CLARK: What kind of reaction were average Pakistani’s giving to President Zardari and UN Security Ban Ki-moon yesterday? Were they happy to see them? Angry?

DOUCET: Well, as you know, the Pakistani president has come under heavy criticism both inside Pakistan and abroad when he continued a foreign trip last week, both to Britain and France. I have to say that when our helicopters touched down at a relief camp set up by the Pakistan military in Punjab Province yesterday, there were rousing cheers from about a thousand displaced people using the cheer that often comes from crowds here which is “Zindabad,” long live, so “President Zardari zindabad” and “Ban Ki-moon zindabad” and there was real jubilation there. But, of course, visits like that certainly gives them something to hold on to. Some hope that perhaps someone will take care of them despite the fact that they, like millions of other people here, are facing an uncertain future.

CLARK: Finally Lyse, if you can just describe what is life like for people right now? How are they even surviving?

DOUCET: It’s quite extraordinary. I’ve been to three of the four worst affected provinces and it’s absolutely heartbreaking. Heartwrenching was the word used by Ban Ki-moon yesterday. When you see people walking through the water, sometimes you have grandparents with children on their heads. Their mother and father of the family carrying whatever goods they can carry, bundles of damp clothing. Today when I was in the Foreign Ministry a very finely-suited young officer in the Foreign Ministry sat down with us and I said, well, how is your family doing? Cause he comes from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, which is in the northwest. He said, well, my wife’s family, their house was – it was completely washed away. And he said, I never realized that this would happen. Like most Pakistanis, he said, who live in rural area, they keep everything in the house. They don’t go to banks. He said, all the money, all the jewelry, in other words, the family’s wealth has simply been washed away. And he said they saw the cabinets bobbing in the water, moving away from them, and basically their lives going downstream. And I thought, we don’t realize how vast the impact of this is. It affects people right across this society, up and down from north to south, to rich or poor. But, of course, the most terrible images of all are those who are very, very poor and now they’ve become doubly cursed. They have absolutely nothing at all, including very little certainty about what the future holds for them.

CLARK: The BBC’s Lyse Doucet in Islamabad.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

U.S. Army Sgt. Paul Gilman, Task Force Knighthawk, 3rd Combat Aviation Brigade, TF Falcon, looks out of the back of his Chinook at the water damage while flying the Swat valley in Pakistan, Aug. 5. (Photo by U.S. Army Sgt. Monica K. Smith, 3rd Combat Aviation Brigade, Task Force Falcon)

• BBC coverage
• BBC picture gallery: Pakistan’s flood crisis
• US Army photostream on flickr
• On The World: extreme weather in Europe and Asia

• BBC coverage
• Christopher Rhoads’s article in the Wall St Journal
• ‘Convoy to Nowhere’ slideshow

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston.  Relief workers, doctors and military troops continue to work hard to help earthquake survivors in Haiti, but conditions there remain extremely difficult.  There are reports of hospitals and clinics around Port-au-Prince running out of medicine.  That sparked concerns about survivors dying from untreated wounds and infections.  Then there is the still frustrating work of delivering food and water to quake survivors.  Wall Street Journal reporter Christopher Rhoads is in Port-au-Prince.  Now Chris, you have a front page article in today’s paper about one particular aid convoy this past Wednesday and it’s really a case study of just how difficult it can be to distribute aid there.  Briefly, what went wrong?

CHRISTOPHER RHOADS: Essentially everything that could have gone wrong, did.  There was a series of problems ranging from one truck being broken down at an entrance of a key warehouse where this convoy was supposed to pick up some food to miscommunication among military officials and just essentially uncoordinated plans.  I should put out that this organization called Eagle’s Wings Foundation out of Southern Florida, that they had had some success in the previous days.  They had been making food drops, but the day I was with them, basically everything that could have gone wrong, did.

MARCO WERMAN: You talk about the traffic, the communication and the infrastructural problems, but you also clearly describe a situation where the bottleneck seems to be this complex of 40 warehouses near the airport.  Was that the source of the challenges for the shipment of aid?

CHRISTOPHER RHOADS: That was what got things off on the wrong foot in the morning.  They had been going into that warehouse every day to pick up food.  It’s a major complex of warehouses and it’s really the new business center of Port-au-Prince since the downtown is so destroyed.  There was just a bottleneck in there that didn’t move for hours because of this broken down truck.  So that was basically a wasted morning.

MARCO WERMAN: So this is one example of the problems of getting aid to people who need it in Port-au-Prince.  What do you see, though, as the underlying issue here?  The real problem.

