PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Even as darkness fell, sticky heat smothered Port-au-Prince like an electric blanket turned all the way up. As I stepped from the cool sanctuary of the Land Cruiser, my glasses fogged up; so I took them off and slipped them into my shirt pocket.

Nancy and I walked into the camp past young men who were wearing Haitian Boy Scout uniforms and were serving as security guards. Dr. Joseline Marhone came out from under a tarp that was stretched like a flat roof over tables piled high with boxes of bandages and medicines.

I greeted my old friend, and kissed her on both shiny cheeks. The last time I had seen Joseline was in November under much happier circumstances. We were in the shady parking lot of the Montana Hotel, transferring 225,000 doses of anti-parasite medicine into her vehicle. She used those pills to kick off a nationwide anti-parasite program. That was a happy day under the trees at the Montana.

Now the trees are gone, the Montana is gone, and much of Haiti is only a memory, but my friend remains, still smiling and still strong. Kissing her cheeks, I tasted the salt in her perspiration and felt that I was in the presence of a hero.

Joseline invited us to sit with her in the cubbyhole behind the piles of supplies. I asked her to tell me about the quake and what had happened since. For the next hour, she told the stories—about how, in an instant of thunderous horror, her house crashed down around her; how she urged her terrified grandson to squirm through a narrow tunnel out of the rubble, and then waited for her own rescue more concerned with where her grandson was than with her own fate.

She pointed to the skirt she was wearing and said it was all that she was able to salvage from her earthly belongings. Then she told us about the camps, and how they are getting worse instead of better, and how she regularly serves 200 patients a day at her makeshift clinic.

The saddest story was about what women and young girls are experiencing in the camps. Far worse than hunger, thirst and disease is the sexual abuse. Hundreds of women and young girls have been attacked since the quake.

Joseline then showed us around the camp and asked me to take a water sample and test it for contaminants. She said that the last two times she drank camp water she got diarrhea. I filled a bottle and promised to return.

I asked Nancy to take a photo of Joseline and me. I wanted one to go with the happy photo from what seems like so long ago.

As long as I am breathing I will work with every fiber of my being to help Joseline and Nancy help the Haitian people.

Several weeks ago, Dr. Alix, the hospital’s administrator, contacted me and asked for help. I know Dr. Alix well. OB was working at the hospital on the day of the earthquake, and has since provided a water purification plant, 12 truckloads of medicine, and cash to help pay for unbudgeted staff needs. Dr. Alix explained that the 700-bed hospital was limping along with only one working X-ray machine and one antique film developer. Both were running 24 hours a day and falling farther behind. The rest of the equipment was broken or had worn out. The radiology department waiting rooms were overflowing with sweating patients sitting on long benches, waiting their turn. The situation was desperate.

I called my friend Jerry. Last year Jerry and Medical Equipment Corporation, his Virginia Beach-based med tech firm, helped us get the X-ray rooms in Honduras’ largest hospital up and running. I told Jerry what the situation was and he graciously offered his services pro bono. As always, OB agreed to pick up his travel expenses. A few days later Jerry arrived in Port-au-Prince on the AA flight from Miami and I met him at the airport. We whisked him to the hospital for a meeting with Dr. Alix and the radiology chief. During the next few days Jerry sweated off about 10 pounds and skinned all his knuckles struggling with the the broken units, but lack of spares and an inconsistent power supply frustrated his efforts.

Jerry analyzed what was needed, returned to Va. Beach and began gathering parts and components. Last week he called and said the shipment, weighing about 2 tons, was ready to go. It consisted of 2 complete portable X-ray machines, an automatic film processor, a single phase generator and an assortment of spares to fix the hospital’s existing machines. The shipment went out by air late last week. This week we are dealing with Haiti customs to get the shipment out in time for Jerry’s arrival on Friday. He and his son Kevin will work all weekend to install the new equipment and repair the broken machines. They hope to finish by Tuesday and fly home.

