UPDATE MONDAY January 25, 2010

We are still trying to determine what happened to the children of the abandoned baby unit.  There were news reports this weekend that Partners in Health took over the General Hospital three days after the earthquake. We been put in touch with them but they have not provided any information that would help us locate the children. These children are not valuable to anyone to sell to adoption agencies or to take as “restavek” (slave) children, because they are all severely disabled or terminal.  We have had a difficult debate with the administration that General Hospital over the past nine months, because we have been willing to move the children out of the General Hospital and into one of the Mercy & Sharing orphanages.  Of course the way they work there, if we want something, they want something in return, and Mercy & Sharing does not pay bribes.

At one point we had our in-country supervisor, Madam Chenet, go to the office to get the final sign off to transfer the children into one of the orphanages - she went to the office at sat in the reception area every day all day for three weeks - and the administrator refused to meet with her.  Ultimately, we began a letter writing campaign to politicians and to the Clinton Global Initiative (insofar as Bill Clinton is the special envoy to Haiti from the UN), and they were kind enough to send people to Haiti and in particular to meet with the administration of the General Hospital.  They took two former ambassadors with them, and the administrator still refused to sign.

We had an interesting weekend, as we got supplies into Williamson again - this time with the help of Tom and Mollie Bedell and the generosity of our friends at World of Children. The Bedells arranged for a motor yacht that was leaving Panama for the Caribbean to stop offshore of the Williamson site.  We decided it made no sense to try and get the supplies in through the bottlenecked port in Port-au-Prince, or to drop him off at one of the other more remote ports that are currently operating, for fear of theft. The Captain of the yacht sent scouts in to check out a beach landing at Arcahaie which is only about 3 miles from the Williamson project. However, there were hundreds of people crowded on the beach hoping to escape Haiti.

Ultimately, we ended up contacting a beach resort about 7 miles up the coast, and Captain Walter was able to land much-needed supplies including rice, water, and some basic medical supplies at the resort which seemed to be doing business as usual, people were sitting in lawn chairs around the pool, sunning and swimming, and sipping Pina Coladas. It is amazing what happens in this upside down world of the Republic of Haiti, but the resort generously helped us.

We continue to urge people to make donations while we continue to reestablish our infrastructure, and deal with the many children who are “new” orphans as a result of the quake.

We are working on setting up a website where we can help people network as we have received many offers from volunteers, doctors, and people from all over the globe, and many of these requests we cannot satisfy, for instance, we are currently not doing adoptions due to the corruption and problems surrounding the adoption industry in Haiti, and yet we receive dozens of emails a day from potential loving parents looking to adopt children.  So we are working on the new website where we can post to these various inquiries and offers and we hope that this will help the exchange of information and help others to make contact with others trying to make a difference in Haiti.