Mercy Corps works to educate Haitians about making water safe

on December 25, 2010 at 9:30 PM, updated December 25, 2010 at 9:45 PM

CITÉ BOB, Pétionville, Haiti -- It helps to be nimble to visit this hanging tent city where Lucienne Henrius shares a tarpaulin hut with her three young sons, John Charles, Jean-Paul and Jerry.

Even the goat kids watch their steps as they climb from one tiny stomped dirt foundation to another.

Perched on a slope above Port-au-Prince, this small camp overlooks a flood wash, dry in the aftermath of hurricane season, that is speckled with goats, naked boys and an infinite array of plastic debris.

Before the cholera outbreak this fall, when Henrius, 33, ran out of water, the rivulet offered a tempting solution to thirst. But these days she is a convert to chlorinated water and the sanitation and hygiene efforts of humanitarian aid groups like Mercy Corps.

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Henrius, widowed by the earthquake and left to care for three young sons, has just returned from a hygiene awareness talk across the road from the camp. She showed her identification card and received 14 vouchers for five-gallon jugs of not-quite potable water, along with enough chlorine tablets to make it safe to drink -- her water allowance for the week.

"They tell us that cholera can kill," she says, "so I take care with the water."

She has obviously listened at the weekly voucher distribution, where a Mercy Corps worker uses a megaphone to drill 1,425 residents of the camp about how to use the chlorine tabs and why. Earlier, Henri Louissint, 73, took the megaphone to repeat the morning's lesson:

"To avoid cholera, you must put a chlorine tablet into a five-gallon bucket of water and let it sit for half an hour before drinking it," he said, his word sure and fast. "When you do this process you can drink the water worry-free. It's not going to be bad for you. Have no fear!"

After passing the megaphone back, Louissint continues. "You should wash your hands regularly with that clean water, eat food that is cooked with the same water, wash in the same water."

But first the water must be made safe.

While Louissint speaks, a local water company truck pumps undrinkable water into a cistern outside a half-built house across the road from Cité Bob, snaking a hose through the gate and down the front walk past a garden of lemongrass, callaloo and manioc root. How dear is water in Haiti, even water that has five times too little chlorine to safely drink? As Louissint reminds his neighbors of the new order of water safety, two young men collect water that has dripped into a basin from a seam in the thick hose pouring into the cistern. They run buckets of the water to the concrete cistern and pour it down.

The water in the cistern measures 0.1 part chlorine. The ideal concentration: 0.5 to 1 part.

To ensure that residents are getting the message that unsafe water is the source of cholera, camp president Justal Pierre-Louis randomly selects one of Louissint's neighbors for a water test.

Too little chlorine in household water can raise the risk of water-borne bacteria in wash and drinking water; too much chlorine consumed long-term can carry its own risks.

Inside the first tent, Orisme Vergnaud cracks the lid on a 5-gallon paint bucket and pours out a cup of his family's drinking water.

Vergnaud, 22, lives with his mother and stepfather in an improved tent fashioned from assorted non-governmental organization tarps.

Like Henrius, he has fitted his structure with a wooden doorframe and a sheet of corrugated metal for a door. There is a high wooden platform, about the size of a wide twin bed, against one side and a peaked ceiling a few inches taller than his 6-foot height. There are no windows. Sandbags line the exterior. One corner inside works as a makeshift kitchen.

Outside, the temperature is in the mid-80s, and a sweet ocean breeze flaps the tarp; inside the air feels 10 degrees warmer.

The test finds 2.5 parts of chlorine in Vergnaud's water, coloring it fuschia to show it is significantly more chlorinated than necessary.

After a few rapid questions and answers in Créole, the reason becomes clear: Older chlorine tabs had higher concentrations of chlorine than the new tablets. The old tabs were four per five-gallon bucket. The new tabs call for a single tablet per five-gallon pail. Vergnaud did his chlorinating in a one-gallon container.

The chlorine level, though high, won't sicken him unless he drinks it for a long time. It is better than drinking water with too little chlorination.

Trish Morrow is Mercy Corps' water, sanitation and hygiene engineer for the region that includes Port-au-Prince, where the aid agency oversees hygiene in 25 camps, including Cité Bob.

Fully half of Mercy Corps's efforts in Haiti are focused on hygiene promotion to prevent the spread of waterborne disease. Aid workers set off on motorbikes shouldering backpacks filled with bleach solution to spray down homes of the sickened in mountainous settlements -- the primary tool for preventing spread of cholera in areas beyond radio waves, cellular coverage and roads.

Down in the agency's tent cities, full wash services are in place, including lined latrines, water vouchers, aquatabs, hygiene education and oral rehydration salts to be used immediately if symptoms of waterborne infection begin. Chlorination stations at the camp also purify the 20 to 30 liters of water each resident uses daily for washing up and showering.

"It is such an infectious bacteria," says Morrow. "It's better if you do it all."

Residents at Cité Bob are taking the risk seriously, says Christnel Cadet, the 37-year-old entrepreneur who lives in the half-built house behind the cistern.

"This community is being very conscientious about their children's health," he says as a hose fills his cistern with not-quite potable water, which he in turn, sells to camp residents armed with chlorine tablets provided by Mercy Corps.

On an average day, he fills the cistern with three truckloads of water. Residents buy 12,000 gallons per day, Cadet says, up from summer water demand highs because of the new health concerns.

"It is because of the fear of cholera," he explains. "Now, if a kid falls down, the mother is giving him a bath with chlorinated water. They are washing their hands, cleaning off their feet before stepping inside. People are taking more precaution."

The camp has had just a single case of cholera.

Back at Mercy Corps headquarters in Pétionville, a hilltop suburb of Port-au-Prince, agency country director Brian Oakes explains how much depends on getting Haiti hooked on clean water. Worry about the mounting death toll helps the cause.

Oakes has lived off and on in Haiti since 1976, settling permanently outside the capital after Hurricane Jean killed 3,000 people in 2005. Time seems to be marked by disaster in Haiti: In the past 35 years, the country has deposed presidents, been parched repeatedly by drought, drowned in hurricanes, and been buffeted by earthquake, aftershocks, famine and blight. Cholera, though, in a place where river water is commonly shared for bathing, waste disposal and consumption, has terrified Haitians.

Complicating matters is the reality that more than half of the country's residents live far off every grid, inaccessible by roads, unreachable by airwaves, and beyond modern conveniences like cell phones.

"They become the unknowing victim of a disease not seen before this fall in generations," Morrow says. "Without contact with the broader world in Haiti, they have no weapons against getting sick and no resources to seek medical attention when they fall ill."

By comparison, Lucienne Henrius is lucky. She fears for her sons' health -- but clutches her chlorine tablets close.

Farther down the mountain outside la Coquille, a Créole restaurant recommended by Condé Nast Traveler, the water worries have brought about new protocols.

Business-class Haitians, NGOs and expats treasure la Coquille for its buffet lunch of griot, spicy, deep-fried bits of pork shoulder, diri jon Jon, rice with wild black mushrooms, and pain patate, an addictive sweet-potato pudding. But now to get inside the restaurant they must first wipe their feet on a foam mat soaked with bleach. Then a host directs guests to wash their hands in a bucket fed by acrid, chlorinated water.

"Because of the cholera," the host says, offering a paper towel. "We must be cautious, mustn't we?"

-- Kimberly A.C. Wilson