In early May 2005, U of T undergraduate students Faraz Siddiqui and Anas Nader volunteered with Third World Awareness, a Toronto-based NGO, to travel to Haiti and begin construction on a soup kitchen for a community in desperate need. Cité Soleil is the largest, poorest and most dangerous slum in Port-au-Prince.
There, in a neighbourhood fractured by conflict and poverty, Siddiqui and Nader constructed a kitchen facility next to an elementary school and started a food program. Many children in Cité Soleil go without meals for days, unable to afford the small fee a local woman charges for a meal.
Siddiqui and Nader are members of the University of Toronto International Health Program, a non-profit student organization that advocates for international health issues. While in Haiti, both also volunteered at a Malnutrition Centre and a Centre for Disabled Children, where they helped with basic needs like feeding and changing children.
Life is hard for international volunteers in Cité Soleil. Haiti has a history of political upheaval since the 2004 coup that ousted President Jean Baptiste Aristide. Today, fighting complicates delivery of medicine and supplies to the country.
“One of the main challenges in a conflict is [the lack of] movement within the country. Conflict prevented us from getting to places even a block away,” Nader said.
“We would get almost two or three reports every day from our landlords to tell us whether it was a good day and ‘a good time to go,’ or a bad day [and] we’d better keep out of the area,” said Siddiqui.
“While we were in Haiti, we saw a few injured people. We heard the bullets. Apparently, it was normal for the people there,” said Nader.
The two students saw armed rebels patrol the streets of the slum. At the time, over 32 different factions controlled the various streets in Cité Soleil.
“The gangs over there have an unwritten rule that if anyone is doing any work in what they consider their part of the slum, the NGO has to pay a commission. Now we didn’t have much money to do the project, let alone bribe someone. They were trying to intimidate us and our friends,” said Siddiqui.
“Some were gangs, but some were rebels. The political situation in Haiti is vague and it’s hard to know what their motivation is. The situation was bad until the locals got to know us. A lot of the gang members have family in the town and once they got to know us they gave us a hand in what we were doing,” Nader related.
The kitchen was completed on May 20, and the team celebrated the building’s opening by hiring the local cook to prepare a ceremonial meal of rice, beans, chicken and sauce for the 280 students.
In some areas of conflict, the rebels used the elements against the locals.
“In the Congo, rebels have driven people from the village into the forest and left them there, and the malaria mosquitoes get them. They don’t have to kill these people. The mosquitoes take care of them,” Siddiqui said.
AIDS and tuberculosis are the main health issues in Haiti, but many of the diseases like pneumonia, diarrhea and malaria that affect Haitians in slums like Cité Soleil are treatable. Improving access to food and providing children with an education may indirectly solve the health issues faced by the poor in Haiti, as better nutrition and AIDS awareness programs may prevent disease.
Katrina Harris, a master’s student at U of T, has also volunteered in public health projects, and is now following up on that work. Two summers ago, Harris worked in Kisumu, Kenya with the development organization Africa Now. Harris helped with data collection and analysis for water and sanitation projects.
“I went to Kenya as a student. I wanted to be exposed to the real work of international development,” she said.
The idea for her current project, Project Re-Cycle, set to start this summer, developed from her daily bicycle-taxi (or pedi-cab) commute to the office where she worked. For her project, Harris was awarded $15,000, which she will use for the benefit of the whole Kisumu community.
“The project was definitely locally inspired. I had no idea of the needs of this particular local group before I came there. I started asking these bicycle-taxi guys a whole bunch of questions: What do you do when it rains? What do you do for medical care? What do you earn?” Harris said in a telephone interview.
She realized that she couldn’t get all the answers to her questions in the fifteen minutes it took to travel to work. She conducted a formal survey, connected with local NGOs and produced a report identifying the main challenges faced by Kisumu pedi-cab drivers, and how to deal with them.
Harris explained that she got the idea for the micro-finance project when she realized that many of the drivers didn’t own their bicycles.
“If there was a system in place that would allow them to lease their bicycles so they could eventually own them, then they can use the money they save for other things, such as health care,” she said. She found that 81 per cent of drivers were earning less than their daily living costs. Owning a bike might mean an income subsidy of 25 per cent.
What motivated these U of T students to pack their bags, bid adieu to family and friends, and leave for a country where a mosquito bite might mean death? Nader explained, “I felt like I needed to be in the field to do the work in the right way.”
“I felt disillusioned by people for whom a greater motivation [to become doctors or nurses] was money or prestige,” added Siddiqui. “The doctors over there have inspired us. The people who work in such areas don’t make a lot of money doing it. They are the ones who are truly committed to what health care is all about.”
Here at U of T, Siddiqui, Nader and a team of UTIHP members have organized a Conference on Health and Human Rights taking place this Friday and Saturday. The conference will feature lectures, discussions and a networking NGO fair.
