The Mission Trip that Wasn't

I'm going to try and use this as a way to jog my memory about all the stuff that's happened since Monday morning--the day we left for Haiti.

The main characters are Laurie, Lisa, Trudy, Shelly, Bruce, Mike (head of the Minnesota team that was down there at the same time), Sherry (Lisa's friend from her last trip down to Haiti), Yves (the orphanage director and founder of GVCM), and I. Any other people's names are probably the Minnesota group.

Sorry if this is a bit disjointed or random, but since i woke up Wednesday morning around 6, i've had 13 hours of sleep, including the 7 from last night. I think that's all the background I have really, so here we go.

Monday Morning: At 7:15 we meet out at church for a last prayer time and to load all our suitcases into the bus. We had 13 checked bags and a few carry-on pieces. I think we were planning on taking 6 back to the states with us, and the other 7 were loaded with teaching tools and other such things for the deaf school. Shelly's husband drove us to the airport in PC's minibus so we didn't have to take multiple vehicles. We arrived and were checked in by 8:30-ish and waited by the gate until our 10:40 departure time. We left the airport on time and arrived in Cincinnati with enough time to get to our next gate and maybe hit the bathroom quick--I'm pretty sure our flight to Ft. Lauderdale was in the pre-boarding phase when we arrived there, so we stood in line and didn't get lunch. Everyone was seated without a hassle though and we were off. We arrived at the Ft. Lauderdale airport without a hitch, hoping to be able to check our bags in for our morning flight so we wouldn't have to haul them to the hotel and back again. We weren't able to do that, so we called the shuttle from the Ramada Airport/Cruise port and they came to pick us up. When the shuttle arrived, we experienced what would come to be a common theme. Hurry up and wait for the driver/luggage/other passengers. Another group that was also waiting for the Ramada shuttle (but didn't call the hotel--apparently you're supposed to make reservations or something) wanted to get on the shuttle and started loading. Eventually we had all 13 of our bags, all their bags, and every person on board. We were able to check into our rooms around 5:30 maybe...it's a little fuzzy. Some of Lisa's family members met us at the hotel and shared dinner with us at the hotel's seafood restaurant--really good shrimp jambalaya. After that, I explored the grounds while everyone else settled in. Bruce and I finally went to be a little before 10. When we checked in, the lady behind the desk told us that we needed to be in the lobby by 4:45 for the shuttle Tuesday morning.

Tuesday: We had all our bags packed up and in the lobby by 4:45, but there were 5-6 other people waiting for the shuttle as well. The driver had a 15 passenger van by the door, but when he counted people and bags he got the minibus instead. As we were loading the bags in the back of the bus, the driver couldn't reach high enough to stack everything so Bruce jumped into the van and helped him load. We got to the airport, checked in, and went through security by 6:30 I think. Our plane was leaving at 8:35 and since we left the hotel before the breakfast buffet opened we were hungry. Unfortunately, there were no food places in our terminal that opened for breakfast but we could go to the next terminal over for breakfast from Sbarro Pizza...not what I was looking for and we weren't sure we could get there without having to go through security again so we waited by the gate until boarding. Our flight came and went without a hitch--except that when the flight attendant was passing out customs paperwork Lisa claimed me as her son. That was easily remedied however and I filled out my own form that i received later. I think we landed in Haiti around 10:15 (i'm not sure on times because I didn't have a watch and I left my cell phone back home because I wouldn't use it in Haiti anyway. When we landed, we met up with Sherry and grabbed our luggage. A few of us hunted for it on the baggage carousel and the surrounding area while the rest of the group stayed next to the pile we accumulate so nobody would grab our luggage and force us to give them a tip. Lisa and Sherry share a heart for the deaf so we let deaf baggage handlers take our bags and we only tipped them. At the airport the taxi drivers were separated from us by a fence so they couldn't grab our stuff and force us to come with them. Still, the scene was pretty chaotic--everyone was yelling, and anytime any body came close to our bags we'd find Sherry and ask if it was alright. If we didn't have Sherry with us at the airport, we would have been in a lot more difficult situation. She's been coming to Haiti for around a dozen years if I remember right, and she knew the customs officials so we breezed right through. Our ride met us at the airport around 11:15-11:30 maybe. During our wait we met "Big" -- he came up to my shoulder, so I was a little disappointed, although he may have been big for a Haitian--and took pictures with the baggage handlers and listened to people begging us for money. Unfortunately, we had shirts with the sign "I love you" on them, and put Jesus instead of I so they were telling us that Jesus loved us, they loved us and on and on. I was torn between giving them money to be a better witness and turning my back on them because they were begging and I didn't know what that money was going towards. Eventually we all turned away and they just kept on begging. My nick name for that time was "Big Boy". Yves and Ricardo (Sherry's adopted Haitian son) came to pick us up as well.

