Author: Kathleen Foster

Capt Guide, the Marine at the helm of the Navy Construction Battalion at FOB Payne in Afghanistan thinks it is important for the “Seabees” to have something to love, honor, and nourish.

“Since pets are not allowed in the theater, he sent guys out to the river valley to find us a tree,” said Seabee CECS (SCW) Thurmond Oliver, who is on his 6^th deployment. The whole C.B. detachment was sent in as part of President Obama’s order to send 30,000 more troops in Afghanistan.

Oliver says the first tree the guys brought back was worse than the Charlie Brown Christmas tree. “It looked liked the guys planted it upside down. It was not up to Captain Guide’s standards,” he said.

So the Captain sent the Seabees out to find another.

“The second one was a good lookin’ tree. But it came with a visitor.” Oliver said referring to the poisonous Viper snake that had hitchhiked in on the tree’s branches.

The Seabees built a large, wooden planter for their tree and set forth caring for it. It was doing well, until one fateful day.

“The guys were taking turns watering the tree,” Oliver explained, “and one day the Seabee whose turn it was used water from the showers. That’s chlorinated. Naturally, the tree died. So, here we have tree number three.”

The guys made a wooden sign for their pet project, calling it “The Joshua Tree”.  But that’s not a reference to the funky looking trees that grow at the national park near the Marine combat center in Twenty-nine Palms, California.

“Captain Guide’s first name is Joshua, so we named it after him. It’s his legacy. It was his dream that we’d have a tree,” said Oliver.

Things are not looking good for Seabee tree number three. Due to a road job outside the wire, it hasn’t been properly watered in a few days. The leaves that were once green are turning brown, blending in with the dust and dirt all around them.

“I think it’s doing as well as that snake on a board over there,” Oliver joked, pointing to a snakeskin nailed to a 2×4 piece of wood.

But Capt Guide is not giving up hope.

“I have faith in that tree. We’re gonna bring her back,” he said, “We’re gonna baby her.”

The guys are using coffee grounds as fertilizer in hopes of perking the tree back up.

“It gives the guys something green to look at,” Capt Guide said, admitting having the tree named after him is a bit embarrassing.  But he’s willing to take some ribbing for the good of the cause.

“As fun and entertaining this is, having a living tree is meaningful around here.”

What do you do when you’re trained for the worst-case scenario but find yourself in the best?

There is a group of Marines here at FOB Payne that operates the “High Mobility Artillery Rocket System.”  Both the system and the guys are referred to as the “Hi-Mars”.

When called to action, the Hi-Mars scramble to their location and can fire two hundred pound rockets from the back of their launcher vehicles in less than two minutes flat. The rockets are GPS guided and designed to annihilate enemy hideouts. So far, this group hasn’t had any bunkers to bust, but they’re always at the ready.

Keeping the Marines focused when times are good is the job of Platoon Commander and Fire Direction Officer Lt Shon Roegge. He has the Hi-Mars running drills for hours, both morning and night, making sure they’re ready to support Marines in the battlefield, when they call for heavy artillery.

Roegge, who is from Rushville, IL, is on his first deployment, his freshness helps to keep the other guys who are on their third and fourth tours going. It’s especially tough for the guys who spend their free time thinking of their families back home, and in some cases children they’ve never seen.

SSgt Carlo Santiago’s wife gave birth to their third child on March 13^th. Santiago wasn’t there because Hi-Mars section chief is here on his fourth deployment.

“I think the Marine Corps like me coming back,” he said when asked why he has shipped out so many times.

Platoon Sergeant SSgt Victor Martinez, who is also on his fourth deployment, has missed between 2 and 3 years of his three children’s lives.  But they were the reason he signed up in the first place.  His wife, gave birth to their first daughter when the couple were just 16. Concerned about how he was going to care for his new family, Martinez joined the Marines. In his 9 years with the Marines, he’s missed wedding anniversaries, birthdays and his daughter’s cheerleading competitions. But, he says, the Corps has made the life he provides for his family possible.

