Belladere Haiti June 2009

As I type this post, I am driving on back mountain roads in Haiti heading toward Belladere. The 3 person team from OBI arrived in Port Au Prince at 4:30 to live music as we entered customs.

We were picked up by Eric, from New Hope for Haiti and drove a few miles to meet up with a member of Partners In Health. We are heading to a hospital where they have been helping the Ministry of Health facilitate operations.

The hospital has a dire need for clean water. Currently patients have had to bring their own water to the hospital. So we are driving 4 hours east of Port Au Prince, over the mountains, bouncing up and down in the back of the SUV as we head almost to the Dominican Republic (15 minutes from the border).

We will be here one week as the filtration system is installed. I will be gathering video stories and photos as it is implemented.

(please excuse any typos, grammar errors, and poor sentence structure. Not easy to type or read what I hbe types in these conditions…and I will me too tired to check it when I arrive at our destination. Sorry Heidi. I know this type of thing drives you crazy.)

Haiti: Clean Water (Video)

I realized that I never posted the second video from my trip to Haiti.  After they were hit by three back-to-back hurricanes in the summer of 2008, the water supplies in the Jacmel area were contaminated.  Operation Blessing, with the help of DHL and Water Missions International, installed a water purification unit that can purify 10,000 gallons of water a day.  The system was installed in the village of Siloe.

2 Haiti Videos are up.

Since returning from Haiti I have been working on videos from the trip. One was for our partner, DHL, and two that will be used on our sites. The trip was a real eye opener for me. My only previous trips outside of the US were short day trips to Canada (which wasn’t hard since I lived in the Metro-Detroit area). I had never experienced anything remotely close to this in my life. The people were very nice, but the conditions they must endure are hard to imagine. Many don’t have access to the things we take for granted: clean water, stable electricity, and education. On top of these struggles, the hurricanes have made life harder for them. Many lost their homes, gardens and livestock when the storms ravaged their country. These are just a few of the stories.

Food Relief in L’Estere, Haiti.
[vimeo 1914853]

Clean Water For Jacmel, Haiti: Vlog Post @ www.myowneyes.org
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwkiaLw0SLk&hl=en&fs=1]

Leaving Haiti Today

We spent the last two days in Jacmel istalling a water purification system. ( I say we, but I really had no part in the installation process.). I was interviewing local residents about the hurricanes that ravaged the city and their need for clean water to drink. Through these interviews I learned that the hurricanes had destroyed their water source.

The residents were very excited about the clean water and expressed many thanks. They were hard at work building a shelter for the unit to keep it protected. It should provide them drinking water for years.

The mission where the unit was installed is right next to the river that will provide the water to be purified. That same river that will give them water to drink is also the river that flooded the city when the hurricanes came through. The surge was so string that it knocked down the walls surrounding the mission.

I am currently in Port Au Prince and fly out at noon. I look forward to seeing my wife and putting together videos that will tell the story of these wonderful Haitians that are in need after the devastation of the hurricanes.

St. Marc, Haiti 2008

Day 4 of our trip to Haiti is almost done. Kumar went out with Humedica today to administer medical relief in the rural village of ….. I stayed back at the hotel to compress video footage and put it on our FTP server so that team members in America can take a look at it and use it for their news and packaged stories. I also uploaded audio files of interviews and pictures that could accompany any possible print stories. It was very stressful. The Internet in Haiti is not very fast. I was averaging upload speeds of 25KB/s, which meant that I had to really compress our video footage in order to get it on the server…but it still needed to be HD. After two unsuccessful attempts at compresion settings, I had the footage to a manageable 130MB. This took about 1.5 hours to upload. The other interesting factor was that you could only access wifi down on the patio by the pool and there was only one location with an outlet. Anyway, I think both videos uploaded ok.

We drove back to Port Au Prince in the afternoon, but made a quick stop at Water Missions to help unload our water purification unit. Once it was unloaded, we finalized plans for the journey tomorrow and went to the hotel where I was reunited with my luggage. It wasn’t that easy, but it’s not worth explaining on this blog. After an hour and a little more hassle, my luggage was finally here! Kumar and I enjoyed a wonderful steak dinner (our first “real” meal in two days) and then I immediately grabbed my swimsuit and went in the gorgeous pool at the hotel. The hotel is very nice and has many ammenities that we Americans take for granted (A/C, hot water, properly sealed windows, comfortable mattress, etc). The Internet is the only thing that is lacking and that appears to be caused by the weather. This happened the first night we stayed in Port Au Prince as well.

After my swim I went to the restaurant to grab a coke and struck up a conversation with another gentleman, Dan, who was here watching the Georgia football game. He is an American who has done humanitarian work in Haiti for 8 years. He was a wealth of information about the culture and people of Haiti. I am fascinated by the Haitian people more and more every day that I am here.

Delivered food supplies to shelters in L’estere, Haiti

As I write this post it is 2:30am in Haiti. We are staying in a hotel in St. Marc. I still don’t have my luggage and look forward to going back toward Port Au Prince tommorrow so that I can have fresh socks, boxers, and pants. First, we have a medical mission to do in the morning with Humedica.

Today we went to L’estere and delivered food supplies to shelters. At one, we spent time with the people who currently call it home. They were very friendly and grateful for our help.

I spent the evening capturing and editing the footage we have so far and am currently compressing it for FTP upload. I am very sore and tired from our journeys (most of the time is spent in the back of a pickup truck driving on really bumpy roads).

I’ve attached a few photos from Thursday.

Preparing for a Trip to Haiti

In 36 hours I will be flying into Haiti to get video footage and photographs of the relief effort taking place by Operation Blessing and their partner Humedica. The country was devastated by the recent hurricanes and is in much need of assistance. We are distributing food supplies to victims and installing water systems that have been graciously shipped free of charge by DHL.

Tonight I went shopping and purchased health bars to eat while in Haiti because I was advised by doctors to be very careful about what I eat. My immunization shots will not have been in my body long enough to have taken affect and I need to be very cautious. I also purchased a supply of cargo pants so that I can have my gear handy at all times. I am traveling with one of our International Disaster Relief experts, Kumar. I am very eager to get footage that will help bring awareness to the needs of these suffering people. The trip will last 6 days and I hope to be able to share my journey with those that I know and love. Keep us in your prayers.

You may also find updates on www.myowneyes.org
(I’m not sure if they will be posting any information or not. Lunar is one of the members that blog on that site)
-Tony

Immunization Shots

Today I had to get 4 immunization shots in preparation for a trip to Haiti next week.  For some reason I thought they were going to be a lot worse than they were.  I must have been recalling the IV I received a few years ago…these were nothing.  The muscle pain I’m feeling now is worse than the  actual shots. I am now protected against Yellow Fever, Hepatitis A, Typhoid, and Tetanus. Pills will take care of Malaria.

[vimeo 1715512]

Podcast setup

We are starting to do a podcast at work and I have been commissioned to take it under my wing.  I personally own the tools I need to do it, so I prefer to use my equipment until we get something comparable at work.  Because many of the people I will interview are in other states and countries, I am using Skype along with Call Recorder to host and record the interviews.  This was the setup I used while at home.  I did a similar setup at work, but without the Mac Pro.

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/1650234]

Hurricane Gustav

Image from Weather Underground