We left the airport and went to a gas station for lunch. It was chicken sandwiches with peppers and onions on a baguette type bread...all very tasty. We stayed at the gas station for 2-2.5 hours while we waited for Mike while he was trying to get a container through customs. While we waited in the gas station we watched the guard walk around the outside with an automatic shotgun to keep robbers at bay. Sherry told us that in Haiti it was legal to "shoot to kill" if someone came to rob the place. We left the gas station around 2 pm and were on our way. Bruce, Shelly, Laurie, and Trudy with Yves in his truck. Lisa and I with Mike and Bodler (another Haitian hired by GVCM--don't know what his job was) in a rented Geo Tracker with a driver's seat that wouldn't stay up. Lisa marvelled at how easy travel was because the road looked like it had been newly surfaced and going was easy until Mirebelais when the pavement ended. Yves continued to the Wozo Plaza (the hotel the ladies stayed at) in Fedja while Mike had Bodler drive through the market to find some hardware store that may sell a part his team needed. At the Wozo, we unloaded the ladies and all the checked bags so the kids wouldn't mob us and start opening things randomly. We then went to All God's Children Orphanage and Deaf school just down the road. We arrived there around 4 p.m. Yves gave us a short tour and showed Bruce and I where we'd be staying. Then we played with the kids for a while. According to Yahoo and other various new outlets, the quake hit Port-au-prince (PAP) at 4:53. I didn't really feel it growing, but eventually it sounded like a freight train coming through. The ground started heaving, the walls were shaking, and the kids started screaming and running back to the building. We yelled at them to come back to us because we were in an open area. They came back, but they were still crying and we just held them. After the shaking stopped it felt like I was on a boat in choppy water because I was a bit disoriented. A few of the Haitian adults and a few from our group then went out and looked in the surrounding area for damage. Nothing was hit especially hard where we were, and most of the time we couldn't tell if the bricks had fallen because of the earthquake or because of poor construction. We went back to the orphanage and played with the kids until dark when they went to bed. At dinner (rice with bean sauce, meet and carrot stew type thing, plaintain, french fries, coke's and limonade to drink) we were able to get online and read about the destruction. We then decided that we needed to send an email to our families to let them know we were okay. The hardest part about hearing the news was watching Ronnie (a Haitian hired to translate for us). He had family in PAP and you could see his heart falling a little more as each line was read. I think that was when Mike and Yves decided they would go to PAP in the morning and look for Sherry, Ricardo, and Ricardo's wife because they had stayed behind to work on Customs agents a little more so the container could be brought to the orphanage. I guess I should say that the container held a lot of building supplies and appliances for the orphanage, hence the rush to get it through customs. After the ladies gave me their email addresses, Bruce and I typed up the email and sent it out. Thankfully I wasn't tired enough to let the original wording of the "kids being shaken up" and the internet being "shaky during good times" go through, but Bruce and I can laugh about it now.

