Journey to Haiti – Day 1

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.