Deployment diary day 15: Monday 1st February

Well today was a bit of a 'write-off' for me. The day was spent in bed recovering. Fortunately, the diagnosis of malaria turned out to be wrong - but a nasty virus has got to a few of the group. A number of the team that returned home at the weekend have reported ill and I wasn't the only one sick here. Conditions here are rough and the long days are hard physically. Good news - by the end of the day (after 2 days of sleeping) I am feeling better.

Whilst I slept the team had their busiest day so far. We distributed 465,000 meals to the camp today - taking our total so far to 1.1 million. That has to be a record for Salvation Army food distribution. The guys from the 82nd are absolute stars and we couldn't manage without them. They regulalry come in and meet with us to see how we can improve our distribution processes.

The UN WFP 'surge' starts this week. The UN finally have food stocks in country and are distributing it through a number of agencies across Port au Prince. There is some debate about it as they are distributing 'first come, first served' as opposed to rations cards. They are also only allowing women in the lines. It makes for a safer line but as the ration they are giving out is a 50lb bag of rice per person it will be very hard for some of the women to physically carry that away. I'm not sure I could carry a bag that size very far.

With the 'surge' happening in the city we plan to start concentrating out efforts in the remote towns and villages. We now have a team in Petit Goave and plan to send a team down to Jacmel in a couple of days to firm up on the assessment work we did over the weekend.

The other good news was that the truck we ordered from the Dominican Republic finally arrived yesterday. Logistics continues to be our biggest headache - limited vehicles and no warehouse make life tough for the team. But the spirit here is good and we look forward to embedding the 6 new team members that arrived today and having some fresh energy.

PS to respond to an earlier comment, 'NGO' stands for 'Non Government Organisation'