PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – This morning I joined a Haitian Pastor, Pastor Volner, on a helicopter flight to a remote community that we have been serving with food supplies. On the way we landed in a village called Pouille, home to a rural community of 1,800 people.

The pastor took us on a tour of a school he founded. The children were dressed in their red-and-white checkered uniform and looked amazingly neat considering the sparse environment outside the school walls.

This village is completely cut off by a snaking river, and the only way in is by air or boat. It was nice being in a place with no cars after several weeks of traffic in Port-au-Prince.

The Pastor showed me their primitive water system powered by an aging and difficult-to-run diesel pump. He also showed me an area he was hoping to turn into a vegetable farm for the school, but needed irrigation.

Our Pilot told me of a helicopter he could access to help us sling load one of our water purification systems in to Pouille. The solar pump could provide clean drinking water for the school of 300 students and feed a drip irrigation system for the vegetable farm. We’re working to make that happen.

We took off and climbed over some high mountains. Martin, our pilot with Samaritan Air, used patches of exposed white rock to generate lift as the morning sun heated up the air. After a short flight, we landed in a field in the village of Savanette.

Pastor Volner told me that the 2,500 villagers live from day to day on the crops they can grow. If the crops fail, they sometimes eat sugar cane all day long as their only meal. Before the quake, they would try to supplement their diets with food bought from Port-au-Prince, but that supply chain had ceased since the quake.

The pastor had collected a large kit form the OB warehouse the day before and had trucked it for 5 hours overnight to reach the village. We walked to the center of the village where the distribution was taking place.

A huge crowd was bustling to get a place in the distribution line. Today we were distributing MRE’s, rice and baby food and the distributions went on longer than we could stay.

It was great to see how far reaching our partner network is. From our warehouse in Port-au-Prince, food is getting out to places of need in many parts of the country. On the way back to the city, Martin flew us over Lake Azuei where I was able to get some aerial photographs of our fish cages and our adopted village, Medan Belize.

We then followed the road back into the city and hovered over the fish farm where OBI will be helping to produce millions of tilapia, creating thousands of jobs.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – My day started with a distribution in downtown Port-au-Prince with The Salvation Army. OBI teamed up with them to hand out our collapsable water kits to 2,000 families. The Salvation Army has been working with a specific camp and do distributions twice a week, usually handing out food.

At today’s distribution the recipients snaked in a long line next to a drainage canal and the UN provided crowd control. One by one they filed through and first collected the OB water kits, then a box of high nutrition food from The Salvation Army. The water kits will help them collect and store clean water.

The next stop was the General Hospital on an assessment to see if we could place the Proctor & Gamble “Tide Loads of Hope” mobile laundry trailer.

I had visited the laundry facility at the hospital a few months back and only 2 washing machines were working. Now none are working and all laundry for the 700-bed hospital has to be done by hand.

The offer of the laundry trailer was of course a big hit and we will hopefully be able to proceed with that program and make it happen. While at the hospital I had a chance to check out the latest water system that Eric installed yesterday, right outside the pediatrics center.

The system was running great and lots of patients, staff and family have already been able to benefit from it. On the way to warehouse 1 we stopped into Dadadou to check on the school and the water unit, both of which were running great. The kids have started decorating the big tent with colorings and paper decorations.

Around lunch time, the first 6 of our medical containers arrived into Port-au-Prince, so it was all systems go getting them unloaded into warehouse 2. At 3 p.m. I had a meeting with the World Food Program and outlined our distribution network. We have been earmarked 20 tons of MREs for our distributions and I’m hoping to finalize the deal tomorrow.

By around 4 p.m. Larry Foltz had managed to unload all 6 40-foot containers into the warehouse–quite a feat! We locked the metal doors and our armed security guard started his patrol.

We will have armed guards on the door 24/7. Tati and our local staff will be back at the Dominican Republic border tomorrow morning to escort the next 6 containers to Port-au-Prince, and we should have all 12 in the nest by tomorrow afternoon.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – On January 12, I was in Jerusalem getting ready to fly to London that night and then on to Niger, West Africa.