Wednesday: The morning came and Mike, Yves, and Jan (Mike's wife) left to search for Sherry and Ricardo. Bruce and I were invited to the Men's Bible study with the guys from Minnesota and Ronnie. Adan told us that the voodoo drums had been in full effect as well as aftershocks during the night. After the Bible study we split into a few groups and got to work. Jeff, Bruce and I started taking off the roof on the future deaf school. We had gotten a corner of the roof done when breakfast came out (pancakes with syrup or peanut butter with papaya and pineapples chunks and pineapple-papaya juice to drink) We needed to take off the steel sheeting, remove all the crossbeams and joists, and then cut the walls level so they could start on a "hip"-style roof. For lunch we had PB&J (grape or strawberry jelly) or a sloppy joe type meat with peppers and onions. Tomato, miracle whip, lettuce and hot sauce was optional. We were able to get all the steel off by mid-afternoon. Then Jeff, Adan, Amy, Bruce and I walked to the Wozo for a quick dip in the pool. If you ever go to Haiti and stay in the Wozo, you'll forget you're in Haiti. Inside the walls there are manicured lawns, mango trees, air-conditioned rooms, tv's, etc...it felt like a Haitian resort. Outside the walls were dirt roads, tiny little shacks with people and animals sitting around, piles of trash, and disease. It was nice to be in water and cool down though. We came back around 3:30 and got back to work on the roof, tearing out crossbeams and sorting the steel into piles of good stuff and bad stuff. Still no word from Mike, Yves or Jan. We were almost done with dinner (chicken with hush puppies, french fries, rice and a red sauce that had onion in it, a purple potato salad tasting thing and cole slaw) when they finally came back. Jan had been crying for a while, Yves was wide eyed, Mike had a pained look on his face and Sherry was shell-shocked. Sherry had been at Ricardo's mother-in-law's house and had seen the three houses around her crumble while the one they were in had sustained damage, but had survived mostly intact. When Sherry started climbing over some rubble to get to the stairway she started hearing screaming. She looked down and saw a woman under the pile of rubble she was on. Sherry was in no shape to help the woman, but I think Ricardo and a few others that weren't injured dug her out. Mike then started giving orders. We were leaving in the morning. Diesel fuel had risen to $50/gallon, there was no food and no water. The longer we stayed with the orphans, the more of their supplies we were going to use. His original plan was to take Yves' truck to the embassy three times to deliver all 18 of us with our luggage, but Yves' couldn't find enough fuel. He did meet a friend of his that operated a tap-tap (brightly painted taxis) that could fit all but a few of us however, and arranged for him to be at the orphanage at 9 the next morning. After we figured out what we were doing, the ladies went back to the Wozo and sorted the suitcases of supplies and figured out how lightly they could travel. We didn't know what the conditions in PAP would be like the next day and if we had to walk we didn't want to be slowed by big suitcases. The guys on the other hand picked up tools and stored everything valuable in "home depot" (the last container of supplies that had made it to the orphanage) so they wouldn't be stolen. We made plans for the next day as well. Mostly, how to get out of the tap-tap and make our way to the embassy if we had to walk. Between adrenaline, anxiety, fear (for ourselves, the orphans and deaf students, and the country) and a the desire to go help in PAP, sleep was difficult to come by--I was asleep for maybe 3 hours. We were hoping to see the pictures Mike had taken during the day in a slide show but we were all too busy getting ready to evacuate.

