First Blog one day after arrival

God is laughing at me


Dispatches from the Western Front by Jay Nielsen

Rob Rice of Great Commission Air and I have been traveling since 6:30 AM Monday but the story starts 12 hours before.

I was planning to make landfall in Haiti sometime this week when Bill Tenhaaf, general surgeon, called me from O’Hare and said leave immediately, by any means, Cayes is falling apart.

The reviews from Jan Davis had changed through the day as Sunday looked calm, but the pressure was building. Jan Nielsen, my phenomenal wife, learned quickly that there were zero flights going into Florida.

Two days later, neither Rob nor I recall how we came to meet on the phone but suffice to say that Rob´s friend who is an off duty airline pilot found us four or five rapid fire solutions, one of which was, fly DTW to Charlotte and then on to Montego Bay, Jamaica and then fly a private sky diving plane into Cayes, direct, no passport stamp, no permission.

As the hour proceeded, Rob Rice decided he´d join the flight just to see what was happening in Haiti and come back out on the same plane.

Now we seem trapped here like many people in Haiti.

As I left for the airport, I told my wife, Jan, the plane is empty, find 1000 lbs of flour and brown sugar in Montego Bay and we´d bring it in to feed our 329 Students in the Brad Reddick School as food was getting more expensive and most markets were closed in Cayes per reports from the ground.

Two hours of waiting with Rob, made me realize he fully thought he could organize an armada of airplanes delivering food to Cayes from Jamaica, about the same time Jan called while on the ground to say the food was waiting and donated by missionaries unknown, sympathetic to our cause.

That led Rob to conclude we needed MORE food, and oh by the way, we could drain fuel from the plane on landing to use in our vehicles. Blackberry communiqué to Jan Davis from Mustard Seed Missions, on the ground at the house we share in Cayes, confirmed Amoce was ready with jerry cans.

Now, we are in MB, landing general aviation and flying private plane, which if you´ve never done it is like visiting Cedar Point and deciding you want to see the underbelly of the iron dragon. You feel like you´re breaking lots of rules and you are. Customs hated the fact that I had two 50 lbs bags of drugs that I´d not declared. AND I wasn´t going ánywhere´, officially. I was not departing, I was flying on from an airport with no connecting flights.

By this point, Jan has decided that she can meet my demands of 4000 lbs of rice a day and Rob says he can find ´something´to fly it in with, and ´maybe he´ll stick around´

I call a potential donor and tell him, we have it on good advice that food WILL run out, fuel is gone and Cayes is about to face more challenges, will he donate to pay fuel and food for a trial of airlifted supplies and he ponies up $20,000 immediately. This call occurs in front of a foot tapping stewardess who wants my blackberry OFF and in the end, everyone within two rows, passes me $100 bills.

Three hours later, I’m in a private skyjump plane with nine 100 lb bags of white powders, 20 lbs of margarine and three pilots, one Jamaican, named Dudley and Rob and I sitting on bags. It very much felt like a scene from Air America.

Keep in mind, we´re not landing legally, we have no passport stamps, no visas and no permission but we know from John Vrooman, our control on the ground that five other planes did it with relief supplies that day.

Typical Haiti, our ride has been waiting for hours but now they don´t have the keys to the back of the truck to haul the flour. Pastor Charles, the president of Harvest International, who shipped our two forty foot containers one week before the earthquake, arrives to open his truck and whisk us away to our Missions International of America guest house.

We immediately depart for Cite´Lumiere Hospital to line up with Dr. Tenhaff who we find cleaning up a hospital gone haywire with a very elite mission staff of physicians. He goes on to work 5A to 11P since he arrived.

He informs me that he can handle Lumiere for now, but needs help, but that Bonne Fin, the sister mission hospital in the mountains, closer to Port Au Prince is overrun with patients needing amputations etc. and the only doctor, Dr. Belding, MUST leave on Friday. He´s been here since before the earthquake and he´s toast.

We hear that refugees are arriving from Port au Prince in droves but the city is eerily calm. Very little traffic and not a sign of crowding.

We hear that the soccer field has been turned into a Refugee Center and go down to see if we can help.

What we find is a tidy ´football field´ half covered in new 8 man tents and a refreshment stand with two toilets being run by the Boy Scouts of Haiti and a hand full of Haitian young men, 15-30 with great devotion to their cause.

I´d arrived to bring aid so I asked how I could help and was told:

1- we have no generator, wire or lights

2- There are no more tents

3- They had a wonderfully organized ditty bag for each new arrival, from local Haitian churches with soap, underwear, shoes, clothes, all organized by age and sex.