I was due to spend a week working with the Niger team on various projects including an exciting new project using micro projector technology. The plan is to begin using videos to train people in remote areas in proper health and hygiene methods. This new battery powered projector that hooks up to an iPod has just opened the door to make that possible.

I had my tiny projector, my iPod and the portable sound system all packed and ready to go and then I received the message—earthquake in Haiti! I flew to London as planned, but then to Miami, Atlanta, Santo Domingo and (48 hours later) Port-au-Prince. The next weeks were spent running flat out on emergency relief projects; I didn’t have time to even spare a thought to my cancelled Niger trip.

At the height of the relief efforts in Haiti we planned to do a distribution in a remote village. On the day of the distribution I just happened to notice the portable PA system in my bag and put it in the truck just in case. It turned out to be a huge winner.

The local pastor doing crowd control was able to make announcements to the 2,000 people scrambling for the distribution. He was able to call each family by name to step forward for their relief kit. The PA system has been very useful in that same scenario several times during the relief efforts here.

Fast forward a few more weeks and Operation Blessing erected a huge tent in a camp of 3,000 people in Port-au-Prince. The tent is now a school building for hundreds of children who are back in class thanks to teachers that OBI is helping to support. OBI also coordinated with the US Navy SeaBees to build desks and benches for the kids.

We are even serving peanut butter sandwiches to around 450 students each day. The woman coordinating the school is a Haitian-American named Jounie. She has become good friends with the OBI staff, and we are constantly offering additional ways to support the camp. I knew this was the perfect opportunity to test drive the micro projector system, so I offered to set up a movie night for the kids in the camp. Jounie loved the idea, so we set about coordinating the best day and time to do it.

The weather forecast for last night looked good—no rain—so Jounie and I decided that it was time for movie night. She started sending the message out around the camp, and I realized I had better find a movie to show the kids!

My options were limited. I sifted through Eric’s (our national director) DVD collection and found a classic animation that the kids would love, and it even had a French language track. A little while later I had the movie formatted to my iPod.

Once it grew dark, a few from the OBI team headed over to the camp. When we arrived, we were greeted by an almighty roar and ear piercing screams, the kids were super excited. I set up the projector, plugged in my iPod and hooked up the sound system. The children filed into the tent and sat cross legged on tarps, boys on the right and girls on the left.

There was so much atmosphere, the kids were buzzing with anticipation and there was me, nervous to see if my system would last throughout the whole movie. I hoped the batteries were fully charged. I pressed play and the movie started and lit up the end of the tent. Immediately, there was silence; the kids were transfixed. Then, all of a sudden, one of the characters did something amusing and the whole tent erupted in laughter. And that was how it went for the next 90 minutes—silence then laughter, side-splitting laughter.

I stood outside the tent looking in. There were around 200 children packed in like sardines. It was hot in there, but they didn’t care. The children forgot about their tough circumstances and were having a blast. It was incredible for me to stand back and watch this huge tent bellow with joy thanks to a tiny LED projector and my iPod.

Jounie took movie night to the next level and handed out cups of popcorn to the kids. When the movie ended, the children applauded and cheered. The batteries lasted and probably could have kept going for another film. My first trial of the projector kit was a success. Jounie got on the microphone and asked the children if they wanted to do movie night again next week, no prizes for guessing what they said…

I have requested some CBN animations in French and a technician is already in the process of uploading a few films already formatted for my iPod. The kids will love it.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Operation Blessing’s relief operations in Haiti have become so huge that we have needed to rent a second warehouse. Now our original warehouse (warehouse 1) will be exclusively for food, water and hygiene supplies. Warehouse 2 will become a distribution hub for medicine and medical supplies.

At any given time at warehouse 1, our team of Haitian workers are tirelessly unloading shipping containers, preparing relief kits or loading the variety of smaller trucks and pickups our partners bring to collect supplies.

We have 17 approved partners in our network consisting of churches, local non-governmental organizations, and orphanages. Each group makes a pick-up appointment with the warehouse manager and arrives to collect pre-assembled kits. Each large palletized kit contains a variety of food such as rice, beans, oil, oats, peanut butter, and meals-ready-to-eat and can feed 250 people for one week.

