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We started our day with an early morning meeting of homemade coffee and assignments for the day.  There was never a dull moment in camp.

This young boy came up to me as I worked on the first system that we set up  - at a university.  While a lot of the structure is still standing, most of it is unstable and will have to rebuilt.  He spoke pretty well with broken english.  He was able to tell me that he lives close by and he playes football (soccer).

This picture we took as we waited for the water to purify is my favorite from the trip.  He took my hat off my head and put it on his own for this one.

My team, Team 2, overlapped with Team 1 so they could get us up to speed. They left on our Day 3.

In the compound where we were staying they had a little agricultural farm with many chicken, fish and goats.  It was a pretty impressive setup to to down in Haiti.  I don’t recall crossing a setup like this anywhere else in the whole country.  Right next to it was a field where it looked like farmer were clearing the weeds out of the field.  In the field they had coconuts, plantains, beans and corn.

We went back to the tent city for the third time and purified another 275 gallons of water .  I walked around this time while while our team was purifying the water and photographed some of the people that lived there.

This man was ironing his blue jeans with a coal iron, something I’d never seen before.  This image also provides a great view of the make shift tents the people were living in.  They used any boards and tree limbs they could find to make the frame and then they would use tin roof or blankets as siding, whichever they could find and salvage.  Most tents were a space of about 8 feet by 8 feet and most had a mattress with some other small furniture items. These tents house whole families as well as everything they have left in the world.  I can’t imagine what it will be like when the rainy season comes.

Everyone was curious about the camera and these two boys caught my attention really quickly with their sweet moment and gaze.

Back at camp by the moonlight, Ron, one of the best and most patient teachers that I have ever worked with sends an email home.  It was pretty bright all night.  We were later told that it was the brightest moon would be all year.  It was really neat to experience with no light pollution, it felt like a really dark day.

I’m back. Many thanks to my lovely wife for keeping up the blog in my absence. I’m planning to do a series of blog posts chronicling my trip to Haiti, one post for each day of the trip. It’s the best way I can think to best tell the story and share as much of the experience as possible. I hope you’ll enjoy it.

Our journey started on Wednesday at Edge Outreach in Louisville. We packed up our gear and spent some last moments with our families saying our goodbyes. The amazing staff at Edge covered all our bases.  They spent many days and nights preparing our team of eight for the ten days in front of us.  We left Edge and headed up to Chicago on a bus where we caught a flight to Port-au-Prince.  The only stipulation was that we had to be at the airport three hours before our 5:30am flight so that they would have the plane weight correct – a complicated task due to all of the supplies that United Airlines would be taking to Haiti.  So we had to get up at 1:45 in the morning.  The three nights leading up to the trip I didn’t get much sleep either, averaging about three or four hours, but it was more than enough to survive on.

Each of us were in charge of a large rolling Pelican case that contained about 125 pounds of gear, supplies, and food.

We waited in line at O’Hare with other groups that were headed for Haiti as well.  We quickly learned that one of the flight attendants with United, a Haitian, would be flying down with us to bring his mother back to the States.  She’d recently experienced two strokes and, thankfully, survived the earthquake.

Traveling through O’Hare brought back many memories from my childhood.  I spent a lot of time in O’Hare, even a few nights, going back and forth between my mom & stepdad in Illinois and my dad in Texas.  Not much has changed as far as I can tell.

We witnessed a beautiful sunrise that morning.  One of my favorite things to do on an airplane (other than sleep) is to take aerial pictures.  Plus we had most of the 757 all to ourselves. There were only 38 passengers, a ground crew, three pilots, and a full staff of atendants.  Let’s just say we had the best service imaginable. First class would be jealous.

I was told by one of the pilots that this little island was a part of the Bahamas.

I believe this is the town of Anse-a-Galets which is a part of Gonave Island. If you look in the bottom part of the frame, you can also see a U.S. Navy Battleship.

Here you can see a U.S. Navy Aircraft Carrier with Haiti in the background.

This quote was on a someone’s backpack at O’Hare.  At the time, I didn’t realize how true it would be for me and my journey to Haiti.