Haiti. Day 1.

Over the course of the next 7 days, I’m going to be publishing here on Loose Luggage a seven-part article about my recent trip to Haiti in the wake of the 7.1 earthquake that has now claimed some 200,000 lives.  Each part of this article will correspond (roughly) with 1 day of my trip.

Day 1

On January 12, 2010 I was sitting in one of the oldest bars in the United States, Frances Tavern, where George Washington used to (allegedly) throw a cold one back.  It sits just south of the site of the World Trade Center and a few blocks away from Wall Street.  It was a wintry sunset that evening that cut through the icy cold and made the buildings look epic against the blue sky.

I was sitting at the bar with a couple of close friends when news of a 7.1 earthquake began flashing in banner form across the game that was playing on the TV behind me.  News of an earthquake in remote Haiti, which I new little about, even geographically—didn’t catch my attention.  However, over the next 24 hours, the gravity of the situation started to catch my eye, along with the rest of the world.

I can’t say that my choice to go to Haiti days after the quake was really a decision I consciously worked through.  As a friend noted to me recently, my soul went before me and I followed it.   That is to say—I wouldn’t say it was any noble reason that caused me to go.  But I saw what was happening there and something drew me in.

As soon as the decision was official, that is to say, as soon as my ticket was booked, I dove in head first.  I began a constant twitter feed that would continue throughout my trip and became a comforting reminder that I was connected to a world outside of that ravaged country.

Support came in from all over the city and country.  A photographer friend from Michigan generously paypaled me support cash.  My good friend at Vera Wang met me in Bryant Park with an envelope of cash.  Martha Stewart Living’s design team gave me a couple of first-aid boxes and a note wishing me safety.  Best Made Co. donated an axe towards the cause.   As I ran around the city all evening attempting to furnish myself with supplies and make as many connections as I could before I headed in, I was answering calls, e-mails, texts, and tweets from people wanting to help in any way they could.

The support that came in was overwhelming and appreciated, but was accompanied by a weight of the reality of what I was about to do.   As I ran from Medicins sans Frontiers’ offices in midtown, to the Red Cross in Hells Kitchen, I busied my mind with the list of last minute to-dos that inevitably accompany a trip of this nature.

About 36 hours after having booked my ticket, and three days after the initial quake, I was on the M60 bus from my apartment in Harlem to LaGuardia International.  I had a large suitcase filled to the brim with generously donated supplies, my backpack with a minimal amount of personal items—some clothes, toothbrush, hand sanitizer, a small sleeping bag—and a small shoulder bag that contained my passport, camera, and notebook.  Additionally, I’d purchased a small fanny-pack first aid kit and leather gloves.

I had a long layover in Philadelphia where I had a chance to send out some last minute e-mails, make some last-minute phone calls, connect one last time with any contacts, and start to think beyond the scurry of preparing and begin thinking about my actual game plan once I landed in Santo Domingo.

At that time most planes were not being let in to Port au Prince.  Those of us that were heading down were hearing reports of planes circling the airport for hours before being sent back to Santo Domingo or Miami where they originated.  For that reason I had booked a ticket into the Dominican Republic, and was hoping to get into Port au Prince by road.  Though in the end this turned out to be a really good tactical plan for getting into the city, I admit I had fears that I wouldn’t have a chance of making it into Haiti at all.

As I sat at in Philadelphia’s airport a sort of shadow fell over me.  I had awoken that morning with the same feeling—“What am I doing? Why am I doing this?”  I was a rogue documentarian heading into a devastated country with no real plan for how I would be able to help.  It’s not something I would recommend to everyone—or almost anyone.  But I usually travel well alone, and have always in the past have managed to find my way.  Deep down I knew all of the experiences I’ve had around the world would help me in this situation.

While in Haiti, networking wasn’t something you did if you were good at it—it was completely essential.  Doctors, aid workers, rescue workers, journalists—we all exchanged information constantly, trading bits of knowledge, rumors, new pieces of news.  I kept a massive pile of notes in my iPhone and my notebook that I referred back to constantly.  Names, hospitals, this US military officer, that UN doctor, this photographer, that Aid Worker.

The first bit of networking came an hour or so before I boarded my plane.  I met a man named Richard.  Richard was a missionary who also happened to be a former Green Beret medic.  On furlough in the States, he had told me that he felt he couldn’t just sit watching the news—he felt he had to actually do something.  So his constituents had quickly raised support for him and he booked the same flight I had into Santo Domingo.  Richard was in his 50s, had a friendly and innocent demeanor, and by the look of his packing techniques, had been around the world a time or two.

Richard, too, was working his people skills.  While at the airport he had made acquaintance with a vascular surgeon from Ohio.  I know I have her name in my notes somewhere but can’t seem to find it.  She was thin and tiny, but had an assertive way about her that showed the confidence and precision that you would expect out of an experienced surgeon (I later discovered that she was the head of her department at the hospital at which she worked).

The surgeon had been called to Haiti because her area of expertise was in amputation.  She donated her time twice a year to a clinic on the border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic—which was where she was heading post-earthquake.

As chance would have it, I sat between the surgeon and the green beret on our flight.  Flanking us were Italian journalists—who immediately began schooling us in the art of networking.  They were leaning over their seats through the duration of our 4 hour flight to Santo Domingo chatting with us about our plans to get into Port au Prince, conversing with each other, devising a game plan.

They offered a spot to me in their convoy.  I told them I was thinking about it—but confided to Richard that I didn’t really trust Italian journalists.  I don’t know why I felt that way, but nonetheless Richard and I decided to “go it alone” without their aid.