What do you call cheese that isn’t yours? Nacho Cheese!

This is Rick Leventhal’s favorite joke. I’ve heard him tell it many, many times. He will admit that’s because it is the only joke he knows. It keeps coming up a lot on this embed with Marines in Afghanistan because the jalapeno cheese spread is one of the most coveted items in an MRE (Meal-Ready-to-Eat).

I stopped begging Rick to give me his after I too a look at the nutritional label on one of the cheese packets: 17 grams of fat.  The average MRE usually contains a main meal, bread, a fruit, cheese and dessert, adding up to around 1300 calories.

Marines I’ve spoken with will often eat two MREs for lunch. But they need that much energy.  As one of the cardboard boxes containing the grub says: Food is a tactical weapon.

Warfighter Recommended, Warfighter Tested, Warfighter Approved.

Pretty much every servicemember you share an MRE meal with will impart to you a different tip they’ve learned about how to eat an MRE… how to prepare it, which cheese to mix with what main dish, or how to cut open the packets to best form a bowl (cut it across horizontally, instead of vertically).

I was all thumbs the first time I prepared an MRE for myself. Thankfully, it came with very clear instructions, and luckily there are plenty of rocks around.

Lt. Jeff Cobb had heard about the “castle” at Forward Operating Base Kanashin when he got his orders to deploy to Afghanistan with the Marines. But the 27-year-old wasn’t prepared for what he saw when he got there.

“The picture I got was a medieval Scottish castle or something like that,” he said looking at the structure. “Not quite the same. But it is a castle.

The “castle” is an ancient fortress made of mud brick walls the completely surround a number of buildings.  There’s some dispute over exactly when the walls were built. Some say it was put up in the 1200’s to protect Ghengis Khan’s hunting lodge. Cobb says it could be even older than that.

“The rumors are that it was built by Alexander the Great when his army came across during the ancient times. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it looks like it’s that old.”

Alexander the Great and his men came through Afghanistan around 330 BC. However old it is, the fortress has been weathered down over the years by Afghanistan’s harsh elements. Some Marines joke that it looks like an ice cream cake that’s been left out too long.

The heat in this part of Afghanistan is enough to make anything melt. The day we were at Castle Kanashin it was 110 degrees. That’s a big change for Cobb, who is a native of Ypsilanti, Michigan. He says the temperature there rises to maybe 75 degrees this time of year. But he’s acclimating to the weather. He didn’t even realize the mercury had risen that high.

“Putting up with the temperatures the past couple of weeks, the difference between 95 and 110 isn’t very much,” he told us.

Cobb has been a Marine for 6-and-a-half years. This is his first deployment. He pushed for the assignment and is glad he was sent to the castle instead of one of the bigger bases.

“This is kind of the tip of the spear right here, the frontier,” he told us while showing us around.

Cobb is responsible for keeping track of all the manpower in the 1^st LAR’s area of operation (AO).

“Nobody comes in and out of castle, or even the AO at large without me finding out about it. “

That means he’s sitting at a desk. But at the castle, it feels like a throne.

“Walk in the tracks,” 1^st Sgt Stephen Cummings told me as we walked toward the Helmand River. I was shooting some video, and veered off a little. Then, not looking where I was going, I veered off again.

“I said walk in the tracks! You know why I say that, don’t you?” He reminded me that any ground that hasn’t been run over by a vehicle could potentially contain an IED.  So, I made sure to stay to in the tracks.

1^st Sgt Cummings is a member of the Marines’ 1^st LAR. The 43-year-old originally from Memphis, oversees the 31 light armored vehicles in Charlie Company that transport passengers and supplies.  He’s based at South Station, a remote base south of the river that has even fewer creature comforts than FOB Payne. There is no refrigeration. So, their bottled drinking water comes in two temperatures, warm or hot.

Cummings and his wife Tamara have two children, Sean, 15 and Lauren, 7.  But his right hand man, Lance Cpl Brandon Foley is just getting started.