This is another example of how OB acts as a force multiplier. We multiply donor dollars by thinking like entrepreneurs. We are always looking for ways to leverage resources. In this case, by thinking strategically, moving quickly, utilizing our network of expert friends and spending a few dollars for airplane tickets and air freight, we are providing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of machinery that will save lives and alleviate the suffering of countless poor people in Haiti.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – This tiny girl is Betty; she is about two years old. To my untrained eye, Betty seems alert and aware, but Loune, from Partners in Health, says she is “a bit slow.” Loune wheeled Betty over to meet me while I sat in a white plastic chair under a mango tree watching Eric and his team build a wooden cover over the dry swimming pool. Eventually we will use the pool for therapy and fun for the kids, but as we sort out more pressing issues, the pool presented a hazard and had to be covered.

Nobody knows where Betty came from or who her parents are. She turned up at the General Hospital about a year ago. Before the quake, there were 40 special needs children, many of them orphans, languishing in one large room at the general hospital in Port-au-Prince. They were, in effect, abandoned children who had been left in the charge of the hospital. Conditions were abysmal, but the children were being fed and cared for.

After the quake, Betty was evacuated, along with her 39 disabled buddies, to St. Damien Hospital. They stayed there until yesterday, when Loune and Nancy moved them to Zanmi Beni.

Zanmi Beni is the name for our newest project—a joint effort between Operation Blessing and Partners in Health (in Haiti, called Zanmi Lasante). It is a home and school for special needs orphans and abandoned children who have a range of physical and mental disabilities. Zanmi Beni, words in Haitian Creole, reflects DNA from both partners, and means “Blessed Friend” or “Blessed Partner.” I am thrilled to be working together with Dr. Farmer’s organization. It is, hands down, the finest and most effective NGO in Haiti.

Loune asked me to watch Betty for a few minutes and left her in her stroller facing the plastic chair I was seated in. I wanted to make friends with her, but since I don’t speak Creole, I limited my communication to tongue clicks, soft goofy noises and tickling the bottom of her tiny foot with the tip of my little finger. She seemed okay with all that until I started taking photos. She didn’t cry, but there were worry lines in her forehead and I sensed that she was about to protest, so I put the camera away. She resumed her curious stare, not quite smiling, but almost. Her beautiful eyes melted whatever hard shell I had left.

This morning, as I reflect on my new friend Betty and how precious and vulnerable she is, I am filled with an epiphany of responsibility. Since her father is nowhere to be found, I feel deeply compelled to stand in for him, and do all that I possibly can to protect her and her pals from all that is wrong with the world.

PORT-AU-PRINCE – The rain came down so hard it woke me up in the night. It’s 5 a.m. and I hear water gurgling in the downspout and splattering on the concrete slab outside my door.

It’s still hot in spite of the rain, so I have my fan with the madly swiveling head still blasting away. I shudder to think of the children from our Dadadou school and the thousands like them who are cuddled together, trying to sleep in leaky tents.

Yesterday, while visiting the school, I marveled at how neat and clean the children were; the girls with intricate braids and perfectly placed hair ribbons; the boys in snow white T-shirts and scrubbed cheeks. How can mothers who live crammed in tiny tents, amid the squalor of a tent city, keep their children so clean, and send them to school looking like they just emerged from cozy homes in an American suburb?

I’ve seen this same phenomena in disaster camps around the world; in the stifling heat of the Darfur desert; the icy mountains of China’s Sichuan province, or reeking, steaming villages in Andre Pradesh, India. Somehow, in spite of horrendous conditions, mothers always seem to get their children cleaned up for school. It is in this commonality that I best see what’s—the same—about all of us. It is through our children that the brotherhood of man best shines through.

My Blackberry just buzzed with an e-mail from Kumar. He landed minutes ago in Santiago, Chile. The airport is closed, with customs operating under large tents. He says passengers are being loaded on buses to be driven to one of five locations in the city. A guy from YWAM is supposed to meet and drive him to Concepcion to connect with Wolfgang and the Humedica medical team. There is a curfew there from midnight until noon every day, which makes for a challenging disaster relief response.

I’m getting ready for my last day here and don’t know how David and I can possibly get to all the places where we have meetings scheduled. There’s a lot to be done on this long road to recovery for Haiti.

We are in the new house now, and can finally get a full night’s sleep without interruption from street noise, mosquitos or a generator that growls all night like an angry bear.

