UN Convoy, GVN comm. center opening

I haven't been able to find internet for a while (big surprise there!), but ill try to recap the past few days.

We went to one of Haitis largest tent camps for displaced people on Thursday. There are 7.5 thuosand people living in a closed off place the size of a football field. They live in rows in makshift tents and are patrolled by the Venezuelan Army. Thank you, Chavez. It's pretty hard to explain the conditions at this camp, but they are beyond brutal. When it rains in Haiti, it pours. This turns the entire compund into a big pool of mud that begins to flood more often than not. The water in turn helps the spread of fun diseases like typhoid, malaria and dengue fever. This only adds on to the high rate of HIV already here- somewhere in between 4 and 12% is the "governments" estimate. We entered the compound on UN trucks along with the IOM and Venezuelan military nearby. On this specific entry, we were assigned to go from tent to tent collecting information on the people living there. We were attempting to find out who was moving out of th camps, where to, and when. Very few of the thousands are willing to leave, as they are given free food and water in these camps. This information gathering took about 3 hours in 12 teams of 4.

The following morning we went to visit one of the many childrens homes. It is unreal the amount of kids that were left behind without parents or any family after the quake. The children are endlessly happy to see us, climb on us, and learn the english we teach them.

We have also been "rubbling". This consists of picking up all the rubble from the collapsed buildings and removing them from the sites in order to rebuild. We work with the Salvation Army on one of the sites. They claim to have removed all the bodies from the shattered buildings, but i've heard some horror stories from past volunteers.

Friday night, about 15 of the volunteers finished their rotation and headed home. They flew private to Jamaica for their GVN debrief and a nice stay in Montego Bay. These were all great people- 2 UBC-O students, a yoga instructor, 2 old ladies from my rotation that made it a grand total of 4 days in Haiti, a San Diego zoo animal taming person, a few Kiwis, and a few others with blander descriptions.

What's left is 6 of us. A Belgian girl with an Oxford degree, a nice Texan who likes his cerveza, a Singapore Air pilot with some of the scariest stories, a GVN rep fron New Zealand, and the Most Interesting Man from the UK called Rodd. Seriously, he is the guy in the Dos Equis commercials.

Our compound is pretty empty, but we are making good use of the extra tents. Texas has acquired one as his "vestiere", Singapore and I have moved into doubles, and we are considering getting a pow-wow tent, a Blegian consulate tent, and a Zen tent where all we do is read Larry's book (what a dick!)

We are all in good spirits. More later. Hi pav.