The 25 year old LAV driver got married to his wife, Evilina, on April 5^th, exactly one month before shipping out to Afghanistan.

He’s going home in December. But unlike his boss who’s been a Marine for 23 years, Brandon plans to leave the Corps.

“I want to work for the FBI and fight cyber-crimes,” he told me.

He plans to finish up his degree in computer science after his service ends in July.

Linking Up with the 1^st LAR

Friday, May 21, 2010

6:30am Camp Bastion, Afghanistan

We were packed like sardines on the C-130 flights from Kabul through Kandahar to the British base in Helmand Province, Camp Bastion, last night.  In full body armor, we sat on canvas benches alongside civilian contractors and NATO troops from various countries.  Space is so tight, you have to interlock knees with the people sitting across from you, forming a zigzag zipper formation with your legs.

I sat next to a Danish soldier who was returning to Afghanistan after a couple weeks of R&R in Denmark.  This is his tenth tour. Two of those tours were back to back and his decision to stay in theater destroyed his marriage.  His now ex-wife, who works in finance, wanted him to come home and get a desk job.  But he couldn’t, saying “that just isn’t me”.  He said “THIS is me.”  For many troops, serving in the Middle East for months on end during these ongoing conflicts are driving a wedge between their careers and their personal lives… another casualty of war.

We arrived at Camp Bastion, which is attached to the Marine base Camp Leatherneck, at 1:30am.  We were greeted by a couple of guys from the public affairs officer’s office who told us we had an early flight and it would be best to just catch a few Z’s along side the flight line for a few hours, instead of wasting time driving to Leatherneck.  So much for midnight chow! (I’d heard Leatherneck has one of the best mess halls, and I was looking forward to it.)

We were taken to a building made of plywood where various troops were sprawled out asleep on all the cots.  So we spent the night sleeping outside on wooden benches made of widely spaced 2 x 4s. Planes, choppers and Ospreys took off and landed all around us all night.

Nervous that I mis-set my iPhone alarm, I woke up early. Unable to get comfortable on the 2x4s again, I looked to the ground to put on my ink stained boots.  Yesterday, our London based photographer Mal James wrote to remind me to put my blood type and penicillin allergy on my boots, just in case something happens and I’m unable to speak with a medic. Because I don’t have dog tags, my name and blood type is also on my flak jacket and helmet.

It’s now 8:30am. Rick, Keith and I just split a breakfast of champions: a peanut butter granola bar and a coconut and chocolate candy bar.  Today’s the day we link up with the 1^st LAR. We met many of them in March during their training at Twenty-nine Palms in California.  I’m excited to see them again.

Thurs May 20th 2010
3:15am

We left the hotel in Dubai at 12am local time to catch our 3:30am flight to Kabul.

Looking around the gate, the people waiting to board reminded me of the crowd I’d gotten used to seeing on the flight from Amman to Baghdad: about half locals… the rest western journalists, contractors and private security.

On the bus that took us to our plane, a young woman struck up a conversation with me.

“First time to Kabul?” she asked, and guessed I was “with the news.”

31-year-old Rona is an Afghanistan native who is now living in Sydney, Australia. She and her mother, who spoke no English but flashed me wide smiles, told me they were eager to see their family, especially after the car bomb that killed 18 people in Kabul just a couple of days ago.

On the plane, Rona came to visit me at my seat, and told me more about her past, present, and hopes for the future.

Her family fled Kabul in 1998 because of the Taliban.
She told me about the day her mother and father packed up their nine children and ran from the country, taking the family first to Iran.

Rona left Kabul with just the clothes on her back. Her parents locked up the house with everything they owned inside. Rona says her mother cried as they shut the door, and didn’t stop crying for their first six months in Tehran. The family moved to Australia 5 years ago after the Red Cross helped them get visas.

Rona and her family have come back to Afghanistan to visit several times since leaving 12 years ago. Rona remarked upon how dangerous her home country is right now, saying she expects it to become more dangerous over the next year. But she’s not sticking around to find out.

