Message from Haiti

I don't even have a fun title tonight. The final 6 people of the group I arrived with departed this afternoon...though they haven't actually left yet they were told to be out at the Miami tent by 5 pm. It's a bit quiet around here tonight....in terms of team members. I still hear plenty of dogs barking. The crickets are noisy after a bit of rain this evening. With many of the property walls damaged or down, there is much more traffic noises noticible. I have a few staff members here so I'm not alone. They shut the door from the hallway to the kitchen - not sure what that was about. Tomorrow they will have to get some cleaning done as my team begins to arrive on Friday- 4 of them, and on Saturday about 11 or 12 more will get here. I hope. American Airlines has said they are resuming flights after a month plus of cancelled trips.

We've done a lot of preparations to get ready for the team to arrive. With water and power established and internet service restored, we can manage quite well. We've been eating a lot of rice and beans - a version slightly altered each day.
We've been fortunate to have laboullie (pardon my spelling of this) but we call it sweet wall paper paste. but it tastes good and sticks with you for awhile.
ha...no pun intended. Susan Bales and I washed dishes for hours yesterday, cleaned cupboards and put things away. The guys have been patching up cracks and holes in the walls in preparation for painting the house. My team members will really appreciate the high ceiling areas!


I've also had enough of the MRE's. I'm very empathetic to service men around the world- I didn't eat that many and don't care to eat many more. We've had different variations of rice and beans everynight for 3 weeks now...we've occasionally had piklees, and some form of meat- beef, or pork, or spam (?), cliff bars and occasionally bread and pasta with speghetti sauce.

TomorrowI'll make plans for my team, be over - whelmed with neighhood kids begging for something, maybe do some wound care in our tent clinic. I'll do some inventory in our little mushroom house. I'll post some pictures this weekend. Angel is bringing my laptop.

For now I'll listen to the roosters and the dogs, and all the other night noises....