Skip to main content

Light up my Isles (Iles Cayemites)


A few months back, I wrote about a visit to Iles Cayemites, an isolated island off the coast of Corail/Pestel in Jeremie (Haiti).

With a population in thousands, the island was bare of even the most basic of necessities. MINUSTAH, through its Quick Impact Project funding constructed several water cisterns to collect rain water in several communities in the area. This has allowed the people to get access to fresh water and be less dependent on expensive water transported by boat to the island.

Next? This month, we installed sixteen solar-powered street lamps along the main thoroughfares Yes, solar-powered! Low maintenance; virtually zero running cost not to mention, environmentally-friendly.

More importantly, these will improve security in the area where with a population of around 20,000, not a single police can be found. The children who used to study under the candlelight or with gas lamps will now have this new found convenience.

The locals showed their full support for this project by taking charge of the digging of holes in which the posts were installed. In one of the localities, Boucan Noel, there was a feast - children danced!

The lamp posts intalled in some areas like Anse a Macon will also serve as beacons to fishermen who go about with their trade up til late at night.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Widespread Hunger Spurs Riots in Haiti

Violence has again recently struck Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere. It started last Friday in Les Cayes, one of the country's more touristic spots and since yesterday in Port-au-Prince. Today, the streets of Les Cayes and Port-au-Prince have been littered with burned tyres and other barricades. Vehicles parked on the road side have been smashed. Petrol stations along the main streets have been ransacked and vandalised. The people have been clamouring against "la vie chère"or the very high cost of living. Eighty percent of the 8.7 million Haitians live in poverty and 54 percent live in abject poverty, according to the CIA's World Factbook. Certain analysts have suggested that the demonstrations resulted mainly from the lack of response from the government concerning this widespread problem. This stance has been taken by the country's business community. The Haiti Chamber of Commerce has reiterated today that it was unfortunate that the governme...
1 comment
Read more

How Aid in Cash, Not Goods, Averted A Famine In Somalia

“ Increasingly, it became clear that a new flow of international aid, cash, and not goods, worked to mitigate the risks of an immediate famine. For now, in spite of acute risks in some parts of the country, Somalia has successfully averted a food crisis,” How Aid in Cash, Not Goods, Averted A Famine In Somalia 08 September - Source: IPS News - 594 Words In February, when the government of Somalia sounded an alarm to the UN about risks of a famine in the country, the UN’s Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), besides quickly shuffling a response team, was acting from a steep sense of history. The Office, instead of sending out massive aid packages, distributed cash vouchers to families who could spend it to buy goods according to their needs. The famine between the years 2010 and 2012, which killed more than a quarter of a million people in the country, offered important lessons to the aid community. This spring, when poor rainfall led to large scale crop failure...
Post a Comment
Read more