After this brief visit, Rona is going back to Australia where her fiance will soon join her.

Her fiance is her 20-year-old first cousin, but the marriage was not arranged. He pursued her on one of her previous visits home. But Rona fears all he wants is an Australian visa. She has friends who she says were wooed into marriage, only to be left by their husbands a few days after the wedding. Despite this, Rona did her hair and make-up on the plane in preparation of seeing her fiance at the airport. Her family is encouraging her to marry him because it would get another member of the family out of Afghanistan. In Australia, Rona is studying to be a nurse but isn’t sure if she will ever work as one. She mainly hopes to settle down with her husband and start a family.

On the ground, I saw several men approach Rona and her mother, but I couldn’t tell which one was her fiance.

I caught Rona’s eye so I walked over, hugged her and gave her my email. As I was walking away, I heard her yell something about two weddings and coming to Australia. I think I might just get an invitation.

Tuesday, May 19th 2010
6:30am local Dubai
11:30pm eastern

I’ve been traveling 12 hours so far. But the journey has just begun.

It could take us 4 days to get to final destination: a forward operating base outside a Taliban held town in the southern part of Helmand Province.

That’s where the marines we met at Twenty-nine Palms, the 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion are set up.

Right now I am flying from JFK to Dubai, experiencing a sort a decadence I don’t experience in my day to day life and certainly will not experience once on the ground in Afghanistan.

We have hot food, fruit, champagne and coffee… And widescreen TVs overloaded with movies, music and television choices. I’m listening to calming sounds of whales and dolphins as I read up on the situation in Afghanistan.

     Armstrong’s face lit up when he saw me. My heart melted as he lunged forward, wrapping his little arms and legs around me.

     “He must remember you,” Armstong’s adoptive father, Scott Dice, said as I held the one year-old.  Armstrong and I hadn’t seen one another since January, when the baby boy was living in the back of a box truck at an earthquake-damaged orphanage, La Maison des Enfants de Dieu (The House of God’s Children) in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

 

 

     That was just days the quake.  Now here Armstrong was, at his new home in Denver… smiling and happy… taking my face in his hands and pulling me toward him until we were forehead to forehead… looking each other in the eyes.

 

 

     When the devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti on January 12th, 2010 Armstrong’s soon-to-be-parents Cherie and Scott Dice had no idea if the child they’d spent their life savings adopting was now living… or dead.

     For them, and many other hopeful moms and dads still working to transfer their adopted kids to the states, media reports were their only lifeline to orphanages across Haiti where more helpless parents were abandoning their children every day. There were more than 300,000 children living in Haitian orphanages before the earthquake struck.  After the quake, that number tripled to nearly a million as now homeless and jobless parents dropped their kids off, hoping they will find new homes.

     Fox News Correspondent Jonathan Hunt and I were doing a series of reports about La Maison des Enfants de Dieu which was hit hard by the earthquake, leaving some 130 children without adequate food and water.  Babies, like Armstrong, were in danger of dying from dehydration. The orphanage was out of formula, so caretakers were forced to feed the babies real milk which was giving them diarrhea.

     The Dices had been reading my articles online and contacted me, asking if I could find baby Armstrong and post a photo of him if I could.  I didn’t realize at the time that this photo was the Dices’ only proof that Armstong was alive.

 

 

      During one of Jonathan Hunt’s live reports on Studio B, I received an email from another frantic parent. Lisa Harris of Littleton, Colorado was concerned the two children she was adopting would get lost in the shuffle as Haiti started allowing the kids to travel to the states.  She asked me to find Guimara and Davinson and write their names on their arms. 

 

 

     Guimara and Davinson Harris made it safely to their new home in Colorado.  I visited the kids this weekend to find them living worlds away from the crowded cribs and dirty mattresses at the orphanage.  Two-year-old Guimara’s favorite color is purple and she loves playing dress up with beads and feather boas.  Eighteen-month-old Davinson enjoys playing with his plastic power tools, but appeared to like following his older siblings around more.

     In addition to Guimara and Davinson, Lisa and Rich Harris have two biological children: Zach, 10, and Rachel, 9, as well as two children adopted from China, Josh, 6, and Olivia, 4.

 

      Despite the fact that Mr and Mrs Harris have four adopted kids, they believe adoption should be a last resort for desperate families in Haiti, not their only option.  The couple has created The Road To Hope, a non-profit organization, that’s raising money to help orphaned and abandoned Haitian as well as Haitian parents who are struggling to keep their children in their own care.  The group’s board has agreed to personally cover all of the organization’s expenses, which means 100% of the donations will go directly to projects in Haiti.

     For their first project, The Road To Hope is teaming up with Haitian Orphan Rescue to build a new facility for orphans and families called  “Nouvo Vilaj” (New Village) in Arcahaie, Haiti.  Haitian Orphan Rescue is run by two sisters from Pittsburgh, Jamie and Ali McMurtrie.  The sisters have spent the past eight years living in Haiti, working at orphanages.  They lost their home in the earthquake.

 

      The sisters have plans to build a new $5 million dollar facility that would not only house as many as 70 orphaned and abandoned children, but would give work to Haitians during the building’s construction, and once completed offer instruction in things like farming and breastfeeding.  The sisters say the future of Haiti depends on its people becoming self-sustaining.

     They tell the story of a man who lives near the land where the new facility will be built. He has eight children, all of which he has offered to give up for adoption because he is struggling to feed them.  Instead, the sisters plan to hire him, so he can afford to raise his children himself.

     For more on the McMurtries’ and Harris family’s partnership, check out their websites www.TheRoadToHope.org and www.HaitianOrphanRescue.org.

Cherie and Scott Dice were supposed to be in Haiti today, celebrating their adoptive son Armstrong’s first birthday with him at the Maison des Enfants de Dieu orphanage.  Instead, they’re back home in Colorado opening cards from colleagues, eating cupcakes and making birthday wishes without their baby.

The Dices planned to spend the entire week in Port-au-Prince tying up loose ends regarding their new son’s adoption. But the trip was canceled when the earthquake struck.  Armstrong is one of the last children remaining at the orphanage.

However, Armstrong’s clearance for travel could come soon. His parents tell me the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has given him the green light and sent all of his paperwork to the Embassy in Haiti.

The caretakers at the orphanage are now waiting for the Embassy to tell them when to bring Armstrong and other children in for a final health check and photo session. Mr Dice says Armstrong could then go straight from the Embassy to the airport.  The chances of that happening today are slim, but Armstrong could start his journey to the states as early as tonight.  That would make his new Mom and Dad’s birthday wishes come true.

Coast Guard Lieutenant Teresa Wolf is truly giving of herself in Haiti… by sharing her breastmilk with tiny earthquake victims.

A few times a day, the lactating reservist pumps her breasts then delivers her milk to the USS Comfort, a floating hospital anchored off the coast of Port-au-Prince. There, it is being used to feed injured infants.

Wolf says she knew when she received her orders to go to Haiti that she would be able to help in this unique way.  She gave birth to a daughter, Chloe Danielle, just 10 weeks ago.  She refers to her operation as “Chloe’s Milk” because her baby is giving to the cause as well.  While her mother is deployed, Chloe is drinking just one bottle of stored breastmilk a day and is supplemented with formula.  She is being cared for by her godmother.

When not essentially pumping life into needy babies, Lt Wolf runs the medical office for Port Security Unit 307 on the so-called “Coast Guard Island” in the Port-au-Prince harbor.  Back home in Goldsboro, North Carolina, Teresa is a Physician’s Assistant and also mother to a four-year-old son, Connor.

January 29, 2010
UPDATE: The paperwork has been found.
—-

They were photographed. Their names were written in indelible ink on their arms. Their paperwork was submitted and re-submitted in an effort to get to the states. But more than two weeks after after the Haiti earthquake, a number of children who’ve already been adopted by American families remain at a Port-au-Prince orphanage.