CHRISTOPHER RHOADS: Well, as one of the people that was in that convoy with me put it, you have people that want to help and there seems to be no shortage of that.  And then you have people that know how to help and there is a shortage of that.  We sort of saw that through the day.  On Wednesday you had a lot of eager people, lot of good will, but in terms of executing the details, numerous people just came up short.

MARCO WERMAN: So there are those that want to help, those that can help, do you have a sense that there is someone, some organization that is working to solve these problems that you describe in your story?  Who is in charge?

CHRISTOPHER RHOADS: It seems like you have a lot of moving parts, which might be part of the issue.  You have all these NGO’s that are working together with the World Food Program, which in turn is working together with the U.S. military, the U.N. troops and others for security.  But still within those groupings you have a huge number of individuals and individual entities and coordinating all that is proving to be pretty tough, obviously, even into this third week.

MARCO WERMAN: So your story mentions the U.N.’s World Food Program, the U.S. Army, you mentioned Eagle’s Wings Foundation, how does the Haitian government fit into all of this?

CHRISTOPHER RHOADS: It’s interesting.  As far as I could tell on that day there was no role of the actual government of Haiti.  There was, however, a role of Haitians.  This organization had hired 150 Haitians to help with the distribution and – - security with the idea of empowering them and showing them that they can do these things on their own and not just accept help.  But as far as the government goes, they were not part of that operation.

MARCO WERMAN: The Wall Street Journal’s Christopher Rhoads in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.  Thanks very much for your time.

CHRISTOPHER RHOADS: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• BBC coverage
• UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: The fundraising efforts we just heard about in Ghana and Zambia are examples of private giving to help with relief in Haiti.  Then there’s the aid sent by governments around the world. There, too, the aid is coming from a variety of countries, some big and rich, others small and poor.  Stephanie Bunker is the spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.  Stephanie, your office keeps track of aid going to Haiti and we should add to any number of other places in need of humanitarian assistance.  Rank for us the top countries in terms of aid for Haiti since the earthquake.

STEPHANIE BUNKER: The top donor is the United States, followed by Canada.  Saudi Arabia is in third place now.  Spain, the U.K., France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Australia and so forth.

MARCO WERMAN: Now you mentioned Saudi Arabia as the third largest donor.  What have they offered to Haiti?

STEPHANIE BUNKER: Interestingly, this donation just came through and it’s $50,000,000.00 in cash that they are giving to the United Nations for something called the Emergency Relief and Response Fund in Haiti that can be immediately channeled in case there is some urgent need.

MARCO WERMAN: Is that typical for Saudi Arabia?  Have you seen them pop up before as a major donor for these kind of catastrophic situations?

STEPHANIE BUNKER: They’ve actually got a pretty good track record.  And if you recall, during the global food crisis they came up with, I think the single largest donation ever to the World Food Program.  I forget what it was, I think it was in the $700,000,000.00 maybe?  It was a massive contribution.

MARCO WERMAN: That was a couple of years ago when there just a bottoming out of wheat.

STEPHANIE BUNKER: Yes.

MARCO WERMAN: What about countries with fast growing economies like China, India and Brazil?  I didn’t hear them mentioned in the top six or seven.

STEPHANIE BUNKER: They’re not in the top six or seven, but Brazil has been very generous.  In financial terms alone Brazil has given $550,000,000.00 but that doesn’t necessarily reflect all that Brazil has done.  A lot of countries also provide in-kind aid and they don’t put a dollar cost to it and they provide a lot of emergency services; surgeons, search and rescue teams, and so on, that are very expensive, but they don’t necessarily indicate the cost of that.

MARCO WERMAN: If you look over the list of countries that are pledging small amounts, it’s striking how many poor countries are there.  I see Sierra Leone, Liberia, what are some of the poorest countries that have contributed and what are they bringing to the table?

STEPHANIE BUNKER: We were looking into this just yesterday.  We looked at the World Bank’s low income country category and we found out that the countries from that list include Ghana, which is contributing $3,000,000.00, the Democratic Republic of Congo is chipping in $2,500,000.00 as a pledge at least, and Sierra Leone which is giving $100,000.00.

MARCO WERMAN: Is the amount of aid that governments have pledged to Haiti unprecedented?

STEPHANIE BUNKER: It’s not unprecedented.  We saw a huge outpouring also for the tsunami, but it’s certainly extremely unusual.  It’s unusual in terms of its size and it’s unusual in terms of the scope of countries that are actually contributing in one way or the other.  I think it’s really very significant when you have a country like Cambodia contributing financially to a country like Haiti so far away.