Our cook and housekeeper turned down our offer to stay in our guest house, and prefer to sleep in their small tent on the concrete slab outside the kitchen door. They, like most Haitians, are haunted by visions of being crushed, and choose to sleep outdoors. We have seen this same fear in other parts of the world where earthquakes tear lives apart and aftershocks remind victims that they will never feel safe again.

We have had rain two nights in a row, so mosquitos swarm to any light in the night and add to the misery index. I am continually amazed at how tough the Haitian people are. Doctors tell me how injured patients lay quietly and bear pain that would have most patients screaming. The “normal misery level” has been so high for so long, that generations of Haitians have learned how to live with non-stop pain.

Meanwhile, in response to Saturday’s 8.8-magnitude quake that struck Chile, our teams have been making assessments on how we can help victims. Kumar Periasamy has left for Chile and will be joining a team of Humedica doctors and medical personnel on the ground to bring aid to those injured and in need of help. Humedica is a German nonprofit and long-time partner with OBI, and we’ve previously worked together in Haiti in response to the Hurricane Ike; aiding victims of the Myanmar cyclone; and helping victims of ethnic violence in Kenya and refugees in Darfur, Sudan, to name a few.

Here in Haiti, the road to recovery continues. We leased a second warehouse very close to our headquarters and the US embassy. Even though it’s a good neighborhood, we have contracted with a local security firm for 24/7 security guards. Each guard is dressed in a camo uniform and carries a shotgun and sidearm.

We helped The Salvation Army out of a jam yesterday. They were no longer able to use the storage area at the airport, and their warehouse is not yet ready for occupancy. We agreed to let them store 5 truckloads of rice and beans and other supplies in our warehouse until theirs is ready. Our team worked all day with US Army soldiers unloading the trucks and stacking pallets in our warehouse.

Looking to the future and how we might help create new jobs and improve quality of life in Haiti, we have decided to dramatically expand our Haiti fish program. The plan is to raise millions of tilapia and catfish fingerlings for stocking in all of Haiti’s major lakes. “Teach a Nation to Fish” is the name of this project. Our partner, Val Abe at Caribbean Harvest, has a Ph.D in aquaculture from Auburn and has already proven his expertise in our joint effort at Lake Azuei. Val will run the project and OBI will fund it and provide logistic and management support. This is a three year project that will result in between 5,000 and 8,000 new jobs and fresh fish for millions of Haitians.

More on that later…

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Dadadou is a tent city in Port-au-Prince where about 7,000 quake victims are living in tents set up on a sun-scalded AstroTurf soccer field.

David and I first went there over 2 weeks ago at the request of doctors from Partners in Health, whose mobile medical team had just started visiting the camp. OBI regularly works with Partners in Health to solve water problems, and, other than a scattered supply of bottled water, the people in Camp Dadadou were without water. The Partners in Health doctors met with us and requested that we provide water for Dadadou. 

David and I drove to the camp that afternoon, met with Dr. Jounie, the camp coordinator, and investigated. We found an empty underground cistern and a new 3,000 gallon metal water storage tank, also dry. David asked Pradel, OBI’s Haitian administrator, to call the water company and order truckloads of water; within an hour a truck was dumping 8,000 gallons into the cistern.

There are several trucking companies in Port-au-Prince, all of which buy water from companies that operate deep wells. The water is clear and appears clean, but the aquifer that the wells draw from is contaminated with fecal bacteria—the result of a dilapidated sewer system that leaks.

Haitian adults drink the water and only occasionally get sick because their immune systems have grown resistant to the germs, but children have not yet developed resistance and suffer from chronic water-borne disease. Worse yet, babies, whose immune systems are most vulnerable, often die.

About two hours after our arrival at Dadadou, our white box truck rolled in with a WMI water purification unit onboard. We spent about a half hour discussing where it would be best to set it up. The underground cistern was located over 100’ from the metal water tank. We had to engineer a way to pump the water from the cistern to the WMI unit and then into the storage tank. The problem was that cars drove back and forth between the cistern and the tank and would squash our waterline.

David found a way by tying the pipe along the top of the fence, and then elevating it high over the gate where the cars passed. It worked, and about an hour later, our water team, working with servicemen from WMI, had pure water flowing into the tank. By the time darkness fell, there was a happy crowd lined up to fill their water jugs and bottles.