The organization who runs the Maison des Enfants de Dieu says that’s because the US Embassy has lost the paperwork for 11 of the 29 children still waiting to be flown to the U.S.  The orphanage says it all now has to be re-submitted.

However,  this is not the only hurdle facing the little boys and girls living at the orphanage damaged in the January 12th quake.  The Haitian Government has put a halt to the transfer of the hundreds of children who qualify for humanitarian parole under U.S. guidelines.  Fortunately, their parents have been told that order should be lifted in a matter of days, not weeks.

Haiti already had 380,000 thousand orphans before the quake hit. Now, that number could top one million as so many parents were killed in the quake and more succumb to their injuries.

Most people can’t imagine sleeping next to their co-workers. But for us, it’s often just a part of our job. Some of them snore — or worse — in their sleep. But on stories like these, there’s little room to lay our heads… much less for modesty.

Our base camp is at a hotel that fortunately suffered little damage in the earthquake of January 12th. At the height of our staffing, we had 30 people staying here with only 5 rooms among us.

I’ve been one of the lucky ones to sleep in a room every night. I’ve had a steady stream of roommates: from photographers Lori Bullerdick, Eric Barnes and Mal James to correspondents Jonathan Hunt, Amy Kellogg, and Orlando Salinas.  I slept in a sleeping bag in a corner at first.  I later moved to a bed after I got sick and Amy Kellogg insisted I take the bed and rest up.  She moved to an air mattress in the middle of the room.

Those not in rooms are sprawled out across our common area: what used to be the hotel’s restaurant and bar. There’s a sleeping bag in front of the bar, in two of four corners and across banquette benches. And no one is complaining.

Some of the victims of the Haiti earthquake were frozen in time when the earthquake struck, much like when Italy’s Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, entombing the the people of Pompeii in ash.

Rescue workers from DRC Emergency services, an American company, have been hired to find victims at the 3 Unibank branches in Port-au-Prince. They tell us they found the body of a victim still sitting at a desk. That’s how fast these poorly constructed buildings crumbled.

In times of trouble, many turn to faith. But that’s not necessarily the case with Haitians who practice voodoo.

They’re leaving the loa alone.

We were offered a rare glimpse inside a Haitian Voodoo temple today. I expected the voodoo priest we met to tell us how he is helping people find solace after the deadly earthquake that struck 11 days ago. Instead he told us he’s leaving the spirits alone. He said right now things on earth are much too volatile to try to invoke the spirit world.

Voodoo, along with
Catholicism, are the official state religions of Haiti. More than 8 in 10 Haitians are officially Catholic, but many practice some form of voodoo as well, often secretly.

January 24, 2010

Cutting through red tape is no easier stateside. For the latest on the children from Maison des Enfants de Dieu please see my colleague and good friend Laura Ingle’s work on the web and FNC. She and producer Chris Laible are keeping minute-to-minute tabs while I continue to cover this and other stories in Haiti.

UPDATE: 9:41 am
Producer Chris Laible in New York is keeping posted on the kids’ progress. He tells me they have all made it through Homeland Security checks.But now Health and Humans Services are going through each kid on case by case basis. This could take even longer than the DHS process. Parents are frustrated. Only 12 kids have been released so far.

Jan 24 2010
79 children from Maison des Enfants de Dieu slept with a solid roof over their heads last night for the first time in 11 days. Unfortunately, it was not at their new parents’ homes. It was at the Orlando-Sanford air base. Getting the kids through customs is taking much longer than expected. But we are told the kids are happy and playing as they wait to greet their new moms and dads.

January 23, 2010
79 children total made it to Florida. 29 more to go. They may have to wait until Monday.

5:16pm
UPDATE:
The children have arrived in Florida. For His Glory Adoption Outreach tells us they are now heading to customs to be processed. It could still be a while before they come face to face with their parents, but for these 82 kids the hardest part is over. 30 more to go tomorrow!

