February 6th, 6AM
I've been remiss in journaling so I”M going to quickly get caught up.
After two and one half weeks away, it's been hard just telling and hearing all the stories from Jan about what we did. While in Haiti, people would ask 'how'd you do that' and I'd tell them I have no idea as all intel is 'need to know' and I don't need to know'
Now I”m back and Toni Z. and Jay S. who are both airline pilots and run our 'Intel and Ops' as they call it, are calling ten times a day with 'orders' or 'assignments'
Monday, Dave and I flew out with Albie from Cayes after a ferocious storm blew past. We unloaded a plane load of food, mostly beans, and had a harsh ride back to Kingston. Cleared customs with Cal, the backup pilot in training and it was dark. On the way into Boscobel, the private strip that Andre runs and Skydivers works from. I asked how we land with no runway lights and Albie says, 'I've done it before'. He comes down to land in the 'big empty spot with no lights' and then 300 feet of the asphalt decides 'that's the lake, let's move over' and safely lands! Now I see how he landed on the cow pasture at Fon-du-lac and the beach at Gounavie! Jan showed me videos on our site of that landing. He is simply the best bush pilot I”ve ever seen and I flew hundreds of hours myself.
Next AM, on the way back to Kingston, Cal looks over his shoulder and says 'watch this'. Now my good friend Rick says all the dumbest things occur right after those two words so I move to the front to watch the crash. Albie comes in over the ocean 3 feet above the waves, touches down on the first 3 feet of the 12,000 foot strip, locks up the breaks and turns into the FIRST tarmac ramp in 200 feet. He could have landed on the roof of our guesthouse.
We chill at the Skydive Jamaica shed for an hour, and load food, and are taking off to be delivered back to Montego Bay and are rolling down the tarmac when the side door pops open, four staff jump in with parachutes and close the door while we're rolling. Cal takes it up to 14,000 feet FAST and they all jump out for some TV commercial they're shooting for the Cayes Airbridge. That looked fun.
We're a bit nervous at MB as we have no customs stamps from Haiti since we've been landing illegally for weeks. Albie sweet talks the customs agent and off we go to Charlotte, Dave and I almost miss the flight as we're yacking. They had to open the door up again. Detroit was cold when Tom and Jan picked us up. Major ice. They delivered the new invertor for the Ouanaminthe Solar install to Wayne who starts on Monday.
Wednesday was phone calls all day. Toni and Jay have me calling Red Cross, number after number for tents and food (no answer), USAID (different person each time) and President Clinton's foundation (answering machine). Lots of banking. Donations are falling off. No word about the CBS film shoot airing. Jan has not bought groceries in 3 weeks so we work on that and laundry.
Thursday night is the Perrysburg Global Initiative by Bill Hilt (Larry Croy's nephew) with maybe 120 booths of organizations from Pburg working around the world, at the Junior high school. All the middle schoolers came with 'passports' so we had lots of visitors but had lots of graphics and slides to make.
While there, USAID called back- Joe Holecko, referred me to the Dept of Commerce and a wonderful man, William Lawton, who finally understood that if I run out of food, 550 prisoners are starving to death for petty crimes. He asks me to write up a grant, and he'll walk it into USAID and try to get us tonnage of allocated food supplies and money grants to operate.
Much of this, we know, is like a baton race. We we're the transition team, holding off crisis by airbridge until the cavalry arrived with boatloads of food for millions of people. The Cavalry (the US Army) came on day five of my trip and declared us 'adequately provisioned' and left. So now we're on plan B. The Red Cross is way too busy in PAP. No aid is coming to Cayes but William Lawton confirmed there is massive food off shore, ready to go. Just no distribution.
Friday AM, Jan and I ate breakfast! About 10AM, I hear a yell and Jan has gotten a human at the Clinton Foundation and a staffer is going to start promoting us. I spend all day writing up a grant request for both. Jan and I are sharing one computer since her's trojan'd out. Big problem. Toni, Jay, Jay and Jan all decide to ask Dave Steel to redo the Website so when grantors visit, they see Cayes Airbridge, not Brad Reddick School on page one. What a blessing he's been.
Donations are slowing fast as the media wanes. Today, I called Amoce and stopped the Cargo truck food and called John Vrooman and we are going to start giving rice and beans to the prisoners as theres not the cash for purchased food. I am NOT stopping but may go to alternate days for now. Mr. Lawton is adamant he can solve that. He also is starting to realize that there may be a dozen prisons not being fed in all of Haiti. !!
So that's it. My burn from the motorcycle accident is finally healing, my skin is peeling, I lost 5 lbs., I now know I'm going to die from skin cancer- not Albie's flying,
I am going to close with a couple lists: The first is all the organizations that made this possible and what they did. The Second is my one page report on activities while on the island. I'll never know or tell all the people who made this happen but this is my best try. We knew NONE of these people before I got in the plane to Charlotte.