Thursday: The ladies arrived and we played with the kids before the tap-tap arrived. There were balloon animals being made, dragon flies being handed out, and pictures being taken. I had a little boy named Chulito (spelling?) that wanted me to hold him. I picked him up and then realized he must have had an accident during the night because he was very moist, but i hadn't showered since Monday night so I didn't smell real good either. Eventually we loaded up Yves' truck and then breakfast was brought out...against our wishes. Omelets with onions and peppers, with pineapple/papayas/bananas and bread...as with every meal we had there it was very tasty. We finally got under way after the driver tried (and failed) to get more money out of us at 9:30. We made it to the embassy around 11:30 after having to come in the back way because the road was blocked off. The back way was a bunch of narrowing alleys that were covered in trash and fallen stones. Along the way we saw evidence of the earthquake in flattened buildings, fallen fences, cracked and leaning buildings, but we didn't see any dead bodies--we were going through the "good side" of town. After being checked into the embassy we filled out paperwork with personal information so our families could know we were okay and applied for evacuation--with us picking up the tab being a possibility :(. The embassy had set out water and some peanut butter and bread, but the only thing left when we got there was bread crust and water. Mike decided that he needed some coffee so he broke out his coffee pot, the beans and a portable stove that somehow made it through security--only local security guards were there, any marines must have been out helping already. David had a cell phone that was up and working so the Minnesota team was able to call their families and tell them they were fine. I think Lisa made a call or two as well, but I figured since I had said we were fine Tuesday night, I didn't have to run Dave's phone bill up more by telling my parents I was still fine Thursday morning. Around 1 that afternoon, an embassy employee came to the waiting room where we had set up camp and told us that they might stick us on a military aircraft to get us out of here, so we had to consolidate everything into a bad that could fit on our lap. Past our room there was a clinic that had been set up for any wounded and we'd see doctors and nurses coming out every now and again. One time we stopped the doctor and asked if he needed anything, he said they needed everything and since we were supposed to bring medical supplies for the orphanage everyone gave him something--it was really cool to see his face as we rattled off the medications we had (pain meds, antibiotic ointments, bandages, gauze, and tape were the big ones). He just looked more and more relieved. After we had shrunk our baggage to about 1/10 of the previous amount, the employee came in and said the flight wouldn't be available to get us until 6 that night (it was maybe 2 by that time). She also asked us for volunteers to keep the check in lines moving, so Bruce, Peter (plumpchef.com is his website--buy some meat seasonings from him), Dave and I went and helped out with that. Around 5 we were all back in the room when the employee came in again and told us the airspace was too congested and the plane wasn't coming in...maybe in a few more hours. She started by saying she wished she was behind the glass so she could be more "safe", but we didn't attack her. Again she asked for volunteers and some of the ladies (MN and IA) went to sort/file paperwork. Around 7 maybe, MREs started arriving and they set up lines in the courtyard to pick one up. Bruce and I held doors for the "out" line and "in" lines. After I got my MRE (turkey roast with potatoes and gravy, a cherry drink mix, a chocolate sports bar, cheddar filled pretzels) I headed back to our room and ended up giving a demonstration to a few people on how to make everything. Mine was okay, but Trudy about threw up after trying her meat loaf. The rest of the night was spent watching CNN until we had seen their loop 20 times and yanked the plug out of the wall and trying to sleep on the floor, in a chair, or out on the grass in the courtyard. Around 11:10 a lady came in and asked us to be quiet because they had a plane for us and didn't want to start a mad rush. I went and got Bruce from the courtyard after she had called our names. We think a flight had been pushed up because a lady was going into shock--we saw her go through an hour before the flight came.

Friday: I'm starting Friday now because there's not a lot of Thursday left and it seemed like a good place to transition. We left the embassy via motorcade at 11:30 and made our way to the airport. The terminal itself was unsafe, but the airstrips were undamaged. When we arrived at the airport, we were directed to a C-17 cargo plane and told to stand in a single file line while we showed them our passports and gave them our social security numbers. We dropped our bags on the bottom half of the plane's door and found a seat. I took a few pictures of the inside of the plane and am still amazed by just how big the cargo hold really was--it's one thing to read about it and another thing to sit in it. We were instructed by the flight crew that we were going to either McGuire in New Jersey or Miami, and we'd know for sure once in the air. The bathroom was for "Women or #2" per the sign written on the door, guys had pee-holes near the back of the plane...not making that up either. On the flight I again slept poorly and had maybe a total of half an hour sleep where my head was bobbing up and down...up being asleep and down being awake. We arrived at McGuire around 3:30 am and had to wait on the plane while we were instructed on what was going to happen next. 20 people at a time were taken off the plane and patted down. Our luggage was taken to the base gym while we went to Customs. After Customs, we went to the gym complex, checked in, and were briefed on the facilities we were staying in. They had 2 full size basketball courts covered with cots, they had a locker room for showers and they had a place to pick up a little food since breakfast wouldn't be served until 7:30, about an hour and a half away. They also had a JAG officer help us negotiate with Airlines for tickets since none of us had made our scheduled flights. We lined up a flight at 11:24 out of Philly, but missed the bus. Then 2 of our group would get a flight out at 12:40 and the other 4 would follow at 2:30 through Detroit. Well, they never switched the 2 onto the 12:40 flight so we were all going to be on the 2:30. When we got to the ticket counter we found a flight that had been delayed since 8 that morning heading to Minneapolis so we hopped on that one at 1:30 and were headed home. We got to Minneapolis 2 hours before our next flight, so we waited around at the gate. Soon after, Bruce and Shelly walked to the Caribou Coffee in the airport and who should they run into other than Shelly's brother-in-law. Small world, no? Just before our plane started boarding, we were debriefing and decided to pray. When we finished, Shelly's brother-in-law handed us all first class tickets. Not sure who paid for them, but it was very nice and much appreciated. We arrived in Des Moines at 6:40, hugged our loved ones, took some pictures and then headed home--not before my family and I stopped at Fazoli's though.