4- There were no bathrooms as the only two were behind security so they made canvas stalls to pee and no number two allowed.

5- They had a wonderful clinic but no supplies.

6- There were thousands of people in Port au Prince who could not afford the $15 US price to ride a cargo truck to Cayes who need to be evacuated when they were getting fuel from the government to extricate when they could hire a truck for $120 a trip for 100 people.

We immediately gave the camp director $600 for five trips, left for our container in the Savanette and brought them a new 5600 watt generator, 500 feet of wire, a utility strip of lights, a BUV full of clothes and shoes and 80 feet of pipe. Two Haitian doctors, younger than my kids, followed us home and returned with 30 lbs. of antibiotics and wound care supplies.

Upon our return, we were received as the new heroes and invited to their twice daily conflab on the future. I offered that they might think about tying into the sewer line and I´d build bathrooms for them to avoid a cesspool and they realized the first rain was going to flood the works. We return tomorrow for my trash pump, and they are trenching the property tonight to prepare for rain control.

Tomorrow, Haitian psychologists open a PTSD treatment center for victims. The people at Katrina could learn a lot from Haitians.

I asked why they were so ´slow´´ and they explained that almost all the arrivals knew ´someone´ in Cayes and went to their house.

Indeed, when we crossed town at noon today, in one mile, at one time, I saw FIVE 40 foot cargo trucks discharging 100 tired bagless refugees onto the street. Eventually the houses have to fill up and the overflow will rise quickly in numbers.

By mid morning, the plane that promised to return for Rob was nowhere to be seen, and he’d settled into the decision that he was here to find an airplane to fly in food.

Jan and Tony have been working non-stop and in 24 hours, had a general agreement that there was PLENTY of rice and beans being offered by the world for Haiti and it was NOT going to get past Port au Prince airport.

At 3PM, we went downtown looking to buy a couple 300 gallon water tanks to put on the roof at the refugee center and it was empty!! No cars. You could drive 40 miles an hour. All the shops are closed as all banks are closed, and all store owners are afraid to open themselves up to looting. It was eerily quiet. No tanks.

John Vrooman has found thousands of tents in South Florida if we can get a plane.

Larry Croy has palettes of canned meat also in Florida.

Tony has a line on three different planes.

Jan has an organization in California, that wants to use our empty trucks going to Port auAP to transport medical supplies to PAP by landing at Cayes.

Rob and I attend a meeting of all Pastors and Staff of MEBSH –Missions Evangeliste, Baptiste South Haiti, the largest Christian organization in Haiti and find that they are in place to distribute all the aid we can fly in ALL OVER HAITI, including Port au Prince.

During all this, where are the police, I´ve never seen one!, the UN. They´re driving around in their cars but I´ve not seen one out of a car. Government, no sign. But Church members volunteering EVERYWHERE.

I saw a man handing fresh bananas to everyone who stepped out of the back of a cargo truck near the square!

The man in charge of the airport has NO superiors, he assumes they are all dead and has no authority to turn Cayes into an international airport. He´s got potentially hundreds of flights coming in with aid and he won´t commit to allowing flights. The pilot are nervous, they can lose their planes with a snap of his finger and he´s paralyzed by indecision.

I heard from Jan, that they´ve worked out a staging area, warehouse and private  landing strip in Jamaica for sending in food.

Pastor Erase has confirmed he has standing warehouses all over Haiti owned by MEBSH to control shipped supplies.

At the MEBSH meeting, I convince Pastor Erase Luders to pressure the aviation guy while John Vrooman tries to get the Embassy in Haiti from the US. to push him to certify a letter of approval for flights and Jan and Tony try to get USAID, the Red Cross, CRC, etc to request a letter of support from the aviation director.

During all this, we have ONE working blackberry since mine is verizon and now a paperweight. No internet, no cells phones, no TV, no Radio. Everything is OUT. All communication is chicklet typing at the speed of mud to Jan and Tony back in the States. Jan Davis is typing constantly.

I´m texting Jan Nielsen fiercely begging for docs for Bonne Fin, planes, food, fuel and MONEY.

At 4PM, the only working internet and phone system in Western Haiti goes down, John Vrooman´s home (MEBSH satellite) just as Jan is going to press with the media for help. We can´t send pics, video or info home.

By 8PM, John has broken transmission and we are calling once and I could talk and be heard but not hear Jan, then I´d call back and the reverse would happen and she´s tell me the news but no sharing of info.