Our partners are responsible for distribution to the camps or communities they serve. OBI team members have vetted the partners to ensure that the food is getting into the hands of those with the greatest need. Each partner also has access to hygiene supplies as needed and bottled water too.

It has been almost two months since the quake and food supplies in Port-au-Prince are beginning to become available. Markets are open and food is available to purchase. The big problem now is that so many people are out of work and they cannot afford to feed their families. Our relief supplies are targeting those families who have lost everything or, as in the case of orphans, had little to start with.

For many already struggling orphanages the increased price of food has made survival even more difficult for the children. Through our distribution network Operation Blessing is providing food to around 4,500 people on a weekly basis.

As news spreads about the Operation Blessing network, we have been receiving more and more requests each day from all sorts of groups hoping to access our supplies. A steady stream of brown manilla envelopes arrives in my hands each day—each one containing a letter from a group claiming to be an orphanage or a ministry in need of help.

It’s hard to know how many requests are scams and how many really do need assistance; it’s common knowledge among the NGO community here that there are groups posing as churches or orphanages which are really nothing more than a scam to tap into free supplies. The truth is that OBI can hardly take on any more partners, we’re already working at full capacity. So vetting the new applicants is not actually a problem as there are simply no more slots for additional partners.

But no matter how over-stretched we are however, there are some exceptions. Today I happened to be at our warehouse when a Haitian man came to the gate asking to see me. He reminded me that this was the second time he had asked for help, so I sat down with him to hear him out.

He told me that he and his wife run an orphanage for 57 children and were in urgent need of food for the children. There was something about his expression and the urgency in his voice that made me realize he was the real deal. I asked him where the orphanage was and if he would be like me to visit. He smiled and said he would be very happy if I would. So I asked our warehouse manager, Larry, to load up his SUV with some food supplies. We crammed it to the brim with rice, boxes of high nutrition individual meals, and water and set off into the tedious Port-au-Prince traffic.

Ten miles and 45 minutes later we bounced down a pothole-filled back road and through the metal gates of the orphanage. As is usually the case at orphanages, the children were very excited to see a visitor and I was immediately serving up high fives and belly pokes to the amusement of the beautiful little kids surrounding me.

The building itself had not been destroyed in the quake, but the entire group have been living outside under a big blue tarp ever since, too afraid to sleep inside. In one corner, near the collapsed perimeter wall, there is a fenced in area that looked like a chicken coup. I asked the director what it was for. “We had chickens, but some were killed by the wall, the others were eaten by some dogs,” he said.

Some of the boys were rustled up to help unload the SUV and the director shouted out a few names to the group. Four little boys stepped forward; they looked concerned and confused. “These four are new to the orphanage since the earthquake,” the director said as he did his best to tidy them up. I did my best to make them smile, but the offer of a high five and a friendly belly poke was not enough to help them see past their pain. I can’t imagine what those 4 boys have gone through. None of them smiled the whole time I was there.

The director took me inside to show me the house. The unfinished building was very sparse, it had very little color and hardly any furniture or toys. He called me into a small room and said it was the pantry. He reached down to the bottom shelf of an empty cupboard and pulled out three almost empty sacks of grain. “You see why we needed help,” he said as he reached into one of the sacks and pinched out a few kernels of dry corn.

It really shocked me, not to see how little they had, but to think that I was so close to telling him we had no more slots available at our warehouse. And we really don’t have any more slots available, but I told him that from now on he must come and collect food from OBI—we will find a way to make up the difference.

One of the hardest parts of this job is having to say, “Sorry, but no.” The truth is that right now in Haiti there is more need than all the aid agencies combined can meet and if OBI distributed to every group that asked for help, we would dilute our impact and never really help anyone. It’s vital to maintain a focus, and right now our supply chain is capable of serving and really making a difference to the lives of the 4,500 we are reaching with food.

TALCAHUANO, Chile – Talcahuano was hurt badly by the tsunami that hit Chile’s coast. The naval port was completely swept away and the water system collapsed. Those who lost their homes are being housed in schools and the Chilean government is helping to take care of their needs as well as providing water in the city.

But all the supermarkets are closed. Curfew is enforced from 6 p.m. to 12 p.m.; movements are restricted. Sometimes it looks like a ghost town here. Most of the people whose houses were flooded have left the city to live with their extended families. But embedded in the communities are pockets of very poor families who remain unnoticed and have nowhere else to go.

