ActionAid UK’s Head of News Anjali Kwatra is in Port au Prince as part of ActionAid's response to the devastating earthquake of January 12th 2010

Monday 1st February 2010

Despite having been in close contact with colleagues in Haiti every day since the earthquake I didn’t really have a sense of what Port-au-Prince would be like nearly three weeks on.

Apart from the lorry loads of aid on the road, Haiti seemed amazingly normal - until we got closer to the capital and began to see houses collapsed into huge piles of rubble. Some buildings looked as if they could come crashing down at any second, while right next door others seemed completely untouched.

But what was most surprising to me – although it really shouldn’t have been - was how people were just getting on with their lives. At every street corner women were selling water, snacks, vegetables, shaving foam and shoes. Some shops were open while teams of men wearing bright yellow USAID T-shirts cleared rubble from the roads and children played in the streets.

At ActionAid’s office people were busy preparing for their next round of food distributions on Monday as well as developing longer term plans.

It was amazing to see how productive they are being despite all of them being affected themselves by the disaster. When I asked one of the managers Marie- Andree where she was sleeping, she replied simply: “The street."

• More blogs from Haiti
• Real Lives: Stories from the survivors of the earthquake
• Haiti Crisis Relief Homepage

We urgently need your help to stop this terrible disaster from turning into a long-term catastrophe. We have set up Emergency Appeal pages where you can help the thousands of Haitians who desperately need your support:

• In Brazil
• In the United Kingdom
  If you live in the UK, you can also donate through the multi-agency "Disaster Emergency Committee" (DEC)
• In the United States
• In Italy
• In Australia
• In Spain
• In Sweden