That's the factual side of everything...now for the emotional

Monday night in Fort Lauderdale I was pretty amped up. Just anxious, excited, really any adjective that would keep you from getting sleep. Tuesday started off a little tense with the shuttle back to the airport, but it went off without a hitch so not a whole lot of stress--other than being hungry because they only had a Chili's To Go kiosk in our terminal. The flight to PAP was uneventful until we were ready to get off the plane. A man with a young child was having problems carrying everything and when I offered him help with his bags, he gave me the little girl instead--she was cute, but not as cute as my nieces. We got off the plane and met Sherry by the baggage claim...she was so helpful. I don't think we would have ever gotten through customs without her. She knew most of the customs people from previous visits and they let us all breeze through. As soon as we stepped out of the airport it was overwhelming. People were trying to get our bags, begging from us, and it felt like we walked into an oven. It was unseasonably cold in Florida when we left and it was at least 80 in Haiti when we touched down. It was a little annoying waiting for our drivers and then waiting more for Mike before we left for the orphanage, but I was still on American time and not Haitian time. As we were driving up to the orphanage I started freaking out again. What was I supposed to say with these kids? How would they react to me? How would I react to them? How would we communicate? All those fears were put to rest quickly though. Most spoke some English and I knew a little ASL and Creole/French, and everybody smiled. It was a lot of fun just walking around with the kids in the yard--I think at one point I had 4 kids hanging on to my hands, 2 on my pinkies and 2 on my thumbs. Then things got interesting...the earth started to vibrate under my feet. It went on for around 20 seconds, the kids were screaming (the older kids hit the dirt, the younger ones went running to the building and we had to stop them) but the deaf kids were the most freaked out. I can't imagine what my reaction would be in their shoes, but they grabbed on to one of us and just started crying. Thankfully we were able to calm them down pretty quickly again after the quake and we could keep playing with them until their bed time. At dinner, Yves brought his laptop and was able to connect to the internet somehow. Amy, a lady with the other group, started reading Yahoo news that brought all conversation to an end. Up until this point I thought it had just been a small local earth quake, it never entered my mind that the quake had started somewhere else and been so strong. The worst part was looking around the table at the local staff. You could see their hearts breaking a little more with each sentence that was read because most had family in PAP and had no way of contacting them. Our thoughts soon turned to Sherry who had stayed behind in PAP. Wednesday came and was overcast which was welcome in my mind--I was going to be working on a steel roof, the less sun reflecting the better--but my thoughts often strayed to Sherry, Mike, Jan, Yves, and Ricardo. I kept hoping to see them but they didn't show up until after dinner. Jan told us what things were like and Mike told us what was going to happen. Wednesday night the guys cleaned up the job sites and finished the important jobs while the girls went back to the Wozo and sorted everything out and packed light. Again I'm amped up and can't really sleep except for in quick shifts--maybe 2.5 to 3 hours. Thursday came and it ripped my heart out. The kids mobbed us and then we had to explain that we were leaving. It was hard because we couldn't explain to them why we were leaving (we didn't want to use up what little resources they had) and we couldn't explain to them how bad the earthquake was in PAP. The ride to the embassy was tense when we started taking alleys that had very little room in them. Once we made it to the embassy there was relief, and each stop after that was one step closer to home.

Since I've been home my mind has been swirling with a lot of thoughts, but a few questions keep making their way to the front:

What was the point of our visit? We'd only been in country for 6 hours.
How do I talk to people about this? We were only in the country, not in PAP and didn't see the worst of it
Why did I go to the embassy and not stay and help?
Did I do the right thing by leaving?
How can I help now?
How quickly can I go back?

I know that this is ridiculously long, but it's my debriefing and if someone can get something out of it/help me see something I missed, I'd like to know that.

May God go before you to lead you, behind you to protect you, under you to support you, and alongside to befriend you.

nate