MARCO WERMAN: Stephanie Bunker is the spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.  Stephanie thanks for taking a few minutes today to speak with us.

STEPHANIE BUNKER: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

The earthquake in Haiti happened more than two weeks ago. Yet aid organizations continue to struggle with basic questions there. Feeding hungry survivors has proved a big challenge. And work is just starting on temporary tent camps meant to get homeless survivors out of the squalid makeshift camps where they love now. Americans who want to help have been urged to give money to reputable aid organizations. But we’ve also heard of smaller organizations that are collecting things like tents or food. So, should you donate items, or is money still the best way to go? David Case is an editor with the online news website Global Post. Download MP3

• BBC Haiti coverage
• Case’s article “Help with money – not stuff”

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: The earthquake in Haiti happened more than two weeks ago yet aid organizations continue to struggle with basic questions there.  Feeding hungry survivors has proved a big challenge.  Work is just starting on temporary tent camps meant to get homeless survivors out of the squalid makeshift camps where they live now.  Americans who want to help have been urged to give money to reputable aid organizations, but we’ve also heard of smaller organizations that are collecting things like tents or food.  So, should you donate items or is money still the best way to go?  Well David Case is an editor with the online new website global post and David, you wrote an article, right after the earthquake titled “Help with Money, not Stuff” and then you said that experience has shown that regardless of your intentions, you’ll only make matters worse if you send stuff instead of money, so explain this to us.  Why?

DAVID CASE: That’s absolutely right.  My article is actually based on my experience Aceh, Indonesia, after the tsunami.  What we witnessed there was a lot of people with very good intentions, of course, sent boxes of all kinds of things, medical supplies, clothes, everything from Bibles to birth control pills.  One of the biggest challenges to a disaster situation like this is that the entire logistical system in the country will have broken down.  The hardest thing to do, really, is to distribute the supplies, not to actually get the supplies because good relief organizations can buy those supplies anywhere.  When you have unsorted materials, it creates an enormous logistical problem for the pros who are trying to get vital supplies in.

MARCO WERMAN: Ultimately money has to go to buying those supplies anyway, so what is the advantage of actually getting cash then?

DAVID CASE: The advantage of giving cash is that you can leave the buying decision to the pros.  One of the concerns, I think one of the reasons why people send stuff instead of cash is they’re worried how their money is going to be spent.  If you send your money to a reputable aid organization you don’t really need to worry too much about this.  From my experience in many places around the world, these are some of the most hardworking, dedicated people you’ll ever find.

MARCO WERMAN: As you said, you spent time in Aceh after the tsunami hit there in 2004 in Indonesia.  Presumably there were some medicines that were desperately needed that were sent in.  One can make a solid argument to send in medicine, can’t you?

DAVID CASE: Well you can and what we witnessed in Aceh is that so much medicine arrived that it rendered all of that medicine pretty much useless.  The French group, Pharmacists without Borders, did a study of the situation after things had gotten better in Aceh and they found that four pounds of medicine for every person in the tsunami zone had been sent.  Four pounds, that’s a lot of medicine.  What it meant was that vital supplies, like state of the art malaria medicines, were buried under boxes from people from Texas that had sent their half opened pharmaceuticals from their medicine cabinet.  The United Nations is capable, and other reputable relief organizations like Doctors without Borders, or Care to get the medicine to the right people and you should provide them with the means to actually do that by sending money.

MARCO WERMAN: Now you mentioned earlier the concern among Americans that if they give money it could potentially go down the tubes in a country like Haiti where there’s a long history of corruption.  That is a concern, isn’t it?

DAVID CASE: Well absolutely, but don’t forget if you send vital supplies, if they fall into the wrong hands they’ll just be sold on the black market for a lot of money.  If you send a tent right now in Haiti, people might be willing to pay a lot of money for that.  If you send money to a reputable relief organization, the chances of that relief getting in the right hands are far greater.

MARCO WERMAN: Now you mention tents, I’ve seen reports that Haitian President Rene Preval has actually asked the world to send 200,000 tents to Haiti.  What is the right response to that?

DAVID CASE: Well, again, let organizations that are the experts decide which tents to buy and how to deliver them to Haiti.  If every one of us went to EMS and bought a tent and sent it, the refugee camps would have a tremendous logistical problem of trying to teach people how to set these tents up.  These camps would be disastrously chaotic.

MARCO WERMAN: And so if people are concerned about shelter, maybe they should give to an organization that deals specifically wither shelter, is that what you’re saying?

DAVID CASE: Yes.

