PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – I’m up at 4:20 a.m. The guest house was still quiet except for the steady purr of the diesel generator in the darkened courtyard. 

I got online and checked e-mails before the system slowed down. Wireless internet in the guesthouse hasn’t worked for five days, but our BGAN (portable satellite dish) saves us from being on the dark side of the moon. We left early for a distribution in Balan, the hard scrabble village outside the city where we have a WMI unit turning water from a chocolate-colored stream into something fit to drink.  

Traffic on the way to the warehouse was maddening. David drove with one hand on the horn and the other clutching his blackberry. His phone never stops ringing, as a constant stream of calls comes in from other NGOs asking for food and water as well as needing guidance on issues ranging from how to get personnel into Haiti to where we buy diesel fuel in Port-au-Prince. Just like in the U.S., OBI has become a hub of resources and information.

Kumar and our Haiti team had the trucks loaded by the time we arrived. We formed a convoy and snailed our way towards the outskirts of Port-au-Prince and on to the salt-encrusted village. We were running late, so I knew that the villagers were already looking toward the horizon for signs of dust plumes signaling our arrival. Yesterday, each of the 400 families in Balan received “la papier” (makeshift ticket) with OBI logo that entitled the holder to a place in the distribution. As we wound our way down the last thorny hillside we could see the serpentine line of hungry, thirsty and already sweating villagers.

After setting up, each family was given two tarps, one bright blue and one tan, two cases of bottled water and a package containing rice, canned fish, cereal and a hygiene kit with soap, shampoo, toothpaste, razor and other small items. As the line snaked its way to an end, villagers from some other village got rowdy, but order was maintained. Distributions are such an emotional rollercoaster for me and the rest of our team. Inevitably, our trucks get empty, but there are always people who don’t get anything. It’s a sad fact of life in disaster relief. There is always that last case of water and last bag of food.

We rushed back to the warehouse for a meeting with a Norwegian group selling modular tents and portable hospitals. The people were nice and their products looked good, but the price tags were more suitable for governments, not NGOs like ours. The meeting didn’t last long.

David drove me to a huge glass company to look at used forklifts. The company operates out of several cavernous metal buildings that did not suffer structural damage, but thousands of tons of glass stacked neatly in racks as long as a football field turned into a windrow of broken glass during the 37 second quake. The owner explained that he was willing to sell us one of his four forklifts. I was worried that the ramp at our warehouse was too steep for all but the newest machine, and agreed to return on Thursday after taking some measurements and consulting with Lonnie, an OBI warehouse expert due to arrive tomorrow.

We drove to central Port-au-Prince to make rounds inspecting our water plants. David stopped by the side of the once-magnificent cathedral. It was so sad to see such beauty reduced to ruin. A man walking along the street told us to be careful and not get too close. He said that a choir had been inside practicing when the roof came down. They were all crushed to death.

We visited the mammoth national stadium and found that our water plant had run out of fuel. We filled the tank with diesel fuel and smiled at the people who immediately showed up with empty water jugs.

While David was speaking with the camp coordinator I received an e-mail from a U.S Navy Commander in Florida informing me that a Navy tug and barge had just arrived to Port-au-Prince harbor carrying 29 containers of OBI cargo. He asked that we quickly arrange trucks to move the containers out of the port. We drove to the port, negotiated our way past numerous U.S. military guards at a series of gates, and met the Navy Commander in Charge. We spent the next hour discussing logistics and were overjoyed when the Navy Commander agreed to deliver our containers to the OBI warehouse.

We left and went to the CAT dealer in an attempt to rent another forklift. The guys there were very cordial, but explained that their fleet was already rented. I explained how desperate our situation was and they agreed to repair a machine that had been waiting for a part that just arrived. I agreed to rent it for six months.

It was getting dark by then. We crawled through city traffic to finally arrive at our guest house. The cook had a delicious dinner prepared and we ate before taking a cold shower. The food was wonderful, potatoes, okra and beef over rice and a cherry cobbler desert. We ate like wolves after a day of fasting on Fritos and chips.

After dinner, two members from IsraAID arrived to discuss their new team’s arrival. Around 10 p.m., they left and it was time to answer a few more e-mails and then crawl into bed.

Tags: Balan, Bill Horan, Caribbean, clean water, Disaster Relief, Earthquake, IsraAid, OBI, Operation Blessing, Port-au-Prince, Relief, Relief Supplies, US Navy, Water Missions International, Water Purification, Water Purification System, WMI

This entry was posted on Friday, February 12th, 2010 at 4:11 pm and is filed under Bill Horan, Caribbean, Disaster Relief, Earthquake, Haiti. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.