Port au Prince

First day in Port au Prince. I flew in from JFK airport in New York and found myself sitting beside a young woman, Acephie. She was taking her two month old daughter, Joanne, to visit her family for the first time.

Acephie left Haiti with her parents when she was a child and was living in New York. She seldom managed to get back to visit but had made sure that she continued to practice her native language - Creole.

For many years she was unable to go home due to the political violence that made Haiti the most dangerous country in the world according to the UN. But over the last two years she has been back twice.

She was interested in why I was going to Haiti and guessed correctly that I worked for a development agency. Tourists are still very rare - visitors are warned away by guide books and web sites.

I asked if she missed Haiti. She told me that she would love to live there but, as a nurse, she was acutely aware of the fact that one in five Haitian babies never reach their first birthday - the vast majority die from easily preventable diseases.

She explained that it wasn’t so much violence that she feared but the poverty which makes every day for most Haitians a struggle for survival. Many parents can’t afford to give their children the food they need to grow up healthily and have nowhere to go if their children become sick.

From the aeroplane we looked down on Haiti - a barren, brown mountainous island that has been ravaged by deforestation. Only 2% of the original trees are left. With no forest cover, soil erosion is a serious problem. When there are heavy rains, rivers the colour of milky coffee - filled with precious top soil - flow into the turquoise Caribbean.

As we said goodbye at the airport, Acephie gave me a few safety warnings but also said that I was sure to meet some of the kindest people in the world. I will be here for just over three weeks visiting three projects supported by SCIAF before going over the border to the Dominican Republic where SCIAF funds a project for Haitians who have become refugees.