Dispatch Friday January 29,2010
I’ve been remiss in my journaling but why will become apparent.
Wednesday AM, I’m talking to the pilot who is flying my docs out to Nassau and he mentions he may stop by Cap Haitian. I run back to the house, pack last clean shirt, a bit of food, and my passport and the next thing I know, I’m flying a huge beautiful jet from Cayes airport that brought in food and meds and supplies for the hospital. The flight that takes Tortug 60 minutes was over in 25.
Now I’m on the ground outside the airport with no translator, no one knows I’m coming except Jan called from the States and told Pastor Noel. My phone won’t work and I’ve painted myself into a bit of a corner.
I’m drawing a little bit of a crowd and one of the airport employees who is off duty takes me under his wing and sits down with me on the curb, running off the gawkers and panhandlers. I’ve never spent a better $20.
Two hours later, Pastor Noel and Woodley have arrived by taking a bus! 60 miles from Ouanaminthe. Now we’re all trapped together but I have a translator.
We hire a car and drive to Ouanaminthe. Cap Haitien is a beautiful seaside town covered in more squalor and trash than anyplace I’ve been in Haiti. Very hectic. If there were tracks down the middle of the street, you’d consider Ouanaminthe at 100,000 people, a railroad town. Very wild west. No electricity for 25 years. No internet. No business center. But VERY friendly.
I got to see our other container that we shipped, did training on how to install the Lister Generator and the Bakery Oven, talked about many things about the new orphanage and collapsed back in my hotel room. After the best baked chicken and Brown rice I’ve ever had in Haiti. I left for church.
With the new building, attendance has quadrupled and Pastor Noel made me preach with Woodley translating. We had much fun and I talked about the community opening their doors to refugees to wild applause. What wonderful people.
Pastor Noel has already taken in 10 orphans to our new orphanage since the quake. He’s hoping to make room for up to forty more.
After Church, I followed Pastor Noel on his motorbike with the new BUV. No lights, Pitch black and I get stopped by the Haitian Police. They detain me for 30 minutes (I’m assuming since I don’t speak Creole but they didn’t seem happy) and then with THREE bikes, we slowly went home directly and I kept my virginal criminal record for another day.
The next AM, John Vrooman calls and says he has a flight out to Cayes from Cap and get right back. No such luck, I spend all day trying to hitch any ride out of town, with Woodley and Noel sitting beside me as faithful friends. No luck and at 6PM, the airport closes, no rides, two false alarms, made lots of nice friends with the Haitian Police (the nicest I’ve ever seen or met).
Back to the hotel (the only one safe enough for a Blan is $120), with no electricity, water but lots of mosquitoes due to no screens. Little sleep and Jan calls at Midnight and says flight out at 7AM.
I’ll skip the details but in one hour, four different solutions that all fell through, a chopper with two orthopedic surgeons, a small plane, a really big plane then a wonderful man by the name of Wayne George sent ANOTHER jet to pick me up, and fly me back to Cayes. They were at max weight so they took out 170 lbs of Margarine and spaghetti and sardines and gave it to Pastor Noel for the orphans and we left. Another fast flight and wonderful people. He was a sheriff from Colorado and his wife was co-pilot. They’d been flying humanitarian aid since day one of the quake.
They dropped me in Cayes, gave 1300 lbs more of the same to John Vrooman for the distribution center and left. I’m home.
Today was a day of amazing people. Dave Kroeger came home to announce that the solar panels are pumping water in the Savanette and the drought for all those people is OVER. What a wonderful day to make that happen.
At the airport, a multi-millionaire heard the story and talked me out of 20 panels for his orphanage. I hope what comes around goes around. He’s been flying aid since the day after our team.
I finally got to actually talk to Jan, rather than text or do that 16 second verizon call until they figure out they have no service (we’re getting quite good at it).
Another neat story: A very rich Haitian owns a resort on the Isle south of Cayes. She owns a big sailboat for taking tourists out on the gulf. She is loading a ship in Miami with food and supplies and it will leave for Les Cayes Monday with 20,000 lbs. !!!. Her turn around is going to be about a week and her max capacity may push 40,000 lbs. That’s what I’ve been saying! Don’t fly, Pull up illegally to a doc and off load real volume. This contact came from one of Jan’s students who is working hard to help us.
I hope at the end of all this unlawful use of non –PAP airstrips and docks, they realize they're crippling their country with the rules to control bribes and greed.