We discover that we have three planes, a 206 that is free to fly, cheap on fuel, and carries 1000 lbs per trip. A Twin Otter that carries a $10,000 surcharge to hold for a couple weeks and will be $1000 a trip plus fuel but carries 4000 lbs and a CASA we can´t afford to wax, let alone take aloft. All of this is thru half a telephone.

Rob gets up on Facebook with Tony, I ´talk´to Jan and we decide we are commited to the Twin and $10K.

Now, let me sum up the situation.

I´ve been in Haiti, one day: I´ve inherited a collapsing hospital full of patients I have to go see on Friday with a staff or three. I´ve already fed one school. I´ve assumed command of the biggest refugee center and still have no refugees. Cargo trucks are dumping people on the streets of Cayes. The banks are closed. The stores are closed. There is NO security but all is quiet. All filling stations are locked up. Food is running out and so is time.

In one day, we´ve arranged an airlift capable of 12,000 lbs of food a day, free fuel, possibly one free pilot, ground transport from the airport, distribution across all of Haiti, transport of 500 refugees a day from Port au Prince, stabilized the refugee center, supplied two clinics and two hospitals with injectable and oral antibioitics and pain meds and fed my own school. (I had a muffin for lunch).

We are in the fourth largest city in Haiti, soon to be the second biggest as it grows faster than any current town on earth, passing Port au Prince and Gonaive. We may see a half a million or more people show up in the next week depending on deaths and fuel.

If we manage to send rice and beans to Port au Prince, tell me how they get water and charcoal to cook it?

I finally get Tony on the phone with a clear signal at 11PM and I´m spent.

I´m two days ahead of most official relief organizations; our three mission organizations with no paid staff and a total of six people with John Vrooman on Infomatics, has performed very well.

I can´t get the Red Cross, USAID, the Army, the Airforce, Bill Clinton or anybody to care half of God´s people are walking my way in the next week, hungry dehydrated and injured and I´ve got $4000 left.

To me, that´s news worth national coverage and I´d be sunk without the local media coverage but I need someone´s attention.

Tony suggests calling in a full scale emergency to the Coast Guard. I ask the down side and he says they may not be happy BUT we are having a major emergency with maybe 10,000 avoidable deaths a day and a pending riot. John, Rob, Tony and I vote unanimously to do it in the AM if not cavalry is on the horizon but we MUST stay at arms length from MEBSH as they´ve not been consulted.

I´m proud of my friends tonight. Amoce served as a great ambassador as always, Smiley, Benot and Jude worked tirelessly, Jan Davis provided wise counsel. Rob never lost his humor or his zeal that we could do this airlift, and Tony and Jan Nielsen along with an army of helpers may be on their way to raising enough money to keep this going for a couple weeks.

I told Rob yesterday AM, that I thought this might be the most interesting day of my life. It was.

God is laughing at me tonight. I would appreciate it if I saw some handwriting on the wall tomorrow that told me if I should call the Coast Guard.

Day two from the Western Front, after some sleep

I´d been at the computer for about three minutes when I thought someone was shaking the front gate door. I went to check and found Haitians streaming into the streets and Jan Davis and Rob both felt the aftershock.

I can now say I´ve felt an earthquake but I bet those in PAP would argue. The fear in the locals is palpable and I guess I can´t imagine.

Ten minutes after the after shock, news came on the blackberry that there was a 6.1 new quake 60 miles east of Les Cayes so we may have new road problems. This isn´t funny; these need to stop now, I´m trying to work here. If the epicenter is moving west 60 miles every 6 days, I´m marking my calendar for next Tuesday to be somewhere else.

Jan Davis read this and stated after seeing the new earthquake news, that I NOT ask for any more handwriting on the wall.

Took a photo of the only building in Cayes to fall down. We are very lucky to have a city to bring all these people to.

Saw Joel yesterday. The Leogane orphanage is GONE. 59 kids sleeping under the mango tree. He´s trying to find a way to bring them to Cayes.

Got a UN staffer at John´s last night that is due in Africa, we´re trying to get him out. All his bosses are dead as they were in the Montana Hotel with UMCOR. Heard only two lived out of all the people in that hotel from the UN Staffer. Made me realize that Ady is not going to get to Ohio State for his M.S. degree in Agronomy on schedule.

Jay Nielsen, activities coordinator and President of Missions International of America. Please keep the Haitians, and my team in your prayers.