UPDATE:
The plane carrying the kids took off a little after 2:30pm. Once on the ground in Florida, the could be detained for several hours while they go through customs. But the first group will arrive today.

UPDATE
2:15pm
We are getting conflicting reports on whether the plane has taken off yet.

12:30pm
The first group of orphans from Maison des Enfants de Dieu is on a plane getting ready to go to the United States. Fox was on the plane when the kids were buckled in. They are expected to arrive in Florida this afternoon. Tune in to FNC for a full report from Laura Ingle!

10:35am
About 80 of the orphans from Maison des Enfants de Dieu are on their way to the Port-au-Prince airport. A C-17 military plane is set to take off at 11:30am, bound for Orlando-Sanford Air Base in Florida where their new mommies and daddies will pick them up and take them home.

8:38am
Moms and Dads are making their way to Florida to pick up their newly adopted Haitian children. They’ve been told to be at the Orlando-Sanford Air Base for the C-17’s 1pm eastern time arrival.
5:47am

The first batch of ophans from Maison des Enfants de Dieu is expected to fly out of Haiti today. 78 of them have been cleared for take off on a military C-17 plane to Orlando-Sanford. The remaining 30 kids are expected to fly to the States on Sunday.Parents are hoping the time to welcome their chidren home has finally come.

January 22, 2010
5:27pm
The sun is setting on the Maison des Enfants de Dieu orphans’ opportunity to fly out tonight. They remain at the orphanage due to continued red tape, and once the sun goes down it will be too dangerous to drive them to the airport at night.
The sun is going down as I write.
However, adoptive parents and the president of For His Glory Adoption Outreach tell me the kids do have a new batch of supplies. Plus, there is now no danger of losing their food to robbers… Thanks to the two armed security guards who are keeping watch on the orphanage.

January 21, 2010
UPDATE: 10:22pm
The House of God’s Children (Maison des Enfants de Dieu) says it is making arrangements to fly 114 children to the United States tomorrow night. The President of For His Glory Adoption Outreach says the orphanage and US government representatives have met today’s deadline to get all the kids’ proper paperwork in for transfer to the US. The president, Kim Harmon, has an adoptive son from the orphanage who will be coming home to her if all goes well.

UPDATE: 3:04pm

Reps for the Maison des Enfants de Dieu are at the US Embassy in Port-au-Prince today trying to process visas for the orphans hoping to head to the states.
I’m told many of the kids themselves were put on a bus and taken there, but were taken back to the orphanage when some babies got sick.
For His Glory Outreach says the organization is hustling to make the embassy’s paperwork requirements today. It hopes the kids’ departure is imminent.

UPDATE: Thursday, January 21, 2010

For His Glory Adoption Outreach sent out the following email to parents and supporters of Maison des Enfants de Dieu:

On January 20, 2010, staff from the Maison des Enfants de Dieu (Children of the House of God) orphanage accompanied by representatives from the U.S. ministry, For His Glory Adoption Outreach (FHG), attempted to obtain humanitarian parole from the U.S. Embassy Port-au-Prince for 133 orphans.  The orphanage staff and FHG representatives were turned away because of confusion about photo requirements for each child.  Additionally, they were informed that humanitarian parole would only apply to approximately 111 of the 132 children from the Maison des Enfants de Dieu orphanage.  These are the orphans who have a “United States qualified referral” dated prior to the earthquake on January 12, 2010.In accordance with specific instructions received today, orphanage staff and FHG representatives will depart for U.S. Embassy Port-au-Prince in the early morning of January 21, 2010, with the 109 children eligible for humanitarian parole.  We anticipate they will receive authority to depart Haiti via air by the early afternoon and will provide further information on the actual schedule as soon as we have it.  Three of the remaining 24 children are being adopted by parents in Argentina and Canada and are waiting for those countries to announce their evacuation procedures.  The remaining 18 children at Maison des Enfants de Dieu orphanage will remain in Haiti since they have not yet been referred for international adoption.  The orphanage receives request each day to accept new orphans, however their ability to accept children orphaned since the earthquake is very limited.  Orphanage staff today reported they were out of diapers, low on food and they remained concerned about security at the orphanage.  Kim Harmon, President of FHG, underscored her call “to all who care about these precious children to pray earnestly for their safety and that the complicated humanitarian parole process can be successfully completed tomorrow. We are thankful to the Lord for where He has brought us and for everyone’s tireless prayer and work to accomplish His will in bringing these children home soon. We pray that the wait will not be much longer and continue to work to that end.”

