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Team 1 (Team Bad Idea Dinosaur)
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Tuesday, January 19, 11 PM:
Wednesday, January 20, 11:30 AM: Wednesday, January 20, 7 AM:
The team is currently bunked at the World Harvest compound. The scouting mission
revealed that the places where hospitals are being set up are not where most
of the patients seem to be. There is a possibility the team will set up a field
hospital in the compound; if so, they will need help to transport patients
in, possibly asking the UN for assistance. Thursday, January 21, 12:45 PM: Thursday, January 21 Daily Summary Report:
The doctor was able to arrange it so they could bring 2 patients back to the
orphanage where they're staying for longer care. One was a little boy with
a 2 inch deep cut to the bone on his leg and 6-7 lacerations on his arms and
legs, and a twisted ankle. The second was a girl who has a break in her pelvis,
and had been misdiagnosed (by other people) with lower back pain and just sent
away with drugs. Report from Chris, Team 1B:
Thomas handed out 1000-1500 oral medications today. A lot of people didn't
have anything medically wrong (50+ women claimed to have UTIs, only 4-5 actually
did), but needed something to make them feel better. Thomas handed out a lot
of vitamins as placebos. Friday, January 22 Daily Summary Report: SUMMARY: Today was an effective, efficient, and useful day, and included the first beers they were able to crack open when finally relaxing together at the end of the day. LOGISTICS:
GENERAL UPDATES: SAFETY: EARTHQUAKES CONTINUE DAILY Jeff reported that there's been 6 earthquakes since they arrived Tuesday night;
they haven't gone a day without 1-2 aftershocks. The one last night was big
enough that everyone left the room and went outside. Jeff just heard a noise,
but some of them felt it. It was a bigger one-- out of the 6, they've only
really felt 2-3, the others they just heard about having happened. When the
big one happened Wednesday morning, everyone was just like "holy shit." Saturday, January 23 Daily Summary Report: Hexe, Jeff, and Daniel spent the day navigating bureaucracy at the UN. Thanks to them, "Mutual Aid Disaster Relief" is now an officially registered UN NGO (non-governmental organization), and will probably be getting badges tomorrow. This means MADRiH teams on the ground have access to meetings with WHO (World Health Organization) and other health NGOs. They should get access to the UN's warehouse of medical supplies: pallets of stuff sitting unused in a warehouse. This means our teams can get whatever med supplies they need, including drugs and possibly even an ambulance. For other supplies, they are still researching the best way for getting shipments. The team spent all day hitching rides between the UN and the U of Miami hospital. "We're an NGO, for legit", Fidget said. The team felt uneasy about registering as a UN NGO without waiting for a consensus meeting, but realized it was necessary to obtain resources - supplies, possibly reliable transportation, and even a possible operational location. Fidget said designation as a UN NGO has "no evident downsides. The process was filling out an index card with a contact person and a group name. It doesn't mean anything—it just has meaning on the ground—but there are no obligations, rules, or restrictions. It's set up so we can get supplies and info, maps of Port-au-Prince (a godsend, to know where the hell we are), and we will try to hook up supplies and meds and transport." Although the terminology used has "organization" in its title, "NGO" status does not compromise our identity as simply a network of resources. Another plus with the NGO status is that the team can now attend the daily meeting with all the health orgs operating in Haiti right now. The UN estimates that there are approximately 500 "spontaneous encampments" - tent cities - in Port au Prince, but the UN only knows the location of 100. Almost no one has gone to these tent cities, and officials are just coordinating that now. Most tent cities have had no medical care so far - which, Fidget said, "is what our team knew and why we formed the group… This is still mind boggling." It appears that some medical care done immediately after the earthquake, before the team arrived, was not done up to our standards. The team is doing a lot of follow-up on these cases. Fidget says they included "sutures that don't fully close wounds and a serious open tib-fib fractures that was sutured but not splinted. A lot of really serious fractures, femurs, tibfib, open fractures that weren't splinted almost two weeks after the earthquake." Also, the UN said there are mass population movements in the 100,000s out of Port-au-Prince, north, south, and east. The government is encouraging and offering free transport for people to leave. 