Organizing and airport runs

I am exhausted, so this post is going to be short--but that is okay. :) We did not go anywhere outside of Port au Prince today. Rather, the day was spent with four trips to the airport to pick up various individuals and team members who came in. Last night, Janael and Heather Owens and their four kids came to spend the night at the guesthouse on their way to their non-profit in Northwestern Haiti. They discussed some of the things they do, philosophies with which they go about helping the Haitian people and empowering them, and difficult things they have faced.

Today, after we welcomed two new team

members (woot Jill and Peggy) we trucked on over to the warehouse to do some organizing. There has been a big pile of walkers, crutches, and wheelchairs that are now neatly stacked on pallets along the wall. Stacks of medical supplies have been neatly organized onto freshly painted shelves. Now we actually know what we have so that we might be able to find things easier. The warehouse looks 100% better--thanks guys!!

On the way to the warehouse, I surprised myself with how much I've learned about Haiti by playing introductory tour guide to our two new team members. Though they had just arrived in Haiti after a long day of travel, they jumped right into the mix (they were actually doing most of the figuring out what all the medical supplies were given that they both work in the medical field).

Anyways, after the warehouse we went back to the guesthouse. I went to the grocery store with Randy and Pat to get some supplies. I was amazed at the prices! One jar of Jiffy peanut butter = almost $10 USD. A small cart of groceries cost almost $200 USD! Yish, the prices reminded me of some prices I'd see in remote Alaska! I guess that is what happens when most of the goods are imported. Randy said most grocery stores in Haiti are owned and operated by Arabian and Iranian people. Not sure what the grocery store draw here is, but okay. The exorbitantly high prices also are indicative of why many people go hungry--I certainly could not afford to pay that high a price for groceries on a consistent basis.

I met Chris Buresh this afternoon--he is here with a team. Chris co-directs the Community Health Initiative that is under World Wide Village's umbrella and is one of those names that I see everywhere but had not met until today. There is another gal here at the guest house who is here for a week but may come back to live for six months to work on community health stuff. Good stuff.

Tomorrow we are going back to the second children's home from yesterday. While I ran financial reports for the organization, team members sorted clothes that were made by sewers in the States. The girls at the children's home are going to receive dresses and the boys are going to get some other clothes that were available. We are going to church in the morning and the children's home in the afternoon. God bless those children!

AMONG THE THINGS I SAW TODAY:

--People buying little pillows of fresh water from streetside vendors.

--Piles of trash lining the road.

--A power blink while we were in the grocery store and NO reaction from the people in the store. If that happened in the U.S., there would have been an immediate clamor as people tried to figure out what had just happened.

--A dead and gutted baby pig for sale on the side of the road...it will be someone's dinner tonight.

--A teensy tiny little lizard thing that was just absolutely too cute for words!

--People who care about the kids at the children's home so much that they were figuring out what out of their own suitcases would fit the children.

--The joy of the Lord on team member's and Haitians faces.