Our opening day in Toronto, yesterday, saw 1,531 visitors. A new record. It was a busy day, but the team are all super excited that so many people are taking the time to see the camp.

Our mock refugee camp exhibition takes place every 2 years in Canada.  Other MSF offices, including USA and Australia also regularly bring the show to the public.  One of the new aspects to the roadshow this year is the Haiti shelter.  It was created by a friend of MSF in his living room.  The shelter is a cubed frame, made of sticks.  The walls and roof are formed of plastic tarpaulin and bed sheets, and the structure is held together by string, also tied to rocks for support in the wind.

It was quite windy in Ottawa so I was curious as to how the shelter would survive the elements.  In fact, it resisted the wind and rain quite well.  Sadly, back in the real Haiti, it’s the middle of the rainy season and the hurricanes are about to hit and I don’t think real shelters will survive very well.

We talk about Haiti, not because it is any more important than the 60 or so other countries where we work, but because it is one that the local population might be more familiar with.  Although my own perspective is that the media is losing interest in Haiti.  I’ve struggled to take most of the media seriously when I see the attention it gives to local non-news items and disregards atrocities that happen overseas.  Haiti is also dropping from the media’s interest.  Some places we work, including Papua New Guinea, where I used to work, rarely make the news.

We had 4 medical centres in Haiti at the time the earthquake struck.  All were instantly destroyed.  Today we have 19 medical centres plus mobile clinics.  The media might be losing interest in Haiti, but we are not.  Please come and visit our refugee camp and see what we have to say about Haiti and the other 60 countries that we work.  Each tour guide has personal experience of working for MSF overseas and has a different story to tell.

We are open in Toronto from Thursday 27^th to Sunday 30^th.

The camp is open in each city from Thursday to Sunday inclusive. On the Monday we are busy taking down the structures and loading them into the truck. Then it’s a drive to the next location. Tuesday is a break for most of us followed by a busy Wednesday unloading the truck and building all the structures again.

Getting water can be difficult – and that applies to our mock refugee camp as well as real ones. Upon arrival at Montreal there was a mix up. At 3pm Wednesday a tanker of water was due to arrive. By 5pm it had not. Our unlucky logistical coordinator agreed to meet them at 6am Thursday (3 hours before open). They told him then that they didn’t have a tanker and that they would use a long hose to connect the municipal supply to our 950 litre water bladder. By the way, 950 litres is what the average Canadian would use in 3 days or what the average refugee would make last 190 days in an emergency. The hose pipes couldn’t connect and around 15 minutes before opening they located a tanker and we had water for our mock-camp.

So finding water in Montreal wasn’t easy. In the desert, you might imagine, it’s even more tough. When I asked the lady from Rwanda last week what she thought of our camp, it was the queuing for water that she remembered most vividly. People say that you never forget not having enough water.

Like Ottawa our camp has been busy – we have had over 1,000 visitors every day in both locations, partly due to the invitations we sent to donors and schools, but also due to the media coverage. I’ve been spotted on the TV news already. The fame hasn’t gone to my head so far.

We are still in Montreal today and Sunday, so stop by and see our valuable water and the other commodities that millions of refugees are currently risking their lives to find elsewhere.

At the end of Day 4 Wendy, or project coordinator, was frantically adding up the visitor numbers.  I was about to close the gate on the final tour when we realised that if I did, our visitor numbers would be around 4,995.  Unacceptable.  So we rolled out our secret PR weapon of the cutest baby in the world with her mom the guide to invite a few more visitors to join us and got our visitors numbers up, past 5,000.  Success.

Ottawa was great, so many volunteers turned up to help us with the behind the scenes and so many guides donated their time to talk to the public about their experiences.  Some visitors did the whole tour twice they enjoyed it so much – although perhaps “enjoy” isn’t the right word.  It’s not exactly Disney World in the refugee camp.  But people are getting an emotional experience from it.  After my last tour, I was taking some questions from the group about how much of an impact NGOs can have on the world, why there is so much conflict, neglect and hatred…………a lady asked me “Do you get discouraged?”  “No” I replied “I get encouraged”.  An interesting question that made me think.  And made me slightly emotional.  Even our mock refugee camp is relatively sanitised compared to a real one, but it is difficult not to get emotional about the subject matter and I too had to take a moment to compose myself and get a glass of water.

I’m pretty sure I speak on behalf of the team when I say - thanks to the volunteers who turned up to help us load and unload the truck and to run errands for us.  Thanks to the guides, all experienced MSF staff, who did tour after tour, many of them for 4 days in a row – I know it’s not easy.  And thanks to the 5,027 people who took the time to hear our stories.

So, to end Ottawa on a slightly lighter note  - one of the reasons that I get encouraged is the dedication of MSF staff to making things better, as aptly illustrated by Matt, another one of the project logisticians: