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1-31-10 |
| We spent most of the day visiting 3 different orphanages that we had made
contact with earlier in the week. Do you remember the orphanage we loaded up the 10 cases of food for? Well we went back with more supplies, mostly diapers and baby type stuff. The director took us down to the tent city where most of the children and a few of the adults that take care of them are living. Apparently, he had already distributed all 10 cases of food to them, and it had been feeding nearly 100 people since our visit. About 30 of them were in their tents while we were there and they came out, surrounded Matthew and I, and began showering us with gratitude. They were so thankful, and while it wasn't a lot...it gave them hope for a few more days. We are working on a way to get them more. While this may not seem like a huge deal from a distribution point- I think it is, mainly because it proves that food can peacefully and efficiently be distributed throughout established Haitian comminutes...no security required. I think the fear of riots and mobs are over exaggerated, (or the fear of one person hording it all for themselves). These people are starving. We gave the food to the community leader, and he distributed it fairly and equally on his own. It was really humbling and awesome to see. We also visited the Casale clinic and delivered them some food and supplies. The clinic gets many abandoned children and does such an amazing job helping them. The children there are so precious. One was abandoned last week on the brink of starving to death. In the mean time, I've been communicating with my contact in the Canadian Navy. Get this - he has already followed up with each of the orphanages we found, using the GPS data we provided him. The Salvation Army has allocated 11,000 meals to deliver to them which they will then distribute on a weekly basis. They want to pick it up by Helicopter, and it looks like this should happen tomorrow. Just in case the Helicopter can't make it...Matthew and I are looking into alternative forms of transportation, such as renting a bigger truck, loading it up and just taking it out there. The reason this is critical to move tomorrow is that I've been told if it goes smoothly, we will be getting more (as in much more) to funnel into Leogane. I've contacted many other agencies, no one else seems interested in pumping supplies to the Canadians. We should have an interesting day tomorrow- the priority is getting this shipment to Leogane. We might have to make something happen on our own. This is a quick picture taken shortly after the families we fed came out to thank us. The blonde woman is an aid worker we brought along with us to show the site to. |
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UPDATE 1-30-10 |
| I have some amazing news- the Salvation Army has just allocated 11,000
meals to Matthew and I to distribute through the Canadian Navy in Leogane. Details to come... |
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1-30-10 |
| Matthew, wrapped up in the tent tarp.... |
| Last night when I crashed Matthew wasn't there. Sometimes he goes and
hangs out with some locals at the SA camp playing dominoes. I woke up at 12 and he still hadn't come in. Same thing at 3:30 a.m., which was not a good sign. When I was shaken awake at 6:30 a.m. and he had still not shown up, I was really worried. I quickly got dressed and went over to the less secure part of the SA refugee camp to look for him, we had been sleeping over there until just yesterday when some of the doctors invited us over. I found Matthew wrapped up in a tent cover sleeping on the ground, apparently he had been locked out from the other side and couldn't get in. "Drop me in the jungle and I'll survive."- The dude is scrappy. I'm so incredibly tired. I think the last week and a half is finally catching up with me. I woke up this morning to an aftershock and was out the door before I realized what was happening. The expectation of another quake hitting has me coiled up like a spring and it's taking a toll on me stress wise. This morning we took Scott (from the team of doctors) to a local hospital with whom he has been in communication. While he assessed the hospital we learned they sponsored three orphanages themselves, and would be willing to distribute food and supplies directly to them. This makes our job easier than going out and finding each of them individually. While they did say that they probably do need food, they aren't hurting as bad as some of the others. When we got back, we decided to make a food run to one of the orphanages we found earlier this week that WAS really hurting. Again we scraped together whatever extra food/supplies from SA, as well as some of the volunteers here and made the delivery. We were also able to score them 2 soccer balls, an extremely hot item with the kids...they went nuts when we gave them to them. We were supposed to run some food and supplies to the clinic in Casale, but the medical supplies never came. While waiting, Matthew went to grab us lunch and spend some time with his family while I started working on my connections and resources for Leogane. The Canadian Navy contact is looking better and better. They have a lot of man power, but no supplies, so I spoke with the SA leadership here who gave me the green light to get some food allocated to the Canadians. This has to be done through the SA logistics officer, who was gone all day at a food distribution in City Solei, but it looks like this is going to happen. Shelter Box has also expressed an interest in supplying the Canadians so that they can distribute in Leogane, so if I continue to communicate with all three of these entities, I think we can build a pipeline distribution system for that region. I'm working with the Canadian Commander to get a larger transport, and finalize a supplier- if we can get them all hooked up and working together, it would be huge. They will manage distributions for the orphanages as well as others in need there. The commander has personally invited me to return tomorrow to take him to the orphanages we found, and finalize our plans. They have a lot of man power, A LOT, so in terms of getting aid to Leogane, we need to hook these guys up with suppliers. It will feed about 200 in the orphanages, but I see it growing to feed several thousands of others in the area. I might try the Mormon Church again but I've already struck out twice with them. Our goal is to deliver something everyday to someone who needs it, and so far we are giving things out faster than we get them- it feels good- and still...there are no security problems. Salvation Army has been treating us awesome and now even refer to us as their "orphanage rescue program". They treat us as equals and have just been so wonderful to work with the last few days. I handed one of them a request sheet from the Casale Clinic - man, they went right to work on getting it lined up. I had a free hour in the late afternoon to wash some of my clothes in a bucket- they were filthy beyond description. Somehow...Matthews clothes look fine...I don't get it. PS - Every time I have delivered food or supplies the care takers have expressed a tremendous amount of gratitude. The last 2 deliveries, they hugged me. If you guys know of anyway to get me more product, I will find a way to get it to the right orphanages who are hurting the most. I'm glad SA has stepped up so much but I'm a little sad we still haven't found a fully backed partner like UNICEF. This would allow us to just turn the info over to them and let them run with it. In the mean time, Matthew and I will do what we can to deliver supplies...it just shouldn't be like this. I think a lot of organizations don't take us seriously, but some, like SA and the Canadian Navy do. I have faith that if we just continue to plug away, doors will open and we can make bigger and better things happen. |
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1-29-10 |
| In an absolutely bizarre turn of events, we are seeing more and more
success. To cut to the chase, what we are seeing is "leftovers" being made available to us. While these are not huge unlimited amounts of food, they are enough to make a difference for at least the next couple days. Joanne, a volunteer firefighter is getting ready to leave on Monday, and it appears that several cases of MREs she brought in are going to end up in our possession. Yesterday, the Salvation Army (who has been incredibly supportive) had a massive distribution, but had to end early due to security issues, and had an extra 20 cases of food they said we could use. (Btw- A single case of food contains 30 something packets of meal, which is essentially rice, meat and other nutrients that will comfortably feed a family of 6 for a week.) In an effort to allocate hard to find resources leftovers are a real possibility. Another thing is that support groups and teams often abandon food, gear, tents, etc and some of this is coming our way. It's not a lot, but when you can be scrappy- it's enough. It also will temporarily resolve the issue of relying on another aid organization to help in the short term. Today we went to Leogane, a city about 15 miles west of pap. We had heard reports that 90% of the city was destroyed. Some American doctors heard we were going and asked to come- Joanne also had some extra medical supplies she wanted to bring. Leogane, has approx 750,000 people. The lead physician we spoke with at the hospital estimates 30-50,000 perished in the quake. We saw hundreds of buildings in complete ruin, and just doing the math, there is absolutely no way a small fraction of them have been cleared. The locals were breaking apart the rubble with sledgehammers. What this means is...most of these collapsed buildings will still have bodies in them. We first visited the main hospital St Croix (sp?). Through Matthew, the doctors assessed needed man power and supplies. Apparently there had been an engineering assessment- and they were still waiting on the results, the hospital which takes patients from all over the region, including pettigrove. They have 2 doctors there, and doctors without borders had set up a tent next door, and were focusing on surgeries only. Other than that, we saw one red cross hospital, the Canadian navy, and that was it. We had the names of 5 orphanages in the area, but no addresses or gps co-ordinates. We asked several people on the street and found one location. While that one particular location had been evacuated, there was a local there that said he knew where several were- so I asked him if he would be willing to show us where they were. He agreed. Once he jumped in...it was easy, we found another 4 very quickly. 