For here - for now - as I try and settle thoughts, perceptions, experiences, people met, paths and connections offered that now need to be followed in order to tell an educated and informed story - I'll use this place to simply record basic thoughts. I am not yet together enough to write a long eloquent accounting of this trip - and when I am, I hope to sit and do so in a way that will do justice to the stories, the people and the truth ... a manuscript that can be offered as a contribution to raise awareness and understanding; my goal in the first place.
So day one - after waiting in Miami for 2 days, I finally found myself at Miami Int'l at 5:00 in the morning, in line waiting to check in for my Vision Air Charter Flight. I was surrounded by people checking in for my flight wearing sweatshirts, jeans and scrubs. There were large rolling pallets of supplies everywhere - medical items, water, cans of Ensure - many wrapped tight in light blue plastic - something done at this airport I hadn't seen before. They had stations where you could "wrap" your luggage. I suppose appropriate in a way - wrapped presents for the people of Haiti. Although I found it sad that they were of the nature this disaster dictated.
I stood in line feeling out of place & a little guilty that I had not been able to bring anything of value in with me i.e. tarps or tents or supplies of any sort - "pack light" I'd been told and so I'd stuffed everything into a backpack and small bag. I try to make up for that now however, as I'm negotiating to get a bulk purchase deal on tents to be flown by private aircraft into Haiti. But I get ahead of myself ...
Our plane - because of those supplies - sat for over an hour on the tarmac before pulling away from the gate. My window seat just forward of the wing afforded me a good view of the cargo loading process and it was obvious from reading the actions unfolding below me that weight was an issue for this flight. The plane itself was filled to capacity with passengers - obviously the combination of all those crucial supplies, and the medical team's luggage was causing a weight and balance issue with the plane. Those bulk supplies I'd seen at check-in had rightly been priority - now a rolling cart of personal luggage of the medical personnel sat, as a group of ramp employees and 2 airline reps huddled over clipboards and paper while simultaeneously talking on cell phones. The pilot did finally make an announcement as we sat there, explaining every caution was being take to ensure the plane was properly weighted and as many supplies as possible made the trip, hence the delay in departure. Eventually I watched as some boxes came off the aircraft - ones that looked more like they were personal as opposed to relief supplies - and the luggage was put on. Shortly after - we finally pulled away from the gate.
The flight was filled with listening to the chatter around me from the doctor's, nurses and medical technicians that made up the flight, and glancing out the window periodically at the beautiful blue/green Carribean water below us.
In a precursor to a gathering suspicion that would prove to be correct - I looked around again at the dress code of those in my immediate vacinity - all as I said in either sweats, t-shirts and jeans or scrubs, and wondered if I was overdressed. It was obvious too of course, by the numerous scrubs worn, that these people were going to hit the deck running once they arrived in Haiti. The Medishare hospital they were going to as relief staff, was located on land adjacent to the airport.
They obviously had received different "appropriate clothing" advice than I had that would prove to be wise - just the first in many misconceptions about Haiti I arrived with. I came with outdoor clothing designed for a hot, humid, tropical, bug infested environment. Yes, it was warm, yes there were mosquitos - but I stepped off the plane thinking the heat was nothing like what I'm used to during the "bad summer spells" here in Redding of weeks of triple-plus heat - and the humidity? Hawaii is worse. And according to my host I wasn't just arriving in an unusually non-typical spell - he didn't understand the bad-rap the island gets for humidity either.
Conversations around me ranged from humourous anecdotes being told about co-workers who had already been to Haiti (obvious there was a conscious desire to "keep things light") - to medical discussions way over my head. What was striking though, was how quiet the entire plane got the minute we got our first vision of the Haitian coastline.
It took a while for that however. There was a heavy cloud cover, so at first there were only brief glimpses snatched through temporary holes in the clouds we passed over. But as the plane got lower on approach to Port au Prince, we saw it clearly - the brownish coastline muddied by erosion run-off due to the deforestation; the obvious density of population as we got closer to Port au Prince itself - and then the obvious devastation visible as we came in to land.
I sat looking out the window in the quiet - thinking as I'm sure many others did - this isn't a television video unfolding. I have arrived in Haiti, and this is real.
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