MARCO WERMAN: David Case, editor at the online site global post, thanks very much for your time.

DAVID CASE: Thank you Marco.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Haitian President Rene Preval has made an urgent appeal for more tents to house up to a million people left homeless by the quake two weeks ago. Preval said 200,000 tents were needed before the expected start of the rainy season in May. His call came as donor nations and international organizations met in Montreal, Canada to assess the aid effort and plan the next steps. Delegates at the meeting agreed Haiti would need long-term outside help. However not all Haitians are simply waiting for help from the outside, as WAMU’s Sabri Ben Achour reports. Download MP3

• BBC coverage
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MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman and this is The World.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today rebuked critics of the U.S. effort to help survivors of the earthquake in Haiti.  Those critics have included officials from France, Brazil and Italy.  Haitians themselves have complained that food, medicine and water have been slow to reach them, but Secretary Clinton today said she resents those who attack U.S. efforts to respond to historically disastrous conditions.  Meanwhile, Haitians are finding ways to help themselves as we learn in this report from Sabri Ben-Achour in Port-au-Prince.

SABRI BEN-ACHOUR:  At the half collapsed St. Francois de Salle hospital amputees lie in gurneys in the grass and in the garden.  A few have tarps above them, others just the trees.  One woman is injected with Morphine on what remains of her amputated leg as her wound is dressed.  Nearby a group of nurses is folding linens.  They begin singing to her.  Their songs praise God for keeping them alive.

Madame Pierre Viaux is head nurse.  We aren’t anybody special but God did miracles for us.  So many died, but we’re alive.  When we sing it gives comfort to the patients and they know that soon they’ll feel better.

In what in normal times would be a stone paved parking area, Michelle Marielaude leans on a baby’s crib where her nine-year-old nephew sits quietly.  He has some bandages and a lot of scrapes, but he’ll be okay.  Soon the family will go back to a camp in the public square that they now call home.  We’re a family, my sister, my nephew.  I asked them what there is to eat.  Nothing, nothing at all she says.  Doesn’t the Ministry of Health help and NGO I ask.  No, our Haitian friends, our neighbors help us.

Neighbors are helping each other everywhere we look here, up in the hills perched over the devastated city Fritz Mevs walks through the rubble strewn floors of his crumbling mansion.  The Christmas tree is still standing.  Not one of the golden ornaments broke in the earthquake.  Mevs didn’t lose family and he can afford to rebuild, so he shrugs off the loss of his home.  Mevs says he’s much more concerned about others in his neighborhood.  Their homes are gone and two dozen are living in his garden.  About a third are children and they take turns singing.  The songs end when one of the little boys chimes in.  My father is dead, he sang.

These neighbors didn’t have much before the earthquake and they have less now.  But they do have each other.  Twenty-one year old Jamson Coassiq.  Mr. Mevs is our neighbor and he’s helped us a lot with food and water.  Mevs son, Digo, pulls up in an SUV full of water bottles he’ll fill for the people here.

DIGO:  We’re still bringing every morning food and water.  Like right now I just brought a bag of rice.

SABRI BEN-ACHOUR:  The stew for that rice is simmering over a charcoal fire a few yards away by a patch of ginger lilies.  Dinner for everyone.  This neighborhood he says, has become like a big family.  For The World, I’m Sabri Ben-Achour, Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

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• BBC coverage
• The Guardian: aid agencies accused of ‘jostling for position’
• In pictures: Haiti receives aid and treatment

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MARCO WERMAN:  Speeding up the flow of aid to earthquake survivors is a top priority now in Haiti.  As we’ve heard for days now, there are countless obstacles in the way of aid workers but some say the aid groups themselves are contributing to the delays because they’re too busy competing with each other.  The World’s Matthew Bell has been looking into that.

MATTHEW BELL:  The correspondent in a recent CNN report from Haiti, went back and forth between two emergency facilities, one run by Israelis and one by Americans.  And she covered the story in a way that would have worked well on ESPN.  It was all about competition as she spoke to some American medical staff.

SPEAKER:  So the Israelis have set up a field hospital.  Have the Americans?  Has the American government set up a field hospital?

SPEAKER #2:  Currently not yet.  The Israelis came from the other side of the world.  It’s a frustrating thing that I really can’t explain.

SPEAKER #3:  Yeah, it’s something that makes you almost embarrassed to be an American.

SPEAKER:  The situation is beyond desperate at this point.

BELL:  The showdown element might make for better TV, but it also highlights the way humanitarian aid groups respond to a disaster like the one in Haiti right now.  Rhona MacDonald is an editor with the British medical journal, The Lancet.

