Today has been a good day here for the team. In some ways it has been an enforced quieter day as the weekend of mourning continued. The usually congested roads have been less hectic and travelling around has been much easier.
The morning started early with taking my friend John Berglund to the airport to catch his return flight home. John and I have shared the 'Incident Command' role here for the last month. While I have been responsible for programme, John has looked after organisation. That's an over simplification - as we have discussed all things together, bouncing ideas off one another. I will greatly miss having his wisdom, experience and friendship and look forward to working together again.
An hour after dropping John at the airport I was back again to collect 7 new team members (5 medical personnel and 2 logisitics team members). One thing about the 'Army' is the immediate sense of friendship and purpose and it has been great to see them settle into their new home today. The pic shows the medical team being briefed by Evelyn. The new clinic team investigated their new work surroundings ready for action on Monday. The logisitcs guys had no rest, loading 500 tents ready for distribution to Jacmel tomorrow and receiving and unloading a huge cargo plane of food to ensure we have enough food for the 330,000 meal distribution planned for Monday and Tuesday.
While they laboured in the hot sun, I was very proud to be among a small group of NGO leaders invited to lunch with Mr John Holmes, the UN's Emergency Relief Coordinator. Mr Holmes heads the UN's emergency programmes around the world - so he's a very senior figure in international humanitarianism. He's on a 2-day visit to meet with the government, install a new deputy UN country relief coordinator and to assess how things are going. There were just 19 of us invited, each representing an NGO that is considered to be playing a major role in the Haiti relief programme. Considering there are an estimated 800 organisations working here I was honoured to be there and feel our place at the table was a reflection of the fine work that The Salvation Army has done here. Whilst we are not regarded by tghe UN as a 'lead' agency I was very encouraged as I learned about the work being done and the challenges faced. I don't know if I should publically confess, but I felt a measure of pride that we have been able to meet some of the challenges highlighted at the briefing. The need to register beneficiaries is key to assessing overall needs. I'm delighted that our local assessment teams visited and registered the 3,300 families in our camp within 2 weeks of the earthquake. Whilst others highlighted the need to start distributions quickly, I quietly pondered the 1.5 millions meals and 2,000 tents we have given away to date. We may not be regarded technically as a 'lead' but I am proud of the work we are doing. There are many challenges; and we would love to be doing more. We certainly have no laurels to rest on but we are grateful to God for the opportunities He has given us to serve and for the support and encouragement of so many which is helping us make some small inroads into meeting needs here.
Today I learned that life in the Caribbean is perhaps a little more 'laid-back' than at home. One of our team had an airline ticket booked to fly home on Monday. Looking at his schedule we realised the outbound flight didn't allow sufficient time to make his connection in the Dominican Republic. So, gathering all his paperwork together, I escorted him to the airport to see if we could change his ticket and fly the first leg of the journey a day earlier. We were taken through the departure area (including x-ray and security) and escorted out onto the airfield tarmac. There we were introduced to a representative of the airline, CaribbAir - a smiling, cheerful looking woman. The conversation went something like this:
'If he flies on Monday as planned, Will he be in time for the connecting flight?'
'Hmm - no'
'Then is it possible to change his ticket and fly to the Domincan Republic a day earlier?'
'No problem - just turn up tomorrow - I'll be here'.
'Do you need to issue a new ticket?'
'No - just turn up - I'll be here'.
'Should he come for the morning or afternoon flight?'
'Doesn't matter - I'll be here'.
We left still bearing the same handwritten scrap of paper that appeared to represent his ticket, thinking to oursleves, 'it's international air travel - but not as we know it!'
No comments:
Post a Comment