AN aid worker from north Essex has spoken of his work in Haiti a year after it was devastated by an earthquake.

Sam Dixon, 25, had been out to Haiti on behalf of Oxfam before it was ripped apart by the natural disaster which killed more than 200,000 people in 2010.

Sam, from Leavenheath, near Colchester, said he still believed there was hope for the country where he has spent the past few months working on Oxfam’s projects to improve the people’s lives.

Some rebuilding has taken place but the majority of the capital, Port-au-Prince, is still a disaster zone, which is what Sam found on his return.

“It was hard because I had made friends before but I wanted to go back. I had colleagues working there and I wanted to see what could be done,” he said. “On the one hand it is a scene of human tragedy day on day, but the people are very determined to get through.

“What you have to imagine is that almost twice the population of Colchester died in this earthquake. There are three million people in this city and huge numbers of houses were destroyed.

“If you think of a city that was extremely poor before this earthquake and then suddenly has this scene of the utmost devastation, to get people back on their feet is a huge task.”

Organisations, such as Oxfam, are handing out cash grants to help Haitians rebuild their lives and give them the necessary tools to restart their businesses.

“We gave some money to three people who clubbed together to start a bakery. They’ve been selling bread in a camp and providing a service to the community as well as earning a living for themselves,” said Sam.

“This is about finding ways in which we can create jobs for people so they can depend on themselves and they can buy their own food, pay their own education fees and their health care fees.”

Even a year on, most people are still living in tents.

“Some of the buildings went from two storeys to one where the top floor collapsed onto the one below, but others were completely flattened.

Sam said: “That damage is still evident. It is very sad to see.

“I drive around and there are people living in tents in all kinds of unlikely places and the sanitation is really nasty.

“One couple’s business was destroyed and their child was ill from living in a tent.

“They spent all their money and their savings on medicine for her but then they had to start selling their bed linen, china and they even pawned their wedding rings. And these were people who were considered well-off before the earthquake.”

Sam believes that Haiti suffers from a bad reputation that might not always be the whole truth.

He said: “We work from home when we are over there and the Haitians are not generally particularly violent. They have gone through so much. I feel very safe when I’m there, I feel at home and very welcome.”

Sam’s career was more or less decided after he spent two weeks in Uganda, aged 18, where he worked in a school and an orphanage. He said: “I decided then that I wanted to do something to help people.”

He has been working with Oxfam for over two years, and has had posts in Chad and Mali as well as Haiti, and his next move is to head to the Congo indefinitely.

He says his parents Sue, a GP at a practice which has surgeries in West Bergholt, Nayland and Colchester, and Paul, a doctor at Colchester General Hospital, are supportive of his career choice.

“They were worried at first but I think they are quite proud and pleased that I’m doing something I want to do,” said Sam, who has two younger sisters, one of whom has spent six months in Colombia working with street children.

“Maybe there is something that runs in the family, although my other sister is studying maths,” he added.