Day 6: January 17, 2010

On Saturday evening I had become aware of some unused food that was available for Cross International partners. It was being stored in a warehouse near the airport by Help for Haiti, a strategic partner of ours. They had about 23 cases of Vitafood, which is a nutritionally balanced food product made up of rice and a blend of soy, dehydrated vegetables, vitamins and minerals. It was not a lot of food, but was worth a trip as it would be enough to use for emergency distributions for our local partners. 23 cases would serve about 5,000 meals.

On the way down the hill I stopped to visit an orphanage called Divine Mercy. This is an orphanage of about 35 children that Cross International has been supporting through donations of food and clothes for a number of years. I had received word from our office that we had not been able to get in contact with anyone from the orphanage since since the earthquake and figured that it would be good to check in. When I arrived I noticed that the building was still intact, but that it had quite a bit of damage. I found the children in the back yard and could immediately assume that they were no longer using the building. When speaking to the director and caretakers, I learned that the children had been eating less food and sleeping in the yard of the neighboring kindergarten. When I asked if anyone had been hurt in the earthquake, I received the answer I had hoped for, “no, gras a Dye,” which means “no by the grace of God”. When I spoke to the children, they were relatively happy playing in the yard, seemingly clueless of the devastation that was all around them. As expected, the orphanage director pleaded for extra funding for their long-term needs of food, water, and construction of a new orphanage. For the time being, all that I could promise was that I would stop by with a few cases of food on the way back up the hill. I figured this would hold them over for at least a week, buying us time to secure more food.

We arrived to the warehouse and found that we were almost unable to stuff all of the food, along with 10 cases of bottled water into our vehicle, a Mitsubishi Montero. It was so tight that three of us had to squeeze into the front two seats of the vehicle for the ride back. Warehouse space was hard to come by, so I took pictures and noted the dimensions of the space as it was not being used to its full capacity. The space was small, but it may prove to be useful down the road anyways.

On the way back to the orphanage, we came across a small mobile clinic being run by a group of missionaries that was set up right on Delmas 33. I decided to stop to find out how they were doing, what type of care they had the capacity to provide, and what their immediate needs were. Their biggest concern was that they did not have anywhere to transfer people who needed further attention, especially those who had an urgent need for orthopedic surgery. As I considered their options, I was surprised at how few hospitals were in such a populated area. I finally recommended that they try establishing contact with Hopital de l’Universite de la Paix, which wasn’t far away, to find out what kind of services they were providing. A second option would be the U.N. hospital, a bit further down by the airport.

When I returned to the office, I found that nine more Save the Children international staff members had arrived to Haiti. Space in the office was getting tighter by the minute. About half of the staff would sleep at the office while the other half was sleeping at Lee Nelson’s (Save Haiti Director) house. I went over to Lee’s house for dinner, participated in their team meeting, and decided to find a space to sleep on his hard floor for a change of pace from the hard floor at the office. I really appreciated Lee welcoming me into his home as if I were part of the team.

Just after midnight, Save received a call from the BBC London Breakfast Show. BBC had hoped to conduct a live interview with Save the Children staff members, but each of their media folks was sound asleep. Rather than letting the call go, they passed the phone to me so that I could tell them about the efforts being made in Haiti by Cross International. The conversation was short. They basically asked two questions. They first asked “what is the situation on the ground?” and later said, “We have heard reports that there is a lot of confusion on the ground in terms of the coordination of relief efforts. Is that what you are seeing?” I did a pretty good job summing everything up, but couldn’t help but feel that they were searching for more reports of chaos and negative information than what I was offering.

Before I lay down to go to sleep, I made it through a few more e-mails, trying to help coordinate efforts being made from our HQ office. I also received a vague e-mail that described children at an orphanage called Bresma as suffering and in serious need of relief. The cry for help had been sent to our headquarters office by an American woman who was somehow affiliated with the orphanage. The message didn’t say much, but did provide directions and indicated the names of the girls that were running the orphanage, Jamie and Ali. It turns out that I recognized the names right away. The girls were from Pittsburgh and I had met them at a Haiti restaurant in December. We had all been at this particular restaurant for the same purpose: to watch the Thursday night NFL football game. This was the game in which the Cleveland Browns beat the Pittsburgh Steelers for the first time in six years. I figured that because the Browns had won that game I could justify going to check on them the next morning.

People laid across the floor of Lee’s living room like sardines. I was able to find myself a spot to lay down and knew that I would fall asleep as soon as my head hit my rolled up t-shirt, but figured that I would switch back to the office for sleeping quarters for tomorrow night.