The next morning, Kumar visited Dadadou to check on the water system and investigate other needs. Dr. Jounie explained to him that there were hundreds of children in the camp as well as 110 expectant mothers and 19 infants born since the quake. She told Kumar of the desperate need for formula and baby food, as well as nutritious food for pregnant mothers. Kumar went back to the OBI warehouse and loaded a truck with baby food, formula, MREs and hygiene kits.

Kumar fell in love with the people of Dadadou and has been going back every day since. Dr. Jounie told him how badly the children needed a place to meet and to resume some semblance of school. We had a 40’ by 60’ tent in our warehouse that had just arrived. It’s the one we had used in post-Katrina Slidell as our food and eating area. Kumar spent about a week clearing an area to set it up near the water tank and organizing a group of teachers.

The people of Dadadou are still hurting, but they are much better off than they were two weeks ago. Now, by the grace of God, the dedication of the hard-working OBI staff on the ground, and the benevolence of OB donors, they have safe water, nutritious food and even a makeshift school for their children. This is a prime example of what OBI is doing in 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.

We started the day meeting with two lead doctors at Partners in Health’s (PIH) temporary headquarters. They told us about a PIH clinic at a camp called Dadadou. They explained that there was no well or source of water for the 3,000 or so people in the camp – only “a large tank” that needed to be filled regularly with truckloads of water.

They further explained that the trucked-in water was not potable and needed purification. They asked if we could arrange for regular water deliveries and also set up one of our WMI plants to purify the water. We promised to make it happen later that day.

We picked up the lawyer at 9 a.m., and then drove through miles of stop-and-go traffic to the very center of Port-au-Prince for a 10:30 meeting with Haiti’s chief notary to confirm our house purchase. Even though I have watched hours of post quake news video, I was stunned by the magnitude of destruction at the heart of Haiti’s capitol.

It is a massive ground zero of broken concrete and caved in buildings. Last year I had been to the central square many times for meetings with various government officials, so I’m familiar with which building is what. It was hard to tell them apart now with so many slumped into gigantic piles of wreckage. I found myself thinking about what it must have been like for colleagues and friends I knew who were there when it happened.

The chief notary met us at an office in a building right off the main square. He stood at the open door to greet us. He was smiling in spite of the fact that we were 45 minutes late because of the impossible traffic.

He welcomed us into his tiny office and apologized for the lack of AC and folding chairs; then with the light of his cell phone, he showed us through several adjacent darkened rooms that were his old offices. He pointed to cracks in the walls and explained in French, what it was like during the quake.

I was filled with a sense of admiration for this man, who must have so much heartache, but still showed up for our appointment with such a cheerful and accommodating attitude. There is a spirit of tenacious resilience that I see over and over in the Haitian people. In spite of their suffering, they somehow remain cheerful, resourceful and appreciative that we are there to help.

After the meeting, we dropped off our passengers and headed for the camp at Dadadou.

We arrived to see an ocean of tents flapping in the breeze and thousands of displaced Haitians, milling about, sweating in the hot sun. We met with the PIH doctor who was the camp coordinator and she walked us around the site and explained her water problem. There was a large underground concrete cistern behind the clinic building.

About 100’ away, across a small parking lot and basketball court sat a new 3,000 gallon, round metal water tank that had been recently donated by Israelis. The tank had a graffiti-like painting of the Star of David and an American flag. A PVC pipe came out at the bottom with a bank of simple faucets. The tank did not have any water in it.

The doctor explained that the only way to get water to the 3,000 camp residents was to bring it in by truck, dump into the underground cistern and then somehow transfer the water to the metal tank. Even if this was accomplished, the water, while clear and seemingly clean, is obtained from local municipal wells that are contaminated with bacteria.

Water in that condition is OK for washing clothes and bathing, but not for drinking. Having non-potable water on site sets the stage for rampant disease, because thirsty people drink whatever water they can find, regardless of being warned. The people in the camp were desperate, but fortunately we had a solution.

David had already called for a truckload of water which was soon dumped into the underground concrete cistern. We unloaded and placed the plant by the metal storage tank, lowered a submersible pump into the cistern and ran a steel reinforced plastic pipe from the submersible pump to the filter plant. We then hooked the filter plant discharge to the metal tank.