50% of the city has relatives in the countryside, so they're expecting lots of people to move there… but many haven't seen any medical care at all. There have been no infectious disease outbreaks yet (cholera, malaria, typhoid), which is a "miracle but they could still develop," said Jeff. The Israeli hospital, though, has had 3 cases of meningitis, 1 typhoid, and 1 malaria. Typhoid and malaria are common and, while serious especially if untreated, are comparable to a bad case of influenza if treatment is initiated promptly. There are now a ton of international hospitals and field hospitals in Port au Prince doing "fairly good work in terms of EMS care and operations, but everyone is in hospitals so no one is going out into the tent cities, triaging and transporting to hospitals." So this has become our team's niche: treating in the field and transporting to hospitals. Now that they have a reliable map, they know where the hospitals are no matter where in the city they are. The roads are getting more congested as access to fuel increases. It's harder to move in a timely fashion because of traffic, "but not terrible," Jeff added. Team 1 communications with team 2 are non-existent at this point. Both teams can communicate to the US, but they are unable to use texts, email, or phones to communicate with each other. The cost for housing at the orphanage has dropped to $10/night/person. There's free housing at U of Miami by the airport or with friends in Delmas 24, but the team continues to stay at the orphanage because that is their only source of transporation at this time that does not need to be hired. If the UN is unable to supply one or more ambulances, there are two helicopters at the orphanage that may be able to fly our team outside of Port-au-Prince to where all the people are moving. They may need to hire a car for transportation if these don't pan out. Due to the NGO status, the team has a good amount of supplies available to them, but transportation is still costly. Gasoline is running at $10/gallon. In order to get to the patients to treat them, the team will need more cash soon. Jeff said, "It felt hotter here today. Walking in the sun, at tops a couple miles, was extremely draining compared to standing in the shade and treating." When asked how he's doing, Fidge said he's "Good. Tired. Rough day spent doing bureaucratic stuff, which was important but you feel like, compared to us going out and treating and directly helping people, bureaucratic crap doesn't feel effective but it had to be done." He reiterated that it's hard not being on an autonomous team, which is "difficult for people not used to following orders." They're happy that Team 2 is on its way. They talked a little about Mutual Aid Disaster Relief the network and our goals, and the team has ideas they want to voice, but in Jeff's words, "It's damn near impossible to think about anything but the small picture when you're beside people who need medical care and we can provide it in a manner that is dignified and respectful, we can provide it in a way that is consistent with mutual aid, not charity or jock doctors." Thomas has got a “golden” video for when he comes back home. He's trying to shoot more video and has a friend with a video editing school who will make a documentary and wants lots and lots of video from them. Today, he treated a 96 year old lady with a femur fracture. He held the fracture while J2 (the Emergency doctor's son, a premed student) provided traction and the Doctor made an improvised traction splint. As the woman laid on the cot with Thomas holding her broken leg in his hands, she began singing, "half singing, half chanting. It sounded ancient and moving." A pastor nearby translated; the woman was singing, "Lord have mercy, you know that we're going through misery right now, you know that we're going through suffering right now," while she had an open femur fracture for 12 days and they are the first medical people she is seeing. It was a diverse group, a pastor, an herbalist, a doctor, and a pre-med student all helping while this women sang "Lord have mercy" not for herself but for her people. They were all moved to tears as they sent her to the hospital in a "taptap", a pickup truck cab. The cab that brought this woman to the hospital for surgery to have a pin put in her leg sent back a boy for the orphanage. The boy, about 12 years old, had a head wound and had been in 3-4 different hospitals since the earthquake. The orphanage director asked where his mother and father are, and he says “They're at home.” "He's 12 years old and nobody had thought to ask if he had their phone number," Thomas said. "The boy rattles off his phone number and they called their phone number AND HIS PARENTS COME TO PICK HIM UP. They had not seen him in 12 days. It's one thing to save a life and we've saved several here-- but its quite another thing to save a family." Sunday, January 24 Daily Summary Report: Today Thomas went to the UN to network with people and organizations there, while the rest of the team went out into city. They didn't find many patients today because between yesterday's update and today's there has been "a huge flood of medical personnel" into Port au Prince, which, based on meetings with the UN, they anticipate to "continue for the next week or so." The influx of medical personnel means that all 500 tent cities which the UN is aware of have medical teams patrolling and checking for people needing medical care. With Port au Prince "saturated" with medical personnel, Team 1 is working to get out of the city. Thousands of Haitians are leaving Port au Prince because the government is providing free transportation to anyone who will leave. Many of these people are leaving having had only basic primary medical care, or none at all. Worse, much of that care is, Hexe explained, substandard. "Very, very badly done wound care, sutures that are only making things worse, putting casts over open fractures that are then getting infected so then people have to lose legs.” The team believes the priority on future teams should be surgeons and doctors, and have filled out a UN requisition form