My First Trip Into The City

Thursday morning I was invited by Col Akin and CSM Tennant to accompany them on a trip into the city to visit a couple of the distribution locations. It only took 20 seconds into the trip for my eyes to be opened to a whole new world, the amount of time it takes to drive out of our camp into the streets of Haiti. The traffic flow is mind numbing. We drove to the first distribution site where over 9,000 line up each day.

Each of the distribution points are ran by different aid organizations. The military provide security to help keep order in the area. You may notice in the photo that the line is all women. Since women are the food providers for each family, there is less of a chance they will try to sell their rice after recieving it.

It was a smack in the face to me when we arrived at the first site. I was questioning all of the times I just threw away food and old shirts. As I walked through the site with command staff I was really impressed on how much hands on work they were doing, helping cut open bags, shaking hands, caring rice out of the area for the women. Col Akin and CSM Tennant really impressed me that day.

We left that area and traveled to Cete Soleil, which has been called "The Most Dangerous Place On Earth" by some people. On this day, it didn't seem like it though, everything seemed calm.

World Vision was in charge of the aid at this site and had a great set up to keep things moving. It was amazing to me the amount of people living in that area. You can view photos from my first trip into the city on the Quicksie Facebook Fan Page. There are two pictures from Thursday's trip that really stand out to me why the military is here and I am going to close out this blog post with both photos.