Three servicemen from Water Missions International showed up to help us with installation, and within three hours we were ready to test the filtered water. The whole time that we were assembling and testing the plant, David was training three camp residents how to operate the plant and test the water.

As darkness fell and a huge crowd gathered around the water taps, David watched as one of his trainees ran the final test. The water checked out perfectly; the people cheered, and started filling their jugs.

We headed for the house. Hot, tired and thankful for God’s favor and another fruitful day.

This morning, David, Kumar, Joe, Jon, Pradel and I drove to our rented OBI warehouse across the street from the Port-au-Prince airport. Our local team of 12 Haitian workers and drivers were there, all wearing OBI T-shirts. While a team rolled out and sliced bright blue USAID tarps into family size 10’ X 20’ pieces, we loaded the big green truck with emergency relief packages (hygiene kits, meals-ready-to-eat, rice, canned fish & cereal) and 10,828 half liter bottles of water from Iceland. David, Pradel and I then took off in the Land Cruiser with the green truck following, and rendezvoused with a van full of Israeli doctors and their medicine. We picked up Valentin Abe, our partner from the fish farm and drove to Medan Belize, a tiny village located on the shore of Lake Azuei.

The lake, approximately 22,000 acres, is Haiti’s largest, but the water is 13 parts per thousand salty and supports little fish life. It’s too salty for us to utilize a WMI water purifier so the village depends on a weekly water truck delivery sponsored by our friend Val. The water truck had not been there since before the quake. The ground, for miles around the lake, is poisoned with salt, so little vegetation grows from the rocky barren soil and farming is not possible. Medan Belize is the village where our friend Prophet lives (click here to watch video), and where we are sponsoring a tilapia raising program.

The last several miles are over an extremely rough trail that cannot be described as a road. It’s a narrow path, barley wide enough for a truck, carved between thorny bushes and studded with jagged rocks. David said the scene, with Lake Azuei sparkling below, reminded him of the Dead Sea and rugged terrain found in Israel. The heavily laden truck groaned along behind us and finally blew a rear tire and bent the rim. At times I thought it might tip over, but it didn’t. When we got close to the lake, a villager sitting on a small red horse with an oozing eye infection was waiting to direct us to an alternate route; an even rougher trail. The last section of regular “road,” runs along the shore, but was flooded due to the steadily rising lake level. It hasn’t rained a drop since the first week in December so I asked Val why the lake was rising. He said that theories and superstition abound, but the consensus is, that the quake opened a new crack between the bottom of the lake and the not-too-distant sea.

Medan Belize’s 45 families were ecstatic to see us as we rolled in. We exchanged handshakes and hugs with the men we knew from previous visits. The women were smiling and the children gathered around us. Little girls in colorful dresses, clearly worn for our benefit, beamed and held their dresses out to each side as if to say, “Did you see my pretty dress?” The village had not been directly damaged by the quake, but supply lines had been cut off, and they were hurting.

The Israeli doctors picked a shady spot under a thorn tree and set up a makeshift clinic with several white plastic chairs, a crude wooden table and cardboard boxes of medicine. Val got on David’s megaphone and explained that the doctors would see anyone who needed medical attention. At first the villagers were shy. No doctors had visited the village for a year, so we knew there was plenty of need. A small boy showed me an open wound on his hand and I led him to one of the plastic chairs in front of the doctors. That started a stream of patients that kept coming for three or four hours. The doctors were wonderful – unfazed by the heat and primitive conditions.

Val had all the family names handwritten on a list and started calling each name, one by one, to receive their packages off the back of the truck. When we finished, we gave each family a heavy plastic tarp and a case of water. It was orderly until people from another village showed up, and the situation became a bit unruly. I was in the truck handing down cases of water. The pleading eyes and outreached hands were a scene of desperation that will be forever etched into the deepest part of my memory.

After the distribution was complete and all villagers requiring medical help were served by the doctors, we left and drove to Balan to check on our WMI water plant that the OB team installed two days ago. The unit is situated near a bridge that crosses a small pool in a muddy stream. While we were there, donkeys waded into the water to drink and several children took a bath. The WMI unit turned the chocolate-colored water crystal clear.