for medications and other supplies. UN food distribution is still a problem. Hexe said "No one is rioting for food, but you have very very hungry people and distributing food is difficult because people are so hungry. It's difficult for us because we cannot give people our food and water because it might start a riot." When asked to clarify, Hexe said that she "hasn't seen anyone actually riot but the situation has been when people try to give people things, there's suddenly a group of 10-15 people who think the people [handing out food] have more than they do." Hexe went on, saying she can't give an accurate, total picture because "we've been sheltered, driven around everywhere, and babysat—it's not safe to be walking around and we don't have a whole lot of information and don't have a strong enough connection with people here as if, say we [all] spoke Creole. This is nothing like New Orleans after Katrina: we are playing ball with the UN, we don't speak the language and we're horribly hampered by that." She continued, "Today was a day we sat back and looked at the situation and realized we're becoming less effective and less useful. We're figuring out logistics. We've been having a hard time finding patients. Our team is very trauma heavy, our expertise is treating trauma patients, and since there is now so many medical personnel, there's little use for us. We've been doing secondary care on wounds and broken bones and transporting to hospitals for surgery. Now we're trying to find more ways to do that and branch into other avenues, but we're not sure what those are yet." Jeff added, "We need to get the hell out of the capital." Tomorrow they plan to spend the latter half of the day debriefing and coordinating with Ekip Bon Fwa (Team 2), which will include extra time to relax and collect so they aren't too exhausted to move out into the suburbs. Jeff also said that since after 6 or 7pm they are inside and can't treat people, from "then on is hanging out. We spend good hours sitting on our gravel pile" in front of the orphanage compound. Monday, January 25 Daily Summary Report: The doctor with whom they've been working was called out of the country; he left on a helicopter this morning. The team spent the day scouting and doing basic hygiene and healthcare. They handed out multivitamins and supplements, vitamin C, ibuprofen, rehydration salts for diarrhea, and deworming meds. Most importantly, they recorded the GPS coordinates of each tent city they came across, and plan to hit every tent city in the Delmas over the next day or so. This is very important, because once the coordinates are recorded, our team will be able to report the tent city's location, needs, and the number of people there to the UN, who can direct further resources towards them. During the day, the team came across a US Army vehicle that was handing out food and were able to direct them to tent cities where people hadn't gotten any food aid yet. Tomorrow, they get their supplies from the WHO (World Health Organization, part of the UN) and will continue to map out the Delmas, doing basic & preventative care; as Chris said, "picking up GPS coordinates of places that need help and dropping them at some of the good friends we’ve made." Our stateside contact for Team 1 has sent them a list of locations outside Port au Prince that have been requesting aid, and they will either try to go there themselves and also pass this information on to the UN. Tuesday, January 26 Daily Summary Report: This morning Daniel, Fidget, Hexe, Thomas, and Chris hooked up with a large group of Christians from a ministry school in Redding, CA. [Daniel thinks they're fiscally sponsored by TDA, Transformational Development Agency, but wasn't sure of the name]. Their two doctors, two nurses, and a dozen or so organizational and security staff set up on a local soccerfield. Since this group only had four trained medical staff, Daniel said, "they were happy to have our help." The team triaged over 75 people today, but only had to treat about 40--and only five of these had problems directly related to the earthquake. "We were treating normal things that a free medical clinic would be treating" in this region at any time, Daniel explained. "Chronic things, infections, internal stuff which I have very little training in [Daniel's a WEMT], so I was very interested to learn from the doctors and Thomas." They gave out a lot of vitamins for colds and Tums, sometimes as a placebo-- when one kid got Tums for a tummy ache, suddenly every kid within ear shot had curiously similar symptoms. One person had something wrong with his kidneys. The ibuprofen he was prescribed didn't work, but Thomas, a clinical herbalist, was able to find a specific plant and mash it with sour orange and that cleared it up. One of the doctors they worked with was a 79 year old man who got his medical license in 1957 and has been practicing medicine for 53 years. Another was an Austalian doctor who worked for years at a rural clinic. The organization practices faith-based healing (prayer) in addition to standard Western medicine. The Australian doctor explained to Daniel that he was skeptical of faithbased healing but when he saw it in action he was convinced enough to quit his job and get involved. Daniel said, "it was interesting learning, tagging along with these doctors and nurses." They also noted that there is still a problem with distribution of UN supplies: "so many supplies but comparatively little effort to distribute them." Tomorrow