Wednesday, Jan 20, 2010
6:05pm

I was out of cell range all day. When my Blackberry came back to life, I was inundated with requests for news about the orphanage.

They are still stuck in Haiti. They never went to the Embassy. Adoptive parents Elizabeth and Josh Daby tell Fox correspondent Laura Ingle the embassy told them not to come unless all the kids have their pictures taken. So the orphanage spent the day taking photos. Word is they will try to get to the Embassy again in the morning. I will be working at the airport, and hopefully will see the kids loaded on to an airplane soon.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010
4:37am

For His Glory Outreach , the organization that runs The House of God’s Children, says as many as 700 children from various orphanages could storm the US Embassy in Port-au-Prince today.

If this happens, the orphans will join 800 Americans already in the embassy and another 600 lined up outside… all looking for a way to get to the United States.

On top of this, there are 1000 more people waiting at the airport. The House of God’s Children says American Airlines has offered a plane to fly the children out, once they get the green light to go.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010
After what appeared to be a promising day, there has been no change at The House of God’s Children. The kids are still sleeping on mattresses in tents and in the open air tonight.

For His Glory Outreach is vowing to march all the kids to the American Embassy to get their final visa clearance in person.

They plan to put the kids in groups of 10, starting with the infants.

The lines at the embassy are already long. For His Glory says this process could take weeks. But the Joint Council for International Children’s Services is telling the organization and other orphanages that this last ditch effort is their best hope. It is also respectfully requesting that the adoptive parents stop asking their congress members for help in security, transportation and water for the kids while JCICS works to break down these roadblocks. For His Glory is looking to move the kids to a more secure location as soon as possible.

January 22, 2010
10:35pm
“In the event of a severe earthquake”, photographer Mal James said to me tonight, “put this by the side of your bed.”
Mal then proceeded to put a bottle of water between the bed and the side table.
He told me to roll off the bed and tuck in close to it if rumbling woke me up. He said if the ceiling comes crashing down, I’ll be able to reach the water. He then put my crank flashlight next to the water, and then walked around to the other side of the bed and put a bottle of water on the floor next to a fast asleep Amy Kellogg. Good guy.

5:30am 1/23/10
I woke up this morning to find two power bars too.

1/22/2010

Petit-Goave’s Big Problems

It took two and a half hours to drive just 40 miles from Port-au-Prince to Petit-Goave. The main road there is buckled and cracked wide open in some parts, littered with rocks and boulders in other stretches. The ride was so bumpy, I got nauseous and had to lay down. It quickly became clear why aid is so slow in getting to the bayside town.

Petit-Goave was heavily damaged in the first earthquake and then was the epicenter of the second one that hit Wednesday. However, the town and others like it west of Port-au-Prince have yet to see deliveries of food and water or help in retrieving their more than one thousand dead from beneath piles of cinderblocks and mangled furniture.

There are Red Cross workers on the scene, helping with medical needs. But there were only a handful of them for the town of 170,000. The Deputy Mayor of Petit-Goave says aid agencies are focusing too much on Port-au-Prince and need to start paying attention to hard hit areas in the rest of the country.

The situation in Petit-Goave could get worse before it gets better. Haiti’s rainy season is coming. Locals fear the structures left standing won’t be able to withstand the downpour.And the people too afraid to sleep in them, still don’t have proper tents.