Saturday (Belated) Report from Haiti

This report just came in today, with the amount of photos that were sent yesterday via e-mail from Haiti, somehow the report didn't get attached. Please check out yesterday's blog post to see the photos that were intended to be included with this report.

I would say it’s Saturday and we only have one more full day to stay, but then you would think we’re counting the days until we can leave, so I won’t say it! We had a big crew of our friends leave this morning and we hated to see some of them go. It’s amazing how quickly we have made friends here. They purposely come look us up to give us hugs and thank us again for being here and doing so much to get the Supply Tent up and running.

Speaking of getting the Supply Tent up and running, we just heard today from one of the big bosses that someone has donated 8 acres of land and they are going to start within the next week or two of building a new compound and the start building metal building, etc. to house the hospital in. They will even have air-conditioning for the Supply Tent! Of course we have no clue how long down the road all that will be. We have heard that where we’re located is in the flooding area of the airport and there can be up to 2 feet of water once the rainy season begins.

Once again the US Airforce sent over about ½ dozen men to help us sort and stock shelving today. They work about 3 hours, but any free labor we get is appreciated. We have knocked a big hole in what needed to be put up for now. Of course there are still tons of supplies outside covered over, but many of them are now duplicates of what we have inside.

Ken and his local Hatian carpenter put plywood doors on our 4 showers today! That will be a luxury for all of us old timers, but all those new ones moving in today won’t even know it or be impressed. It may not sound like a big deal just to hear that he did it, but if you had to take a shower with the curtains flopping in the wind exposing you one minute and then slapping your body the next with the old wet nasty curtain, you would know why we’re going to appreciate it for the next couple of nights. For some reason the wind was cool last night and it made the cold water feel warm to us as we showered and we really wanted to extend our 2 minute shower time...which several people did, but we try not to abuse their water shortage request of short showers.

- Jack