3 were in desperate need, and we gave them each a case of food- they were very grateful. One of the orphanages had a huge group of Canadian navy helping them "rebuild" (essentially they are there with man power, not resources. I spoke with their commander about co-coordinating relief efforts with other orphanages in the area and he agreed. I have already sent him the gps data on each of them and am looking for someone (aid agency) to supply him with the needed food. He has already responded and if we can get this guy a supplier, most of the orphanages in Leogane are going to be in great hands. It seemed they had dozens of men ready to go, but no resources to work with. The last orphanage we found was really humbling- the pastor lost his wife and 2 of his 3 children. I took a picture of him and his last remaining child, I'll post when I get back. I'm finding ways to protect my emotions and keep from becoming physiologically compromised...it's hard to explain, but I'm conscious of the dangers of it, and so far think I've been doing pretty good- I've seen some heartbreaking things, I just don't let them get all the way in. As the day ended and we were returning, we received a phone call from one of the bigger orphanages we found when we first started- their director said his kids were starving to death and they needed help soon. As soon as we arrived back to SA, none of the SA leadership was around...and there those cases of food were sitting, which they said we could have....we had the truck, we had the time- so I just took control told my team to load the tap tap (truck) with 10 cases- which we did, and off we went. We drove the truck into the compound, closed the gates, and unloaded. The director was extremely grateful...he hugged me. So what I am saying is...we have figured out how to move food without drawing any attention at all- we didn't have any security and there were absolutely no problems. The locals would never suspect a tap tap to have aid, and even if they did...they wouldn't touch it because they would have to assume it was the property of another Haitian, the penalty of stealing from is death. One thing I failed to mention about yesterday was we had a lead from a trusted friend in Utah that a young Haitian man didn't have means to return, and still didn't know if his family was alive or not. We spent done time on this, but were able to track their location down, find them, and learn that they were all alive as well. We relayed this information to my friend in Utah who has told him. We will try to set up a sat phone call when things settle down a little. Tomorrow I am meeting with an American group who is looking to temporarily relocate several dozen orphans to a town about 8 hours from here. Should be a good solution for many of these children. Matthew and I are hanging in there for at least another day. The doctors we worked with are letting us move over to their complex just across the way- they have showers too. It will be my first real shower in 10 days. |
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Canon 7D Crash Course??? |
| Michael asked me to update everyone that has been asking about the Canon 7D Crash Course, and let you all know that It has finished it's final editing and has been sent to production. It will ship before February 13th. If you have more questions please post below.
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1-28-10 |
| I'm not sure how much longer I'll be able to stay here. Today, at
least right now, even with yesterday's success. I absolutely do not want to be here. I am know there are many people working very hard- however the bottlenecks, red tape, egos, and blown-way-out-of-proportion danger of riots are stalling aid from moving. We hit the streets everyday, see malnourished, sick, diaper less children who need help, assess their needs, gps locate their position and tell them help is coming. Then we leave and day after day nothing happens, and here they are waiting, and waiting and waiting, and thousands of tons of food are just sitting there. It seems there is absolutely no sense of urgency, organization or willingness to co-operate within aid groups. I cannot tell you guys how many times I get a "good contact" who says they want to or can help, when they change their minds, or don't return calls, or don't really have any authority to do anything, or want to sit around and talk some more about it, or "plan". The time for planning is over. When Matthew and I started we agreed to check out ~20 orphanages of the 100 on our no contact list. We have located about 13 who have immediate needs. We have proven that a rag tag group of volunteers, with no established structure can find orphanages that are falling through the cracks (btw- I estimate there are closer to 300-400 orphanages here that aren't even listed, we have found some of these). In this particular situation, I do not believe there is a ground team that can find and identify them faster than we can. A large wheel, by the nature of it's size alone, can not accelerate as fast as a small one. We have an advantage in going out and finding these places the bigger organizations don't. We don't attract any attention because we use local transportation. We don't need or use security because those very same "dangerous" natives help us locate these places and we do it by talking to people on the street. Another huge problem I'm seeing is the creation of extra