I also met a real nice man, about my age who has a mission much like MIA. Two schools, two orphanages, both in Cayes and he’s running out of food so I sent him to John who provisioned him. He’s already ‘adopted’ two orphanages in PAP and packed them into his schools to get them out from under tarps. Just what I wanted to do with Joel’s Leogaine kids.
Ran into two execs from the Coast Guard. They are frustrated they are not being allowed to land at any ports and learned from me that we have two nice docs. They were told there were none. They’re getting to work on that next. I told them my story about almost declaring an emergency the third day I was here and they said I should have done it.
I guess the best story of the day is the prison. I was wrong on my last note. We fed 550 prisoners in a total of 18 cells, measuring maybe a quarter acre. I stopped by briefly, trying to be obscure (the only white face in a black prison) and it was heart breaking. Then I got home and one of the workers showed me incredible pictures. He’s a pro, great moments with a dozen arms reaching through peeling bars for food from Benot and his team. Most of these prisoners are not felons but stole a loaf of bread etc. to feed their famillies!!!!
Jan and I have been communicating with a reporter from national CBS thanks to an eloquent letter to them from David Meier. He has been in PAP for two weeks and is coming to visit what we are doing in Cayes this weekend. Finally, maybe I get the message out; we have real problems out here with all this crowding.
I hope it helps bring attention to our isolation and food pressure and crowding.
The 1800 meals did not begin to cover the refugees from PAP today.
Fonkoze is limiting the withdrawals from the bank wires so tomorrow I have to ask the Bank president if he wants me to tell CBS, the reason no one is being fed at the refugee center, cargo trucks or prison is because he won’t give me my own money! I’m betting I get it.
What I’d give for one working phone! I’m getting carpal thumbs from texting. Rick figured out how to attach a recording of his voice to the text which while kludgey is better than 16 seconds or driving 45 minutes up to Johns to talk on the only working phone. I’ve still got Digicel at 5AM when no one is using the bandwidth. I hate that since Jan is getting to bed at 1:30 AM.
Well, after two days in airports and finally airplanes, I’ll say ‘over and out’
I am simply overwhelmed by both the Haitian response to their own people and the wonderful things Americans are doing during this massive crisis. I’ve been remiss in thanking everyone.
Addendum much later at night:
Tonight is the first night I’ve had no travel, meetings, training, visitors and I sat down on the porch with my ipod to listen to some music and pray.
It’s easy to go pretty feral here. Showers are to cool down, not get clean. But on the other hand, it’s hard to find a place more interesting to sit and look over than Haiti. With the dogs barking, the roosters, the kids crying and the church songs rolling over the roofs, its somehow much more real.
It must be time to come home as I’ve spent the evening designing my perfect desert home and it’s pretty Spartan. I could easily move here, and do what John does every day, just making peoples lives easier.
Although this two weeks has had it’s tense moments, all in all, I’d never think of an earthquake as being this relaxing.
Ive been doing a lot of reading in the late evening and marvel at how the world has managed to mess Haiti up so much. The final formula is simple. The USAID is a branch of the USDA that buys crops from farmers as subsidies to prop up farmers (it doesn’t work, it’s like giving everyone in the class one grade higher). Then they give that food to USAID and those bureaucrats donate it to massive aid organizations like CARE, CRS, WorldVision, etc who are required to sell 1/3 of it on the open market to produce their operating expenses.
That dump onto local markets destroys local economies making the world dependent on high priced American food. We’ve been doing it since 1953. If you’d like to see the references, read Travesty in Haiti, by Tim Schwartz.
That comes to mind as I listened, not to praise music but instead was struck by the words of John Lennon.
Imagine:
Imagine there’s no heaven, It’s easy if you try.
No hell below us, Above us only sky.
Imagine all the people, living for today.
Imagine there’s no country
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
No religion too
Imagine all the people Living life in peace
You may say that I’m the dreamer but I’m not the only one
I hope that some day, you may join us and the world will be as one.
Imagine no possessions. I wonder if you can. No need for grief or hunger.
A brotherhood of man.
Imagine all the people, Sharing all the world.
You may say I’m a dreamer. But then I’m not the only one.
I hope that some day, you join us. And the world will live as one.
And with that, I leave you. Haiti is a mean place and rarely fair. I only hope as the graphic pictures leave the TV sets that the world does not forget this wonderful place and it’s people. They need our prayers and help forever.
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