We met one of those families whose home had been destroyed. When the tsunami hit, they had escaped to a nearby hill for safety. But everything in their house was floating in water.

When they returned two days later, they found their house filled with mud. Everything was destroyed. There was no room to sleep, there was no food, and it was miserable.

They all began working together to remove the mud. The wooden floor was rotting, so they removed it. The beds and furniture had to be thrown away. All that remained were cooking pots and pans. Knowing their condition, their church provided some clothes and food, but when we met them they had nothing. Their neighbors have not returned; they have moved to other cities to live with family. But these children have no other place to go.

When a local pastor and I arrived to their home, the mother was in tears. She had no words to express her loss. The house was a mess and had a strong odor. These children and four adults were cramped in one home. There were no smiles, no hope, and no food for the day.

We brought in packages of food, which would last them for two weeks. The mother gave me a hug and said, “May God bless you.” Finally, they were able to smile and some hope returned. For the next hour the pastor and members of the church spent time encouraging the family. And the children were even smiling as I took their pictures.

In all, 250 needy families received food packages consisting of rice, flour, sugar, oil, milk powder, and pasta. Five churches with volunteers visited the homes, gave them food and encouraged the families. For these families, it was hope and help they so desperately needed.

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 – At 4 a.m. there was a tremor. I heard some neighbors quickly vacating their home. Later, our workers at the warehouse were talking about it and I heard from our customs broker that no one was working at customs for fear of buildings collapsing.

I was wondering if we would have any kids in school today. At 9 a.m. we pulled into Dadadou camp and there were about 60 kids. I hoped that more would join in shortly. Since it was the first day of school for these kids, the plan was just to have a time of fun and games. The kids began to sing the popular hymn “How Great Thou Art.” They sang beautifully and the teacher said a prayer. Within minutes children were coming from every corner; by the end of the day we had about 500 kids.

Dr. Jounie, the camp coordinator, was so excited to see the kids go to school. “These kids were traumatized and they need a place where they can be themselves. My dream has come true through Operation Blessing…this school will change lives,” she said.

Eight teachers and 7 volunteers were registering the kids and categorizing them into age groups. The school will offer grades 1-6, going from 9 a.m. until noon. Kids were singing and having lots of fun all morning. According to Dr. Jounie, this is the first school in operation.

Dadadou has around 7,000 people. As the word gets out, more and more children will be attending the school. At the end of the school session, each child was given a bottle of cold water, an MRE (meal-ready-to-eat) and peanut butter.

Smiles were everywhere; every kid had something to take home. Dr. Jounie said, “Operation Blessing is the best organization. You do what you say. Thank you.”

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.

Gridlocked traffic, exhaust fumes, blaring horns: a typical morning in Port-au-Prince.

Our relief efforts were back in full swing today, and a constant stream of partnering groups arrived at the warehouse to pick up supplies to be distributed to displaced families. In the Cite Solei slum our water team identified several new sites for water purification units.

The slum has thousands of displaced families and many have received little or no assistance with clean water. In some of the spots there is no water source. So in one area our team installed a huge 1,000 gallon tank from which to draw water. We will have a water truck making daily rounds ensuring that the tanks are full.

Back at the warehouse, I trained the first group of mothers (and father) in how to use the Lifesaver bottle. Our partner, Lifesaver Relief, has donated hundreds of bottles to be distributed to displaced Haitians. OBI has chosen to distribute the bottles to parents with very young children, especially nursing mothers.

We are doing the training in small groups to make sure that each parent has the opportunity to interact with us and ask questions. The Lifesaver bottle uses air pressure to force water through the filter; it comes out very clean and very fast under pressure. There was a lot of laughter as we all got squirted by water—clean, safe drinking water.

The team is getting ready to install our huge tent in Camp Dadadou to serve as a school. Today we were busy preparing all the parts and making sure there was a big space cleared in the camp. In the afternoon, our good friend Val came over to discuss details for expanding our fish farming project in an effort to establish over 100 new jobs and provide protein-rich fish to thousands of Haitians.