With a large part of our team in Port au Prince now working to manage numerous medical teams that are coming and going there are only a small hand full of us left on La Gonave. We have stopped English and Computer classes for now and most of the work projects around the compound have come to a stop as we have run out of gourds to pay the workers. Besides us running out of Haitian Gourds, signs of the country’s shattered economy have also started to show up in the town in the form of stores being out of rice, the price of fuel doubling, and the bank being closing for nearly a week. However there is word that the bank will be reopening on Monday and there is supposed to be a large boat of rice coming soon as well.
Even though there aren’t many of us left on the mission station here on La Gonave things can still get crazy sometimes. Just this morning Butch was woken up from a nap by a call letting us know that that there was a need for crutches and a plane would be at the airfield within an hour to pick them up. Since everyone with keys to the depot was off work today we had to break in and then load the truck up as fast as we could and take off toward the air field.
Scotland Team unloading supplies from the Breezy Sea.
Friday morning the Scotland Lemonade team came in by boat at 10:30 unloaded and arrived at the Wesleyan mission at 10:50 then promptly split up, sending one group with supplies up to the orphanage and one group with medications over to the hospital pharmacy. The group that was at the hospital restocked the pharmacy, took video footage, surveyed the new construction, and inspected structural damage to the old part. This is the group that is heading up the project to rebuild the hospital next August. Meanwhile Dan Irvine who came in with them was having a meeting with the hospital director and tracking down another cook to take with them back to Port. Then they all left just as fast as they had come to meet their MAF flight at 12:00. After all of the commotion was over and the dust had settled there were still two of the Scotland team members here on the station that had been left. It wasn’t an accident though. They gave their seats so that a sick girl could make an emergency medical evacuation. So then right after lunch they were headed back down to the boat with Butch to start their long trip back so that they could make their flight out of the country the next morning. This is just another small example of daily life here.
Will at his going away party the night before leaving Haiti.
Last night we had another furry of action as we got the call that a family needed important adoption papers for one of the orphans on the island. If these papers could be drawn up, this little boy had a chance at leaving the country the next day to go to his new family. Before this could happen, we needed a written statement from the mayor and the town judge who were no where to be found. Luckily some of the guys who work for WISH would not give up. They ran back and forth all over town for hours until they finally had somehow hunted down the judge and mayor who they pulled out of a meeting and then with the mayor’s help convinced the judge to come down to the station at 8:00pm on a Saturday night to draw up the last of the papers. The little boy was on the boat heading over to meeting at the American Embassy this afternoon to determine his fate, and right now he is on a plane flying into the United States to start his new life!!
Matt