the same group will probably go to another location—someplace with more urgent patients. They left late at 10:30am, finished at 3pm, then hung out while waiting for their ride until 5. Wednesday, January 27 Daily Summary Report: Today the team went to the WHO (World Health Organization) warehouse where they were able to stock up on supplies, including antibiotics. Hexe said they weren't able to get stethoscopes or multivitamins. Later they went to a pediatric clinic with Anne and Roger from Team 2. Hexe said it was "Really interesting because most of us have no background or training for working in a clinical setting with children." Hexe mostly gave out supplies, but "Anne and Thomas were really good with the children." They left when the doctors got there, spent a while in transit, and hung out with Team 2 later on. Hexe said, "We're not responding to a disaster anymore, we're responding to the aftermath of a natural disaster exacerbated by pvoerty and people's underlying health issues." She also said that they did not want a relief team sent down specifically to take on the work that they've been doing, because they are a trauma team and their work is not long term work.Given the warning that seismologists still expect more aftershocks in the coming weeks. Hexe said that their team is still sleeping outside, "partly to save money, partly because it's nice outside, and partly because of the 6.0 earthquake" they lived through the morning they arrived in Haiti. Thursday, January 28 Daily Summary Report: Although Team 1's reports are getting shorter, at some time in the future this site will have more stories about their work - once they're back in the US and will be able to relay pictures, video, and personal notes more easily than they can now. Today the team revisited several tent cities to which they'd been before, enabling them to maintain relationships from earlier in the week and check in on some people they'd had as patients before. They passed out vitamin C, multivitamins, and deworming pills to kids and resupplied some tent city clinics. They saw "no traumas to speak of" but changed a few bandages. Thomas was happy to report that "it seems like Haitian nurses have stepped in and are doing a great job with the tent cities and small clinics." Tomorrow Team 1 will check Haiti-based logistics for future teams, possibly Team 3. Jacmel seems flooded with medical personnel, so they will check into that and also get to use a helicopter for reconnaissance to check out rural parts with greater needs than Jacmel has. These rural areas are places that often only received medical attention 1-2 times year even before the earthquake. Thomas said that hopefully we could get a team out into the rural communities to provide "primary care for the underprivileged for Haiti… a place where everyone's underprivileged." One member of the team, Chris, is especially good at making connections. A Haitian by birth, Chris, according to Thomas, has been "watching out for everyone, trying to provide what he can. He took an entire semester off to come down and help his people. Our compound is literally on the outskirts of City Soloeil, 'the worst spot in the world'—even in good times the UN doesn't go into City Soliel-- and Chris has been going out there all the time, talking to people, asking if they need help, delivering baby formula, keeping us safe and connected to the local community." Chris has offered to come back for short periods of time with new teams to help them get oriented to the country. Thomas "highly suggests other teams bring Chris to get them settled and into the swing." Also, since Thomas has observed that it takes "a week to get acclimated before real work gets done" , Thomas suggests that all future teams plan to stay at least 2 weeks, like Team 1 has done, or longer. Thomas also believes that MADRiH should "keep teams on the ground for the next 6 months. Future teams should plan to come for a long time, be self sufficient, bring food, water purification tablets, and be prepared to wok in rural Haiti." He hopes that MADRiH can raise $20,000 to continue to treat the secondary, lasting injuries from the earthquake and the deaths from poverty that are becoming more visible as the urgency of the earthquake fades a little. The team has tickets to fly out of Port-au-Prince on February 2nd. Some members will continue working Stateside, raising herbs, giving interviews, and doing local fundraising. Friday, January 29 Daily Summary Report: Tomorrow Team 1 leaves for Jacmel. They are excited to get out of Port-au-Prince, to see the movement of people who have been migrating out of Port-au-Prince and to see rural Haiti. They are going to "put in a few more days of hard work before heading back. I'm glad to have the opportunity to learn a bunch more about the country and people." They will stay overnight in Jacmel, maybe longer. The tent cities outside the city of Jacmel need medical help. Fidge said, they're going to "work real hard for the next couple of days and then it'll be time to come home." The team is scheduled to return on February 2nd. Over the last few days the team has witnessed illnesses and deaths from dehydration, malnutrition, and hunger. At this point, it's more day-to-day poverty and illness that are killing people, not the immediate traumatic effects of the earthquake. The team plans to discuss and create as clear a list as possible of what illnesses/injuries/etc. future teams should be prepared to treat (Editor's note: this list