RHONA MacDONALD:  Sometimes what we imagine aid agencies would all work together for the greater good, but unfortunately, on the ground that doesn’t always happen.  It’s about what each charity can do so they’re working, some of the time, in competition rather than collaboration and because of that, then they’re not most effective and so they’re not saving as many lives as they could.

BELL:  McDonald helped write an editorial in The Lancet today that knocks large aid groups for being so obsessed with raising money and telling their own story, that they sometimes let things like media interviews and public relations get in the way of delivering aid.

MacDONALD:  I think aid agencies have done as best they can under terribly difficult circumstances so I don’t want to spotlight any particular agency but again, the main point is they can do so much more when they work collaboratively and on the ground, they don’t often work collaboratively.

BELL:  Part of this is about economics.  Aid groups live off of donations.  They compete against each other for some of the same pots of money.  The way each group responds to Haiti in its hour of need, will make for an important element in future appeals for support.  But United Nations spokeswoman, Stephanie Bunker, says The Lancet goes too far when it says the aid industry is guilty of losing its humanitarian focus.

STEPHANIE BUNKER:  I really do not think that the agencies and the NGO’s are seeking media coverage as an end in and of itself.

BELL:  Bunker also disputes the contention that aid groups in Haiti are failing to coordinate their activities and work collaboratively.

BUNKER:  This article actually is throwing a whole lot of babies out with the bath water.  The United Nations, in our humanitarian work, we work with non-governmental organizations and I will tell you right here and right now that if we didn’t have them to work with, there wouldn’t be, you know, any kind of a humanitarian aid operation to scale.  They’re that important.

BELL:  Aid groups are not above criticism, says Peter Bell of Harvard University.  But in his experience, as a former president of the aid group, CARE, humanitarian agencies have been pretty good at staying on task and working together under difficult circumstances and he recalls something that happened in Haiti several years ago in the wake of tropical storm Jean.

PETER BELL:  We had the largest warehouse in Haiti and we had colleagues from World Vision and Catholic Relief Services, working right alongside us where people were clambering for food and young men waiting with pistols and rifles in the background, wanting to push their way to the front of the line and actually it was a very well coordinated and cooperative effort, under pressure.

BELL:  From outside Haiti, Bell says the aid effort does look chaotic and unorganized but he said that might have more to do with the extent of the damage and the numbers of dead and injured people, then with any tendency toward competition among aid groups.  For The World, I’m Matthew Bell.

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• BBC coverage of the Haiti earthquake
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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World.  Authorities say the hunt for any remaining survivors of Haiti’s earthquake is starting to wind down. Haitian officials says at least 75,000 people have been buried in mass graves, but the death toll from last week’s quake is much higher.  Despite the grim numbers, there are a few signs that things are slowly starting to improve.  Kenneth Merten is US ambassador.

KENNETH MERTEN: Some normal aspects of life are starting to come back. Open air markets are open, people appear to be trying to go out and about and doing their business to the extent they can.

WERMAN: Today, Haiti’s commerce minister said banks will start operating in the next few days to get cash flowing.  Still, many thousands are still waiting for basic help; food, shelter, and medical care.  Some are getting that care on the U.S. Naval Ship Comfort.  It’s a former oil tanker that’s been converted into a floating hospital.   The ship is now anchored a mile off shore of the capital Port au Prince.   Reporter Sabri Ben-Achour is on board and sent this report.

SABRI BEN-ACHOUR: A helicopter touches down on the flight deck of the U.S. Naval ship Comfort.  It’s carrying patients, victims of the earthquake.  They come on stretchers, down through elevators into Casualty Receiving or Cas Rec, where a team of medics is waiting for each one.   Commander Tim Donahue is head of surgery aboard the ship

TIM DONAHUE: Yeah, so his is a young gentleman who came from a shore facility who’s has burns on 30 percent of his body, covering his face, his arms and his chest.

BEN-ACHOUR: Some of the patients have been transported from other ships, aircraft carriers or frigates that don’t have the facilities to treat the most critically injured.  But more and more of the cases are arriving from the shore, 25 in an hour.   Lieutenant Commander Danny Dauroro is in charge of nursing.  He has done humanitarian work for years in Haiti.

DANNY DAURORO: This does not compare by any stretch of the imagination.  Just some of the crush injuries, some of them what we would call traumatic amputations, facial injuries.  It’s the orthopedic injuries and ensuing infections that have followed, that are unique to what we’re dealing with right now.

