Our Stones

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We setup the GART at World Concern today.  Hoping it provides the needed bandwidth for these folks to get some work done this evening.  Most reports and requests are due tothe UN daily and this has been real difficult with the connections here.

Had a real hard time pointing and staying on satellite today, must have ben the dehydration and heat from the roof.  Not sure how hot is is on this roof, but now that I am writing this, I am in the shade of the ball, cooling off, sipping some H2O and catching up with everything else going on.

After we were pointed and online, we grabbed some lunch.

The building next to us is destroyed, the two images, one from google earth, the one from the roof of the building the GATR is on.  You can see the roof we are on, it has the square looking thing in the middle of one section.  That is a sunlight, the other black thing is a cistern.

The thing about connections, are connections.   I have had the blessing of making quite a few here and I never not stopped to shake a hand, give out a card or help someone out.  The next someone may be me that needs help.

The photo below, say a million words, I got it from a connection.

Departed FL at sometime around 8:30 after finally getting everything ready and going (for the flight).  Flew in a Hendricks Motorsports aircraft (the donated three, plus fuel and crews) for the relief effort.  We flew from there to the Bahamas and then into Haiti after  quick refuel.

Once we arrived on the tarmac in Haiti, we were told to sit still and wait for someone to collect our passports, once they had those,  the took them to customs and had them stamped.  We were te deplaned and put in to a holding area until we received our passports.  I had an advantage of being ‘on-loan’ to MAF so I had advantage, since they were handling the logistics and passports during entry.

I met my contacts after receiving my passport back and then game on.  I had about a 20 min lull while I waited for our chase plane, my cargo was on it, once it arrived I moved the gear about 40 feet and started to pitch my tent and make me a home for the night.  Once my tent was done, I started learning the ropes.  I quickly learned how to schedule flights back out for folks arriving and then I took a trip 1 mile across the airport to customs.  The terminal has been condemned, so they have makeshift stuff everywhere.  The customs office was a 20 year old Haitian, with a set of guns and a badge.  Building re pore and making friends is essential here and I took the opportunity to make a friend with my new customs agent, since he is the one letting all of the relief workers in and out.  I got another 50 passports stamped with visa’s helped secure visa’s for four guys from Singapore that drove in from the Dominican Republic and headed back to the hanger.

We talked about setting up the GATR, but that didn’t move in nay type of direction, so it was back to scheduling flights, walking people through the arrival and being flexable.

Once it got dark, things slowed down a little and I got some email out and caught up on some.  Texted and skyped my Wife and then went to bed.  Unfortunatly being camped out on the infield of a airport, you don’t sleep much.

A day of utter chaos and confusion.  There is more people here at the airport, then the town I live in….all trying to get to and from Port-au-Prince, mostly aid workers and a few Haitians, that were already in the American pipeline.