Message in their bottles: Real relief for Haiti

Mar 6, 2010 — Star Tribune

Jim Spencer

Mar. 6, 2010 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- At 3 in the morning, while most of the 2 million residents of the Dominican Republic's capital city slept, David Preiner and Daniel Hungria climbed bleary-eyed into a pair of rented Suzuki sedans and followed a 26-foot covered truck out of town, headed for Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

They knew the 250-mile ride over the mostly narrow, hole-pocked two-lane road would take at least nine hours, probably more. Their hired truck, loaded with 20,000 bottles of drinking water, lumbered slowly. As they settled in for the ride, and the sweltering day that lay ahead, they also knew that the water they carried was not even a drop in the bucket of Haiti's need. But Preiner and Hungria, young business partners who worked previously in Minnesota, felt compelled to do something after the devastating earthquake leveled parts of Haiti in January, killing nearly 200,000 people.

In the hours after the quake, they seized on water. It was "an immediate need that we knew we could fulfill," Preiner explained in his usual analytical monotone, which understates the emotions his efforts provoke. He and Hungria delivered 1,200 bottles using a minivan the day after the quake. On a second trip a few weeks later, they brought 19,000 bottles in the truck.

This day, on their third trip to Haiti, they intended to pass out an additional 20,000 bottles, distributing a little hope in the process.

Their ultimate goal -- to pass out 100,000 bottles -- will be a very modest achievement in the big picture of Haitian earthquake relief. But as Preiner said, "I'd rather do something small than plan for something big that never happens."

Twelve hours, one detour and a wrong turn later, Preiner and Hungria arrived in Port-au-Prince. Their paid Dominican aid team included the truck driver, his assistant and two ex-Dominican soldiers with concealed weapons; Hungria's cousin, a former Dominican drug cop, also road along.

For their first stop, they chose a shantytown in a field that someone claimed once served as the private airstrip of Haitian dictators Poppa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier. It's hard to know what is true in Haiti. What Priener and Hungria knew to be true on this day was that the field served as home to an unruly crowd desperate for water. From the truck's sweltering, enclosed metal storage compartment, Preiner -- 6-foot-2 and rail thin with pale skin -- and Hungria -- 5-7 and stocky with the cocoa hue of Dominican roots -- passed out bottle after bottle. They had distributed only about 2,000, when small tree limbs gripped like baseball bats signaled trouble on the dusty plain. Spontaneous wrestling matches broke out. A few punches flew. Both men jumped fearlessly into the roiling crowd, trying to keep order. No one took a swing at them, although a few angry people threw gravel. But to keep their latest attempt at earthquake relief from becoming a riot, they needed to leave.

Crullaune Rose Gurda, 23 years old and nine months pregnant, was grateful the pair hung on as long as they did.

"The clean water is very important," she said through a translator, after returning to her shanty with a package of 20 bottles balanced on her head. "If there is no bottled water, we must drink from the wells. Water from the wells is not good for the baby."

In Haiti, dirty water drives the highest infant mortality rate in the Western Hemisphere. But in a country of 9 million, where earthquake-buckled streets have made an already lousy infrastructure worse, well water can be risky for anybody.

Into the hands of those in need

In the early hours after the earthquake's first strike, Preiner and Hungria, who moved their mortgage business from Minnesota to the Dominican Republic in 2008, decided to get real relief to real people, something big government agencies and other well-heeled aid organizations have struggled to do.

"There are people who don't have the ability to go where the food is or where the water is," Hungria explained. "It's different when the help is coming straight to you. And if we have the ability to bring it to them, why not?" They beat almost all the big agencies into Port-au-Prince after the earthquake and knew immediately that they would come back.

"We saw people crying. We saw dead bodies of small children," Preiner said. "But in all of that despair [we saw] how happy and grateful people were when they saw us. Even though it was just a bottle of water, it seemed to provide some kind of hope."

Trip No. 2 rendered an unexpected result. Preiner and Hungria went in with 19,000 bottles of water and came out with a 9-year-old Haitian orphan. A Jesuit priest begged them to take the boy, whose parents died in the earthquake. Preiner, who is 24, was reluctant and said so. In what would become an hourlong debate, Preiner handed out water while trying to verify the child's story and call lawyers about taking the boy. The decision boiled down to a simple assertion by the priest:

The child would likely die if left alone in Haiti.

Preiner and Hungria chose to save his life.

"We brought him home, gave him a hot meal and let him clean up," Preiner said. "We bought him a bunch of clothes, looked at a couple of orphanages and found a good spot for him."

Calm in the face of tension

No one keeps tabs on how many independent operators distribute aid directly the way Preiner and Hungria do, but they practice a principle that could apply to any relief supplies, not just water. They meet the earthquake's victims where those victims live and set a calm example.

"No agresivo [don't be aggressive]," 29-year-old Hungria urged his makeshift aid team as they set up their second aid stop after leaving the shantytown. A Haitian who understood Spanish translated into Creole. A young volunteer who had been whacking an expandable police baton into his palm put away his weapon.

"In our name, we thank you and say congratulations," said 29-year-old Victor Harry-Jacques as lines progressed at Preiner and Hungria's second stop deep in a poor neighborhood of wrecked homes with narrow dirt streets no wider than alleys.

They passed out several thousands more bottles than they did at the first stop. Then, as the crowd began to grow uncontrollable again, they shut the doors and headed deeper into the neighborhood. At the third stop, as a Haitian who lived in the area helped keep the lines orderly, Hungria spied a couple of children holding machetes.

"Don't worry," a Haitian volunteer told him. "All they want is water."

As hundreds of people received many thousands of bottles, a UNICEF SUV squeezed by blaring hip-hop music so loud that it drowned out a nearby Jehovah Witness church service. U.N. troops have occasionally offered armed cover when they happened upon Preiner, Hungria and their crew, but mostly, the team works independently. The young men try to collect money on a website -- www.communityadvantage. org -- and to attract sponsors, such as Ceres, an environmental company, that paid for the truck on this latest go-round. The rest has come out of their pockets.

As night fell on their third trip, the pair made a fourth stop. They were near exhaustion, and the crowds grew more unruly. But the truck was less than half full and emptying fast. Sweat soaked the white T-shirts the aid team wore to distinguish themselves. Preiner and Hungria battled fatigue from 15 hours of effort. Some bigger, stronger aid recipients used the darkness to breach the lines.

"I can't believe that my people act like animals," said a Haitian woman.

All of them don't.

The fifth and final stop came at the same place they ended their second trip -- a Baptist church. Here, at last, was the model any relief agency would covet: Haitians politely passed roughly 6,000 bottles of water from the truck to the sanctuary.

The Haitian volunteers who had spent the previous five hours passing out water got a couple of packages of bottles each. Hungria collected their names and cell phone numbers. The truck was empty save for a few bottles of water held back to give Dominican border guards a couple of hours later.

From the border it would be six more hours of travel, battling drowsiness with caffeine and loud salsa music.

It was 4 a.m. -- 25 hours after they left -- when Preiner, Hungria and their team finally returned to Santo Domingo. Their eyes burned. Their muscles ached. After three trips to Haiti, Preiner and Hungria had passed out about 40,000 bottles of water.

Only 60,000 more to go to reach their goal. Both young men predicted they'd make it.

Jim Spencer --612-673-4029

Newstex ID: KRTB-0281-42634991