BEN-ACHOUR: The patients are coming from 35 medical nodes on the ground, sites where the military and NGOs and the Ministry of Health have set up clinics or triage centers.  Captain Andrew Johnson is in charge of medical operations on the ship.

CAPTAIN JOHNSON: So we’re expecting patients from all over and that’s what my men and I working right now, how to coordinate from all the sites to get the information in and have it in a focused manner.

SABRI BEN-ACHOUR: On the back of the ship, Amy Puffenberger is spraying uniforms with insecticide to kill off mosquitoes carrying malaria.

AMY PUFFENBERGER: This is what will prevent getting bitten.

BEN-ACHOUR: The bug spray is an extra precaution for rapid assessment teams that will go ashore by helicopter and bring back more patients.  Some are children, like this 12-year- old girl recovering from a hole punched out of her skull.  Neurologist Mill Etienne is treating her.

MILL ETIENNE: Well, basically she was playing outside of her house, and she said all of a sudden, she said the earth started trembling.  Because there is really not a clear word for earthquake in Haiti because it’s not something that we have there.  But that’s how she described it which I thought was a very vivid explanation.  And she said that a little bit of the house fell on her.  Her family was trying to run out of the house.  Unfortunately, her mom and her 16-year-old sister did not make it.

BEN-ACHOUR: Her father survived, and he’s living on the remains of their home.  Other children arriving onboard have no parents at all.  And that raises a difficult question, what to do with children, or anyone, once they’ve been treated on this ship.  Many have nowhere else to go.

ANDREW JOHNSON: We would actually want to try to get them back to Haiti. I mean, it’s their home nation.

BEN-ACHOUR: Again, Commander Andrew Johnson.

JOHNSON: We’re there trying to rebuild their infrastructure and assist them.  We’re here to help Haiti and the Ministry. And so we’ll work with the Ministry.  We’re not going to drop people off in the middle of a field somewhere.

BEN-ACHOUR: Johnson says he’s counting on NGO’s and USAID and Haiti’s Ministry of Health to step in.

JOHNSON: We’ll obviously have a plan to plug them back in and have some direction.

BEN-ACHOUR: But the Comfort just got here, and so far, patients are coming, not going.  This ship has space for a thousand of them.   For the World I’m Sabri Ben-Achour aboard the U.S.N. Comfort off the coast of Haiti.

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• BBC coverage
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MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston.  It was one week ago today that a magnitude seven earthquake hit Haiti.  Estimates vary but some put the death toll at 200,000.  More were injured and one and a half million people were left homeless.  Food, water and supplies have been slow to arrive.  The airport can’t handle enough planes and the quake severely damaged Haiti’s main port.  It wasn’t until today that workers started to unload the first cargo of aid to be delivered by ship.  Reporter Amy Bracken is in Petionville, a suburb of Port au Prince.  Amy, what are you seeing where you are right now?

AMY BRACKEN:  Where I am right now is actually an area that was much less hard hit than downtown Port au Prince.  But it’s still astonishing to walk around the parks and even the streets.  Some of the side streets are blocked off at night.  People put out tires and various things because they all want to sleep there.  There are blankets spread out and tarps strung over where people are sleeping.  Thank God it hasn’t rained yet.  If it does and it tends to rain very hard here, it will be a catastrophe for all these people sleeping in the streets and in parks.  A lot of people are clearly injured and there’s an incredible number of injured around the city.  Some of them have been able to get basic care and a lot of people go and get treatment and then go back out on the streets and live in completely unhygienic conditions and there’s very serious concern that a lot of people are going to be reinfected and that the rate of amputations is already extremely high.

WERMAN:  Amy, do people there know that massive amounts of aid and donations have been pouring into the airport?

BRACKEN:  A lot of people are talking about aid that has arrived in the airport and has been sitting on the tarmac and people know that there has been a hold up.  I mean we’re seeing reports about more aid coming in and there are food distributions around the city.  People are getting the word.

WERMAN:  And what about news?  I mean how are people actually getting their news in Port au Prince about what’s happening in the outside world, reaction to the earthquake, even body counts in their own city?

BRACKEN:  That’s a very good question.  Most people are pretty in the dark.  It’s a country that’s hooked on radio and a lot of the radio stations aren’t functioning and the newspapers aren’t working.  Some wealthier people some journalists, people with special access are able to go to the U.N.  They see CNN or some hotels.  Other people largely rely on word of mouth and a lot of the aid is going to the encampments that people are living in.