Upon arrival, and after claiming all of our luggage filled with medical supplies, Richard, the surgeon, and I stepped out into the wet, warm Dominican air.

Within minutes of stepping out of the airport Richard and I had bartered for a $500 one-way ride from Santo Domingo into Port au Prince.  I was shocked at how easy it had been (though more expensive then I’d wanted it to be).   Our driver, who spoke decent English and turned out to be a very good man, told us it would not be safe to drive through the night by ourselves, and that we should link up with some other cars that were heading in to Haiti.

So he walked off and minutes later returned to the car and informed us that we would drive in with a convoy of four vehicles—one of which was chalk full of our Italian journalist friends (who turned out to be helpful and amiable).  It was just after midnight when we began cutting through the darkness under a canopy of stars towards Port au Prince.

I was in the front seat, Richard in the back, telling me more of his life story.  I haven’t been able to communicate with Richard since my trip, but at the time, and in the midst of what could have been a very fearful trip, he felt like a long-time friend.  We traveled well together, with similar mentalities of open-mindedness.  Before leaving Santo Domingo, I stopped and bought 3 large water bottles—my emergency water supply should there be limited resources in the city.

The following several hours were dream-like.  I nodded on and off, waking here and there to the inky blackness that enveloped our little convoy, save for the stretch of road immediately in front of our car that was illuminated by the headlights.  Our driver had clearly made the trek many times.  It isn’t a long straight road, but rather one that bends and curves through small villages and towns.  Without experience of having traveled it, one would inevitably be lost within the first hour.

In the middle of the night, about two hours into the trip, we stopped so our driver could relieve himself.  As he waded through the brush out of site, Richard and I stepped out of the car to stretch.  Everything was so calm.  We were in a rural part of the country, surrounded by hills, lush with trees.  The air was still, and though slightly humid, light and cool.  The sky was an explosion of stars, and it was hard to imagine that a hundred miles ahead of us lay a country in complete ruin.

Somewhere along the journey we had lost sight of our traveling companions.  We caught them about an hour outside of the border at a roadside stand where we stopped and had coffee and plantains.  Our first sign of car troubles nearly left us stranded there.  The engine wouldn’t turn over and the car had to be jumped with one of the other vehicles we were with.

Another twenty miles down the road the wheels began making such a hideous grinding noise that we couldn’t travel more then 25 mph, and again lost sight of our convoy.  We drove for another half an hour with the awful grind and a pace that was a little bit unnerving as we passed through villages that seemed, in the dark, unfriendly and foreboding.

We reached a town about ten miles from the border and could drive no more.  The Italian journalists had stopped and unloaded their camera gear to investigate a make-shift medical unit that was over-flowing with patients that had been driven in from Port au Prince.  I walked in to the building and caught my first glimpse (and smell) of the disaster that lay ahead.  White eyes stared up at me from all around me.  People in agony, limbs broken, severed, heads gashed.  The walls to the unit were blue-green and the lights ferociously white and flat.  It was a saddening scene.  I took a deep breath while I attempted to smile at the faces looking up at me.

Anxious to unload my large suitcase that was becoming a burden to carry, I decided that this was as a good a time as any to donate the supplies I’d brought in.  I felt sort of silly as I opened the suitcase for the Dominican nurses—who weren’t necessarily unimpressed, but certainly exhausted.  My supplies would help, but were, I realized, a drop in the bucket.

Someone asked me if I wanted a picture of the nurses with the supplies.  I didn’t, really, but felt somehow obligated.  They posed in front of the open suitcase looking tired, and I felt ashamed.  As if I was saying, “Yes!  I got as far as the border.  I saw some suffering.  I passed off some supplies.  I took a picture.  Now let’s get out.”

Our driver apologized, but told us that he would be able to take us no further.  The next hour was a bit of a blur.  I wasn’t really sure what was being negotiated, but somehow we piled into a new car, with some Dominicans that I admit I didn’t really trust.  Just before we took off, I wondered a few hundred feet from where we were and stumbled upon a large encampment of Dominican rescue workers, clad in what would become familiar orange shirts, waking before the dawn to pile into trucks and head back into the quake-ravaged city.

Our car began cutting into the darkness that seemed to become thicker as the towns and houses grew more meager.  Before long we were in the back of a long line of vehicles waiting to get through the border into Haiti.  Looking at the length of the line ahead of us I wondered if it might be hours before we made it to the border.  But almost sooner then I had this thought, our driver cut off of the trail onto the muddy shoulder and began racing his way to the front.  It turned out that our driver was a border patrol officer, and we were now being driven, not only directly the front of the line, but straight through the border without any questions asked.

If it seems odd, it was.  And this event, like so many other events on my trip, seemed to happen outside of my abilities and will.  Like a dream I had no control over, events, relationships, experiences, seemed to unfold in front of me like a story that had already been written and was simply taking it’s due coarse.

As we passed into Haiti, the sun was just beginning to peak out over the mountains to our left.  The landscape was completely different then those of the Dominican Republic—bare of any trees, it was almost desert-like (unfettered exportation of lumber has left Haiti deforested in many places, depleted of a resource that could otherwise be a major source of jobs and income).

Now sandwiched between some rather loud, aggressive Dominicans, with Richard in the front seat, I began to again nod in and out of sleep.  I fell in to vivid dreams, until I woke, finally, to find myself in a city bathed in morning sunlight that was almost apocalyptic, and my dream-state quickly transitioned into the nightmare that was around me.

Continued tomorrow.