steps, making it harder to do things than they should be. Let's say a church has a huge stash of food they don't know how to distribute. I contact them, asking them to sponsor our program, they say yes call back tomorrow and we can start. Well I wait till tomorrow, call them back, and now they want to ship it to another distributor and want me to co-ordinate with them, which means I have to establish contact, negotiate a relationship, schedule a time etc, when I could have done this all the same day with the church in the first place. There is a huge fear to take action. Another problem I'm seeing is what I call "misinformation" being flooded with contact numbers, email addresses, etc, I spend a few hours a day trying to reach them, and nothing comes of it. It's been a tremendous waste of time dealing with this. Matthew and I have also determined that the need for security is overblown. We watched 2 - 50 gallon tanks of drums being transported yesterday, it had a full UN transport team protecting it. They do much more danger to that shipment by drawing so much attention to it. Of course there are some bad apples, but you can expect that in every city. Haitians also have rules. The punishment for a Haitian stealing from another Haitian is death. Haitian police have been given orders to shoot and kill looters and thieves, and most of the bodies I've seen were dead thieves. Does it not make more sense to use Haitians to distribute food to other Haitians? Surely I cannot be the only one who knows they have whole community organizations set up which can handle this. Oddly, another problem I'm seeing is a tremendous amount of criticism and negativity directed towards me. I've gotten emails from complete strangers telling me what a bad thing I am doing or how to assess, how to report, whom to report to, how I should gps tag them One of the only orphanages we have found seems to think I have something to do with their security problems. We received 2 emails from their leadership asking for help or an assessment/contact- so we spend a few hours driving out, find them and it turns out not only do they have all the aid they want, people have already tried to break into their stores. I tag them make a note, and a few hours later the same woman who asked us to cone check on them accuses me of causing the security breach. (wth?!?- I guess she thinks that looters, who have extremely expensive computers, extremely expensive Internet connections, electricity are watching my blog every hour to get info to raid her orphanage for something to eat- it's absolutely ridiculous- I got another email from her this morning asking me to remove me from her lists and to stop all contact about her organization... Remember this is from a person who asked for help to come. It's a joke...I guess I am learning some people don't want help. Equally delicate is the situation with Matthew, if he decides to quit...it's over. We are extremely alike and I love him like a brother, but sometimes he gets offended by how we are treated or ignored and I'm not sure how he is feeling right now. There are some other issues too, but most if them are manageable. I've also just been told that the camp we are staying at is closing down tomorrow, so I'll have to try to find another place to crash. So that's where we are at- your prayers and thoughts are appreciated. |
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1-27-10 |
| Had our first actual aid move today. When I woke up this morning, I
didn't really have a plan, but knew it was time to take action and move something to an orphanage, preferably the one we found yesterday that had the 200 kids. When the Salvation Army guys came in we told them about the big orphanage and they assigned someone to drive out with us to confirm. Long story short, he was as shocked as we were. We came back reported. within an hour SA had us heading to pick up 7 cases of food and some tents. I told SA how grateful I was for their help and their leader said "you are the reason we are helping, you stuck it out and made things happen. We are glad to help you." I'm extremely grateful to the Salvation Army- they were the first to step up and actually supply us with something tangible. I can't go into details, but there was some red tape picking up the stuff, and I was told it may be harder to get it in the future, so we are still looking for a long term partner. The truck was over filled and we covered it in a plain blue tarp. While in most places this isn't a big deal, in Port Au Prince, it is. If someone finds out we have aid, it can turn into a riot in a matter of seconds. Matthew has dreadlocks, which is common in gangs here. (and yes he looks like a gang member). I dress as military style as possible, and they tell me I look like special forces. I also wear gear on my belt under my shirt and it looks like I'm armed. Most Haitians look at us and are confused as to who we are and what we are doing, so they leave us alone. We rode the entire way (about an hour) on top of the boxes, got there, set up 10 tents, dropped off the food and left. It felt really awesome to finally help out. They were very grateful and happy to see us and get the aid. Just wanted to say great job to everyone! We are still looking for an aid organization to work closely with us who can move a little quicker with less red tape. Matthew is feeling better and better about what we are doing. |