WERMAN:  I imagine the lack of reliable local radio stations is hampering the search for loved ones.  How are most families who’ve been torn apart by the quake, going about their hunt for missing family members if they don’t have like the mouthpiece of the local radio station to help them?

BRACKEN:  A lot of people have been just showing up at the places of work and the homes that their loved ones were at, just talking to people.  People are frantically trying to communicate with each other by phone, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.  Sometimes text messaging works.  I mean some people have been able to get internet access and have been able to go online to the various things.  There are various ways of looking at lists and people are trying to remind themselves to put themselves on those lists and that the loved ones on the list of people who have been found and are doing alright.

WERMAN:  Now I know you have many friends in Haiti from the many trips you’ve made there over the last seven years, Amy.  You’re trying to find some of those friends yourself.  How is that going?

BRACKEN:  All of my closest friends are fine.  I think everybody that I talked to though has some, at least distant relative or some friend who they’ve lost inevitably or who is missing.  Everybody’s stressed out about at least one person that is still being searched for.  I go around with a friend of mine, we’ve been driving around and when she runs into people, there’s always that conversation of have you seen so and so and sometimes the news is a great relief and sometimes it’s devastating.

WERMAN:  There have been reports describing varying degrees of looting and unrest.  Are you seeing any signs of that, Amy?

BRACKEN:  I personally have not seen any of that.  The only act of violence that I saw was at a cemetery when a man was furious that the man burying his daughter wasn’t paying enough attention to burying his daughter and he was all over the place, burying other people as well.  That got a little sketchy and I was actually at a nearby funeral and members of that funeral ran over to try to break up the fight, which I think shows that tensions are high but there’s also a strong effort on the part of a lot of people to keep things calm.  I spoke with a spokesperson from the U.N. yesterday who said that he had received no reports from the U.N. peace keeping mission or the U.N. police about specific incidents of violence.  He had only heard about looting, the kind of looting that could be expected in a situation like this.

WERMAN:  Reporter Amy Bracken in Petionville, Haiti.  We’ll be checking in more with you in the coming days.  Thanks very much.

BRACKEN:  Thank you.

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• BBC coverage

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MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman and this is The World.  U.S. military helicopters landed on the grounds of Haiti’s damaged presidential palace today.  More than 12,000 U.S. military personnel are taking part in the multi-national effort to help the earthquake victims.  Many in Haiti have cheered the arrival of U.S. troops but the American military presence there has ruffled some feathers abroad, most notably in France.  The World’s Gerry Hadden reports.

GERRY HADDEN:  The Americans controlling Haiti’s airport have had to delay the landing of dozens of planes, some carrying supplies, rescue personnel or doctors.  At least five French planes were forced to land in the Dominican Republic over the weekend.  One was carrying components of a large field hospital.  The Americans say the problem is there’s only one runway but French foreign diplomat, Alah [SOUNDS LIKE] Joyanday, filed a formal complaint with the U.S. embassy in Port au Prince over the incident.  Speaking on French radio today, he said he wants the United Nations to better define the Americans’ role in Haiti.  This is about helping the Haitian people he said; it should not be a military occupation.   It’s about getting Haiti back on its feet.  The allusion to occupation strikes a nerve among some in Europe.  When European see U.S. soldiers these days, they’re reminded of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which remain unpopular here but French political scientists, Francois Dreyfuss, says Europe’s leaders shouldn’t use that as a smoke screen to distract from their own lack of leadership in the Haitian crisis.

FRANCOIS DREYFUSS:  The European countries are not very happy when their weakness is displayed through the power of another country and mainly when it is U.S.

HADDEN:  Leaders from the 27 European Union member states, didn’t formally meet to discuss the crisis in Haiti until yesterday, nearly a week after the quake.  They have pledged over half a billion dollars in aid but they did not announce a joint, on the ground mission like the American one.  Instead, each country has been coordinating its own relief efforts.  Now some European governments are seeking to distance themselves from France’s public displeasure with the Americans.  Spain’s foreign minister, Migalan Jelmoratinos, said it made sense that the U.S. controlled the initial on the ground operations, because of its proximity to Haiti, its ties to the country and above all, its superior capacity to respond.  France’s irritation will probably blow over pretty quickly but the wariness may be remain and not just among the French.  That’s in part because the United States has a checkered history in Haiti.  While U.S. officials deny it, many inside and outside Haiti said the U.S. is partly responsible for two coups there over the last 20 years.  Among them is Canadian writer, Peter Halward.  Halward says it’s troubling that President Obama has asked his two predecessors to raise funds for Haiti.  He points out that former U.S. presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and loans to Haiti.  Speaking to the website, TheRealNews.com, Halward said this policy destabilized the country.