We left the doctors in Balan and rushed back to Port-au-Prince for an appointment with our lawyer and the homeowner we are trying to buy a house from. We need a base of operations where our team can sleep, shower and rest in relative comfort and safety. We met our lawyer alongside the road in front of the US embassy. US Marines dressed in camouflage fatigues and floppy hats shooed us away saying we couldn’t stop there. We moved to a busy service station parking lot and had a meeting in the Land Cruiser. The lawyer doesn’t speak English, but between David’s French and Pradel’s Creole, we formulated our game plan and went to the property to meet with the homeowner. We hammered out a deal acceptable to all. Tomorrow we are meeting the lawyer and seller and will go to the “notary” to confirm the property records, make sure all is well with the title, and complete the transaction.

We are thrilled with this development. The upstairs of the brand new five bedroom home will serve as the living quarters for our Haiti national director, Eric Lotz, and his family. The lower floor will be OB Haiti’s main office. There’s a two story guesthouse behind the main house with six bedrooms, each with its own bath. That will function as quarters for our American staff as they cycle in and out over the next couple years and also serve as a guest house when we have visitors. There is ample room to park our three trucks and two SUVs inside the gate and within the walls. The neighborhood is quiet with the US Embassy a few blocks away, but in order to insure safety we will hire 24/7 security. This was a real find and incredible buy in the face of sharply escalating prices for homes and buildings stout enough to have withstood the terrible quake.

While we were meeting with the homeowner, Kumar, Joe and some of the warehouse team took a truckload of valuable medicine to the General Hospital. The medicine was flown in from Canada on a jet piloted by a guy from Rome, Italy. Once again, OBI took the medicine “the last tactical mile” and got them into the hands of the doctors at the biggest hospital in Haiti.

Joe’s son, Jon, is a retired US Navy Seabee who runs our warehouse and is a critical link with the military and Mission Aviation Fellowship. He spent the day shuttling shipments of beans, rice and medicine from the airport to our warehouse. It was a very good day.

Port-au-Prince, Haiti –  I’ve been awake since 4 a.m. The rest of the Operation Blessing team is still sleeping, but a life-long habit of rising early along with some raucous roosters have me wide-eyed and bushy-tailed.

We are staying in a “guest house” in central Port-au-Prince. For $65 per head per day they feed us excellent family-style Haitian meals, offer wireless internet access and AC, but hot water is not on the list of amenities. It’s been a while since I started my day with a cold shower. I can assure you, one doesn’t linger long under the needles of an icy spray. It does, however, take one from feeling half-asleep groggy to full-alert awareness without the aid of espresso.

I am not complaining, only letting you know what life is like here for our overworked team that puts in 18-hour work days, 7 days a week. In comparison, the residents of Port-au-Prince are suffering unimaginably, and do not have the luxury of our gated compound, armed guards and hot meals.

Today we head to Lake Azuei, where OBI’s tilapia-growing friends have the floating fish cages that we sponsored. Their village was not affected much by the quake, but they have been cut from supplies for over three weeks. We are bringing a truckload of relief packages (food and hygiene items) bottled water and a team of Israeli doctors with medical supplies. There is too much salt in the lake for a WMI purifier, so we have many cases of bottled water that the Navy shipped here for us from Norfolk. Ironically, the water, that was donated to OBI by a Pennsylvania company, was bottled in Iceland. It seems so odd, melted iceberg water for villagers in the hinterlands of earthquake-ravaged Haiti.

Yesterday I came in from the Dominican Republic. We left Santo Domingo at 6 a.m. in a rented car with local driver. He drove way too fast for my taste but I didn’t complain. The road was busy with truckloads piled high with relief streaming toward Haiti, so we spent lots of time passing trucks. The countryside in the Dominican is beautiful, with scarlet and orange beauganvilla planted in hedgerows along the highway and banana plantations covering the verdant valleys and lush foothills.

The border crossing into Haiti at Jimani is like a scene from an end-of-the-world 3D movie. Hundreds of trucks raising clouds of yellow dust and diesel smoke are bunched up waiting to squeeze through the funnel that is the narrow, iron gate to Haiti. Heavily armed soldiers with bandoleers of ammunition crossing their camouflaged chests swing the gate open to allow in one vehicle at a time. We clutched our passports and held our breath as we pulled up to the gate. The solders barely gave us a second look and swung open the rusty gate, and then, we were in Haiti.

More tomorrow….