Cooperating Organizations:
Missions International of America, http://www.missionsinternationalofamerica.com/ Fund Raising, U.S. And Site Logistics
Missions International of Haiti (M.I.A. Sud), no web site, Amoce Amazan, Local logistics, translation, transportation, security
Andri Wiese, WinWin Aviation, Boscobel FBO, Sycamore, Illinois, http://www.winaviation.com/ Jamaican Ground Control
Toni Zuriani, Airline Pilot, ATP, Team Coordinator, Communications, Vision
John (Jay) Sawyer, Airline Pilot, ATP A320, B737, CA-212, CL-65, 1802 Anne Lane, Morris, IL 60450, 815-483-5968
Bob Wright, Short Term Trips, Pennsylvania, http://www.shorttermtrips.org/index.php?pID=10
Mary Beadner, Jamaica Link Ministries, Grand Rapids, Michigan, http://www.jamaicalink.org/ Donations acquisition and delivery
Sky Dive Jamaica- Albie , Kingston,, Jamaica, http://www.skydive-jamaica.com/ Pilots and delivery
MEBSH (Missionarie Evangeliste Baptiste Southe Haiti), Les Cayes, Haiti, http://home.cogeco.ca/~vrooman/haiti/jdhmebsh.htm warehousing and Island distribution, Island Communications
Direct Relief Inc. Medical provisioning, http://www.directrelief.org/
Our lady from the resort, with the sail boat and sea bridge, arriving tomorrow. With 140 tons of food
Me Pierre Yves-Lesage, Chief of Police, 4 Chemin Station, Les Cayes, Haiti, Security,
Missions International Of America Earthquake Response
Facts: The Haiti earthquake struck on January 12, 2010 at 4:53 p.m. The 7.0 magnitude quake's epicenter hit just 10 miles west of Porte-au-Prince and its 2 million inhabitants. 3 million people are in need of emergency aid after this major earthquake. The quake sent 33 aftershocks ranging in magnitude from 4.2 to 5.9. An estimated 300,000 were left dead.
Refugee Center: On arrival in Haiti, Dr. Nielsen set to work with the first Refugee Center, providing water, generators, power, lights, water buckets, medical supplies, clothing, and most of the food for 300 people. We flew in 50 12 man tents for housing at the center. From the onset, it was apparent that the best aid was coming from Haitians themselves and we’re only provisioning.
Arriving Refugees: Most of the 3-5,000 Haitians arriving in Les Cayes from Port Au Prince went directly to a family member's home, swelling the housing needs. M.I.A. provided water, a banana and a loaf of bread to 1800 arriving refugees per day from day nine til now. Les Cayes is the most rapidly growing city on earth and may pass PAP in the coming weeks.
Food Flights: While food was available, money was not and prices had doubled. There was no work and banks were closed. Subsequently, M.I.A. flew two to three airlift flights a day. Each provided 2600 pounds of rice, beans, oil, flour, sugar, gasoline, and medical supplies to feed refugees, hospitals, prisoners, distant communities. Flights are continuing.
Missionary Delivery: Travel to Haiti was bogged down in PAP. Flying arriving surgeons and support staff to Les Cayes from Jamaica was rapid and effective. We will be helping to evacuate the estimated 200 surgeons stranded in Haiti.
Fuel Shortages, Stranded Planes: Fuel hit $19 a gallon and then was not to be found. We flew in fuel to get stranded planes off the tarmac, run cargo trucks and aid vehicles all over Cayes until fuel arrived on day ten.
Prison Feeding Program: The Federal government was decapitated and fundless. Hence, the prisoners went unfed for 11 days and deaths were rising. M.I.A. took over feeding 550 men and women at the local prison every day. We provided water, bread, fruit, drinks, and a variety of other foods along with toothbrushes and T shirts. We are looking for a doctor to run a clinic outside the prison on our March trip for 8 days.
Hospital Support: Oxygen, injectable antibiotics, tetanus shots and dressings could not be found. M.I.A. partnering with many other small missions brought supplies to the airport that were distributed to Lumie’, Bonfine, the general hospital and more distant sites.
Public Transport: Human transportation was the biggest issue. A bus ride from PAP was $20, a huge sum for a Haitian. M.I.A. paid for three buses a day to bring 150 refugees each, to Cayes for free in the early exodus. We also paid to send refugees to reunite with their families in Jeremie.
Orphanage support: Thousands of orphanages collapsed in PAP. Local orphanages needed to ‘double up’ and many slept under tarps. We provided what tents we could and are still expecting to ‘adopt’ some orphanage to ‘live’ at the Brad Reddick School the rest of this year.
National Attention: A national CBS news crew, with Bill Whitaker, came and covered our journey. They were amazed that several unrelated small mission groups were able to quickly transport food and supplies without support from large organizations.
Planning for recovery: Providing the basic necessities of life is reguired for the short term, but our long term objective is to ob creation, planning and recovery. We hope this year to start both our Furniture factory, VoTech school, and BUV factory to get as many as 60 men working in the Savanette.
