Tuesday, May 24

This morning Kendra left at 5:15am to take Xiomara and Johnbern out to the land very early so they could work on constructing doors on the shelters out of the beds. The HELP families said this was their preference.

Kendra and I met with Alain - the boss in Camp Management at IOM at the UN Log Base (Log = Logistics) at 8am. We spoke with him about finding more families and he put a team together to do preliminary screenings for us.

The Protection Cluster meeting for protecting vulnerable people was across the base at 8:30am. Walked in and everything was in French even though Amandine from Handicap International invited us and knows that we don't speak French. Oops.  Sat through the 1.5 hour meeting, then asked Armony from shelter protection for a small update - she gave us a few people to contact, so we felt good about spending our time there even though we were completely lost.

Stopped by OCHA for a meeting schedule and visited Carlos about the possible solar light donation. He has known Kendra for some time and gave us "off the record" information.

We saw Captain Florentin (our Paraguayan friend) there, but only had enough time to say hello.  To Eko Depot the two of us went and we accidentally turned one road too soon. One road too soon in this case meant driving into the Haitian National Police evicting a tent camp with force by demolishing everything with a bulldozer. Wow! It was an intense few moments as we saw people breaking down their homes and carrying what they could away before the bulldozer got to it. There were lots of Haitian National Police with big guns just waiting in case there was trouble on this small side street.

To Eko Depot for more screws for the pavilion and extra paint for the latrines. After you pay, you walk 5 feet to have someone check your cart. The cashier missed a screw box and the cart checker threw a fit and accused us of stealing. Ugh. Took forever to pay for the 6th box.

Finally, in the early afternoon we headed out to the land.  When we arrived the UN Japanese Commander was waiting for us. They have been working on the 2k of access road since Monday, May 16th and received our most recent JOTC request for fencing and preparing the new land. They received it instead of our Paraguayan friends.

Took Johnbern and Xiomara with us to HELP to have a meeting with the doctor with the HELP families who will be moving in and/or are helping us with the Food For the Poor meeting tomorrow. Meeting concluded with them agreeing to move in and us paying for dinner for the group.

Back to land to make a sample door as that was one of their requests. Cut all the wood we could with a saw and the generator.

Xiomara, Kendra, and Eduardo ("Security")

Doctor kept trying to convince us to stay out there, but thank you Lord we had dinner plans with Nicole from IOM. She is the one who helped us get all the gravel donated.

Kendra and I cleaned up and washed our hair in the well. It was WAY better than using the bucket shower approach to wash my hair. It actually felt clean and that is weird.  As soon as we finished, it started to POUR.

As we were leaving, Nicole called to cancel. This is actually a relief because it was 7pm by this time and we had a long day anyways. Stopped at the restuarant by the airport for their chicken, rice, and fried plantains so we didn't have to cook. Bed as soon as we got home.

Sent from my iPod