Day 29 - Haiti: The smoke came from there...

This is going to be a different type of entry. Because surprisingly, even through all of this, I didn't light up once - this is after all a blog about my quitting smoking... But I realize that my back-patting blog can show in a different light the challenges I faced recently, making quitting smoking seem so petty (although all ex-smokers know it's really huge, in its own perspective).

January 12th - 5:45 pm Get home, throw my tired body onto the couch. (DON'T light up that habitual cigarette.) Chit chat with my boyfriend as we usually do, until I reach over and open my Macbook. Like I usually do. I log on to Twitter and BOOM! my life as I know it changes drastically for the next three weeks.

The Twitterverse is all a buzz about this huge earthquake in Haiti.

I start chasing all of the sources that claim to have the most information, follow them, turn on my television. I'm completely enveloped in these tweets claiming live feeds and 'realtime' information. So I tune into one of these streaming video feeds from someone's living room, a makeshift studio put together on what seems to be a dining room table. This guy is chatting with a frazzled Internet provider CEO, also livestreaming from his home office... in Petionville, Haiti. It's just a few hours after the earthquake, and you can hear the quiver in his voice. He says his wife is a doctor (she's yelling at him to get out of the house, it's not safe).

More and more people are tuning into this amateur report. More and more people are English. This feed being in French, I start blindly translating what's being said, from French to English. I must have done so for 4 hours, non-stop.

That was no longer enough for me, though. The calls for help were still coming through via Twitter the next day. This time it was about the lack of water, medical help and people stuck under rubble. It was frustrating. At that point, only the US Coast Guard had made it there and were doing all they could in Port-au-Prince to be of any help at all. But it clearly wasn't enough.

Chaos was seeping in. So I googled. This was frustrating. How could I help? There must be something that can be done, this is ridiculous! I was seeing calls for help in orphanages! No... not babies!?.... I kept googling until I feel upon this curious website called Ushahidi (haiti.ushahidi.com). There were other emergency calls being uploaded, information, a map... this was amazing. So I punched in the information I got until I realized that the orphanage had already been written about a few hours earlier. Had someone followed up on this? Was this true? What was happening, was someone dispatched?

I knew that all of this was extremely new, never been done before - not that I was aware of, anyways. Twitter wasn't very old, I'd never heard of a region hit by a natural disaster with cell and phone lines down, but Internet still being up and running. Were the people in charge of organizing emergency calls getting this information? Were they doing anything with it?

So I searched online and tried to get direct "from the source" information on how the orphanage was doing. I managed to reach the Colorado office of the haitian orphanage. The owner was chatting via Yahoo! Messenger with the orphanage itself and confirmed that they'd had no help yet. So I updated the Ushahidi post with the confirmation and my information. I posted it on my Twitter page, too. (You never knew who was going to read your tweet!)

Within an hour, both Oxfam and World Water Relief called me to find out where I got this information and how they could help. Wow! I was excited and nervous all at once! (It worked! It worked? Wow, it actually worked. Then, kinda like that candy that pops in your mouth, I was getting all of these new contacts, getting and giving information about the conditions on the ground in Haiti, acting as a liaison between the Web and the Ground via the Phone. (My cell phone bill is going to be ridiculous. RIDICULOUS! - but worth it.) At one point, I was actually giving information on the road conditions and the quickest routes into Port-au-Prince to a doctor on his way to help out wherever they were needed, armed with water filtration devices. Through the good graces of the domino effect, the kids at God's Littlest Angels actually got water the next day!!! That was the first time I had cried. I had had a tiny role to play in that and I felt peace. Butterfly effect. *Shivers*

The next two weeks consisted of coordinating with forces on the ground and other Voluntweeters (lol, I know... corny but adequate) - There was an army of volunteers from all walks of life gathering for one cause. It was awe inspiring. From pastors to wedding planners, radio DJs to college students. Musicians to former politicians and actors to hackers - we were all uniting and making sure that action and accountability were synonymous. Then the media got hold of what was being done, and like a wildfire, I was getting requests for interviews from national networks. Live, pre-recorded, Skype, etc. I hadn't even gotten that much media for the band!!! This was awesome because it was actually for something way bigger than me. For once I was the mouthpiece for a cause not affiliated to an organization, but rather free-spirited, intelligent and collective effort.

Everyone over the past few weeks has felt that buzz, that collective energy flowing through each one of us, inspiring action and involvement. It's been incredible to be part of it and connect with like-minded people. It's been awesome to witness the birth social media's soul.

I'm a singer. An event planner. I'm not SuperWoman or Storm. I have an addiction to my Macbook and iPhone. That's all.

The work continues. I'm rested (yet sick), happy and ready to roll up my sleeves again. And I STILL haven't lit back up again.

Photo by Matthew McDermott