PETER HALWARD:  Yes there’s a need for emergency relief that’s undeniable but on what terms and under what conditions and in whose interests?

HADDEN:  U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, in Haiti this weekend, told the Haitian people that the U.S. would stay in Haiti for as long as needed but as a partner in rebuilding.  For The World, I’m Gerry Hadden.

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• BBC coverage
• Latest pictures from Haiti
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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World.  It’s been nearly a week since a 7.0 magnitude earthquake devastated Haiti.  Estimates of the number of killed are ranging as high as 200,000 and international aid is only just starting to get through to those in need.  This survivor spoke for many of his compatriots.

SURVIVOR: We don’t have no houses.  Most of the houses this way.  Even the houses stand up, people were scared to sleep on them.  Most of these people don’t eat since Tuesday night.  Last night they put food in the street, we can’t even get them.

MARCO: The BBC’s Nick Davis is in Haiti’s capital Port au Prince.  He says most Haitians are still waiting for aid.

NICK DAVIS: They’ve heard the C-130s flying in the major transport planes, the [PH] Antinox, knowing that on board is the aid and the supplies which they so vitally need.  But yet you go in the street and you ask people what, have you got any water, have you got any supplies, have the aid agencies reached you?  Have the US military reached you?  And they say no.  And it’s that which is causing insecurity because you have to bear in mind that there’s always a problem here.  Things have improved in the recent years but even so in situations like this people do what they can for their families and that is what the real concern is for people like Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary General who’s calling for more troops on the ground and he’s calling for more peace keepers.  The US are putting more troops here, an estimated 12,000 are expected to arrive at some point during the course of the day.  So that’s the reason why they are concerned about insecurity.  And people here as well can start to feel that maybe the mood is changing amongst their countrymen.

MARCO: So nearly a week on from the earthquake Nick, why is it so hard now still getting the aid to the people who need it?

NICK: It’s a combination of factors.  We knew about the bottleneck which existed at the airport.  It was a real problem with the initial air traffic control which was being run by the Haitians.  They were then sort of allowed to cede control or maybe they never cede control it was taken away from them by the US authorities who believe that they could do a better job.  So American air traffic controllers speeded up the process.  Once they did that it meant that the supplies not only landed but were unloaded quicker.  But another problem now is that it’s very difficult to be able to move the aid around.  There are real problems getting fuel into the country.  Every day we journalists have to go on missions to try and find petrol, to find diesel to fire up our generator so we can broadcast from the earthquake zone.

MARCO: What is going to happen with that fuel situation because the UN warned today that it is so dire that as you say road deliveries of aid are in jeopardy and so are the mobile phone networks.  So aid and communication could get shut down if there isn’t enough fuel.

NICK: That’s right.  The situation which we’ve been doing is we’ve been trying to bus fuel across from other countries, mainly of course the neighboring nation, and so that’s one thing to do.  The other way is to be able to go around the city trying to find fuel which is being sold at very high prices.  It’s gone up by a few times the price that it was before Tuesday and that’s the other way.  Clearly that’s not what’s going to be done by other relief organizations.  But you know as you say, it’s needed, it’s vital for the movement of aid.  It’s vital for the communications network which most of the communications use generators to power their huge towers.  Without that it’s going to make life here on the ground and also the coordination of the aid even more difficult.  You know this country has got the second largest number of NGOs in the world.  Now you can, you sort of put that into the equation.  You put the US into the equation.  You put the UN into the equation.  That’s a lot of coordination which needs to be done.

MARCO: And is it your sense that it’s clear who is coordinating things?  Is it clear who’s in charge?

NICK: When you get to the airport it’s very clear that the US is in charge because there are lots of G.I.s who ask for your passport and want to check your identification.  If you’re a US citizen you’re allowed in.  If you’re a journalist you’re allowed in.  If you’re Haitian you’re not.  So it’s very clear that in that respect the airport has become a de-facto part of the United States.  But elsewhere on the ground people are in some respects doing things themselves.  These are some of the most resilient people I’ve ever seen in my life.  And they’ve been dealing with this sort of reality, not earthquakes but, you know horrible disasters.  You know they face four hurricanes within a month in 2008.  The world did stuff, but it didn’t do a lot.  And then you know we zoom in and then disappear out.  Hopefully, some people are looking at this situation and hoping that there may be a silver lining, that the world will see what the situation is like, this poor country, and actually that they can actually start a rebuilding process here.

MARCO: The BBC’s Nick Davis in Haiti’s capital Port au Prince.

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