will be based on the current situation; a strong aftershock could change the priorities of personnel and treatment.) Saturday, January 30 Daily Summary Report: The University of Miami has a huge hospital and has been employing lots of Haitian workers there since the quake. Through some bureaucratic screwup, they haven't been paying their Haitian doctors, nurses, and staff, so there is a strike at the University of Miami hospital. Team 1 heard a rumor that there was a big ruckus about it. [Editor's note: although I cannot find any information in stateside news about the strike, an article at http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking-news/story/1454684.html indicates a snafu between the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services is preventing any more patients in critical status from being flown to the US for treatment that the USS Carl Vinson and the USNS Comfort cannot handle. As a result, the whole healthcare system in Haiti may be getting backlogged because patients are not being flown to the US anymore. The US military says they are ready and able to transport more patients, but the hospitals in FL are full and DHS won't let them take the patients anywhere else.] Team 1, aka Team Bad Idea Dinosaur, wants to publicly express solidarity with the striking workers. Chris has said that he will need at least a month at home to process, recover, work a little to pay some bills, etc. before he'll be ready to go down with future teams and assist with orienting them to Port au Prince. [Transcriber's note: Team 1 will need some rest and recuperation before they're able to jump into more organizing-- they've been going non-stop since the earthquake struck!] Thomas has a very large network within the herbal and naturopathic community, including a guild of naturopathic doctors, students who he has taught all over the country, and his herbal mentors. He has been communicating with various contacts since he's been in Haiti and has already secured enough supplies ot set up a permanent herbal clinic in Port au Prince. He looks forward to coordinating with MADR alternative care people as well: “I would love to see up an herb clinic in Port-au-Prince and have lots of supplies to set up in Port-au-Prince." The main problem about setting up a clinic is building logistics:
At this point the majority of Team 1 is "“totally out of our field of what we're trained to do.” This not a reason to say “don't come,” but don't come thinking you're going to be using trauma skills. Daniel estimates that there was a 2-week time period from the disaster before the direct injuries from the earthquake are gone. They look around and still find some dressings to change, "but minor wounds are treated and major ones are in hospitals. You're not gonna wander around and stumble into a tent city with 100s of people who haven't been seen yet." At this point, their work is simply "doing healthcare in a country where there isn't a lot of it." “We've been trying to find out where we can plug in. It's gonna be really hard. We don't have a skillset that is needed right now, but with that said, we don't know what Port-au-Prince will look like in a week and a half because lots of groups are leaving in the next few days; this is the timeframe people are getting out of here. So it's possible if you just go to Port-au-Prince and visit places you'll find work." Daniel continued, “There has been a huge amount of medical personnel wanting to get into this country. I'm not sure how clear that is from media and reports, but there's a lot of people here. In the city of Port-au-Prince, there are 10-15 field hospitals (foreign military hospitals) in addition to the Haitian hospitals that survived the quake—[a meeting with the WHO showed there are] 45 operating hospitals total with 100,000s of doctors and nurses who came to deal with direct trauma casualties of the disaster. The problem is almost all those people are on 1-2 week trips (like us). What I've been thinking about is that everyone's living outside Port-au-Prince and there's sanitation and diseases related to that, which are not an issue yet (it's crazy! WHO is monitoring and infectious diseases haven't broken out yet but they might be a concern soon), and I've been thinking about what health issues come from living outside in close quarters without access to sanitation, food, water (access to which is getting better…), not so much medical care—medical care happens in hospitals and there's a lot of that.” Thomas mentioned making up little leaflets in Creole with clear pictures explaining water treatment and basic sanitation, how diseases spread: “aftercare sheets.” There is a need for community health not trauma. The team spent most of the day in transit, but were able to set up a brief clinic outside a high school in the countryside around Jacmel. Of the 40 people they saw, only about half needed more than a 5-minute once over and vitamins. Of those, only about 5-10 needed more treatment than de-worming meds, ibuprofen or painkillers, and vitamins (Vitamin C or multivitamins).“If you're coming down here, you're coming down to do the care that's always needed, stuff that was needed before the earthquake and stuff that'll be needed after we leave:” rural community healthcare. Patients included:
