Adams' Story

Six months after the earthquake, SCIAF’s Clea Ferguson visited Haiti to meet some of the people who have been helped thanks to money donated by schools in Scotland. She spoke to 20-year-old Adams and this is his story…

From the inside, with pictures of film stars and musicians torn from magazines pinned to the walls, Adams’ shelter doesn’t look too different from a young person’s bedroom in Scotland.

Then you step outside, and you’re bang in the middle of the noisy, crowded Delmas 68 camp – one of the hundreds of makeshift camps now littered across the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince.

Adams is just one of the many thousands of people in Haiti who have been helped thanks to the support of people in Scotland. In the 37 seconds that the earthquake lasted, he and his family lost everything. His home is now one small room that he built himself.

He told me: “Life is very different now. Before, I lived in a house. I was watching television when it happened, and I ran outside. Everyone was crying, screaming and bleeding. Every time I sleep I think about it.”

When the earthquake hit on January 12th over 200,000 people were killed and over a million people lost their homes. SCIAF has been working with our partner organisation, Caritas Haiti, to help the survivors.

Adams explained: “Caritas gave us food, showers, toilets and drinking water. I was given a hygiene kit with soap, a towel and a toothbrush. Caritas helps us a lot.”

He gave me this message to pass on to SCIAF’s supporters.

“I’d like to say thank you to people in Scotland. Life is not finished for us in Haiti. I think there is hope. I’d like to be a doctor one day. Thank you to SCIAF, and Iask you to keep helping us and to not forget us.”

Generous people across Scotland helped to raise over £1 million for SCIAF’s Haiti Earthquake Appeal. In the months and years to come, that money will be used to help people like Adams get
back on their feet and begin the long
and difficult job of rebuilding their country.