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1-26-10 |
| We are slowly getting more and more support for our orphanage
assessments. This morning I was introduced at the Salvation Army meeting and they are becoming more and more supportive. We have several contacts now who are willing to help us, but as of this moment, nothing has actually moved. A small French team of doctors was supposed to visit one of the orphanages we first contacted, but we got back so late that they've already gone to their hotels for the night. I've also made some good solid ground contacts with the Mormon church who have also agreed to help us, but until it actually happens, I'm not counting on it. Today we visited a few cities north east today. One we had tried to find our first day here and couldn't. It was actually an orphanage/ clinic referred to me by Brian Henry, one of my workshop attendees. I spoke with the son of the director before I came and told him I would help. We got better directions this time and eventually did find it. They have had no contact since the earth quake, running at maximum capacity- they needed medical goods and supplies. While we were there, we asked if they knew of an orphanage that had 500 kids in the area and they gave us some places to check. This was our original plan because I had received 2 emails about an orphanage out there that desperately needed help, and we had no idea where to look. We found this huge compound, and even helped evacuate an older man to the main road so he could get a taxi to the hospital. The compound looked like it was doing pretty good, but they still needed some help. Again we asked about the big missing orphanage, and he directed us up the road. So we get there...and get this...there are freaking 200+ kids out there under a few tarps. Completely homeless. There were about 6 adults taking care of them and it looked like they were cooking up a big vat of rice. Some looked like they needed minor medical attention. Of all the orphanages we have found, we believe this one needs it most. We found a 4th orphanage in the way back- 25 kids- their main house was destroyed- they need help too. After this visit, Mathew and I had a talk- it's time to start moving food and supplies in a safe manner. All the work we are doing really means nothing unless there is a result. From their perspective, we show up, collect their data and they start hoping aid will come, but it never does. In a sense, Mathew and I become somewhat responsible for those kids until aid is delivered. Tomorrow this will be our main goal, to actually move aid ourselves if no one else will. The trickiest part will be security and doing it in a safe way for everyone- I have a few ideas...big day tomorrow. My number one priority will be getting something to the group of 200+. |
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Matthew...... |
| This is Matthew, the man Michael has been referring to in all of his blog posts. They have been through a lot together including finding Matthews family safe and alive! Matthew has been translating for Michael and helping him navigate throughout the city. |
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This Is What it is ALL About...... |
| Interesting day- I'm typing this on my iPhone- it's been my life line.
I almost lost Matthew today, he was frustrated that no one was interested in supporting us with supplies. It breaks your heart to see these kids, some with urgent needs, suffering. He had told me he was leaving tomorrow and I would be on my own, which meant I had one of two options, leave or hot the streets without an interpreter. Stressful thoughts both. We decided to go out anyway and just plug away, continuing what we were doing, gathering data. By the end of the day, we have visited about 20 total locations, 10 need urgent help, 2-3 had aid, the rest were evacuated or were bad addresses. There is absolutely no way a non- Haitian would be able to find some if them. We are learning how to be more effective and efficient with more visits. Instead of saying "where is this specific orphanage?" we ask "where is the orphanage" and sometimes they ask "which one?" we have found 2 unknown orphanages this way. Unfortunately, I'm not taking many pictures. Having a camera with me causes some problems- I'll explain later. For now my focus is on collecting data- and so far it's slowly coming together. By the end of the day, we were able to get some good info to several groups who are interested in helping. The Salvation Army has really warmed up to us, and when we reported to them tonight, they said they were going to try to help us. It was at that time Matthew said "you have won me over" And seemed genuinely happy how things were coming together. I don't want to get my hopes up, but aid should be moving soon directly to these children our volunteers have found. This has been quite incredible and I hope we can continue. We have a few more leads, everyone back home has been chipping in, in such amazing ways it's incredible. We have taken down the map for security reasons, but are still keeping track of what's going on. I'm getting ready to go to my tent. I'm so dirty it's incredible :) Thank you for all your prayers and support! Michael Sent from my iPhone |
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© 2010 Michael Andrew Photography, All rights reserved. Blog by infinet design |