Daniel, Hexe, Chris, Thomas, and Jeff Fidget spent 3 hours getting to Jacmel—"it was a long, long trip" that covered just 30 miles. They met up with Suncere's contact who had a car and was "a really awesome guy." First they went to MSF (Doctors Without Borders) hospital where they were told that “we have enough people here, we don't need anyone at this hospital.” Chris talked to the director of the hospital about where they could go and through that hooked up with a Haitian named Professor Rock who lived in a rural place 1-2 hours away to check out. They stayed a little over an hour and plan to come back tomorrow all day and to scout for the John Brown Brigade (Team 3.) In Jeff's words: "It was so beautiful. Ridiculous beautiful. Driving up form Port au Prince, from the chaos and misery, we drove up this riverbed surrounded by mountains in this lush area surrounded by mountains." They rode with the driver, Sun's contact, a friend who spoke English, plus the 5 of them, all in a pickup. Daniel explained they took a "crazy road in and out of a river, following the riverbed, crossing the river every couple hundred meters (at deepest 1 foot deep, in big pickup truck) to the remote tiny town where the professor is from. We set up a clinic outside the high school – nice building. There were no structures there that could have been knocked down—just wood or tin construction. It's amazingly beautiful—the first big trees I've seen in the country." Although Haiti is 99% deforested, Daniel said that they were in "part of the 1%." Jeff said they spent a lot of the day traveling but “I felt really good about the work we did with these folks cause they don't get a lot of medical care.” They're going back to Port-au-Prince tomorrow night. Tonight, Chris says, "we're chilling on the breezy beach…" Sunday, January 31 Daily Summary Report: They are sunburnt and tired and will be preparing to return home to the United States tomorrow, Monday. They fly out on Tuesday (February 2nd) and will be collectively regrouping together in Alabama for a few days upon returning home. They are very appreciative of the Stateside support and anticipate continuing support of Haiti relief work upon their return to the States. This evening they had a conference call with Teams 2 and 4 to go over lessons learned by Team 1. They emphasized that a working knowledge of Haiti, basic medicines, and Creole (at least a substantial amount of translators) is important for any future teams. Chris said specifically, "Just make sure that whatever team is coming is not coming for a specific trauma situation. You need to work on having a good understanding and education about primary nutrition and primary care. We are in the post disaster period. We treat people who are not seeing doctors for up to a year in a 3rd world country. We want people to understand that. Also malaria, typhoid, dengue, other infectious diseases that might be coming up in the next 4 weeks. Every team needs to be able to understand how to identify these things. When we got here, we had to create a role and rush into learning a lot of these things. Each team needs to be more prepared." Monday, February 1 Daily Summary Report: Tonight Daniel gave the last update from Haiti for Team 1. It was a chill day overall. Jeff, Hexe, Chris, Thomas, and Daniel met up with Team 2 and Chris's older brother, who lives in Haiti. They all hung out for an hour and a half and had really productive discussions reflecting on their time in Haiti, accomplishments, and future goals. From there, Team 1 and Roger went with Chris's older brother to his house, where they hung out for a few hours and walked around his neighborhood. An older man and Thomas played craps--the old guy totally beat Thomas. Neither spoke the other's language but they managed to communicate just fine. Finally, the Team drove back with a driver they've been with for the last few days, and have been packing and sorting stuff, preparing for departure tomorrow. Soon after they were back at the orphanage where they've been staying the last two weeks, Chris got a call from someone (a Haitian) who said there was a shooting in a neighborhood they'd just been through. "Cops and commotion," said the caller, Daniel told me. “Whatever calm and peace there was in the city is gonna go back to the situation it was before the earthquake." Daniel continued with his own thoughts, "It's interesting for me because we've seen this city in a time when they'd suffered this catastrophe but it had also changed the character of the city,” with crime rates down, a safer, different Port au Prince. Daniel told me a story that he'd been "castigated" for forgetting to tell a few days ago. When they'd been driving to a rural village outside of Jacmel, they had been "driving in and out of this river, at one point it got completely dark and we were completely lost, driving the wrong way in a river valley. Our truck got stuck in the river trying to cross where you're not supposed to cross it because we were 50 feet off the road… oh damn. Sun's contact in Jacmel hopped out of the car and flipped it into 4-wheel drive-- it hadn't been in 4-wheel drive yet but they'd been driving through a freakin river! He kicked some rocks out of the way and just drove out." Thomas and Jeff said "hi" too, but Hexe, Roger, and Chris were off eating, I think. They all look forward to sharing stories, thoughts, analysis, photos, and videos once they get to Thomas' farm in Alabama. Tuesday, February 2 Daily Summary Report: Team 1 and Roger are safe, sound, and happily in Florida. They're spending the night in Miami. Roger heads home and Team 1 heads to Alabama tomorrow morning.
Page last updated: Sunday, February 28, 2010, 10:02 AM HT |
