Tracking Ed Monroe as he travels to Haiti and other exotic(?) places

Sunday, January 29, 2006

Ed's in the pool in Haiti 2005

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Almost ready

It figures that when you think you have it all together and ready to go that something should happen. Today, it is the 3 ½ year old water heater. It is leaking all over the floor in the basement and there is no hot water. Maybe it is preparing us for the showers in Haiti with cold water. Plumber will be out tomorrow to try to replace. I guess we should be grateful that is the only problem, so far. Emails are flying back and forth with last minute details, suggestions and announcements. We did get confirmation that our large drug order from Europe that was stuck in customs at Port-A-Prince was released and the medications are at the clinic. We’ll lift a cold rum punch drink to that.

Also the 4 French nationals, including a priest and a nun, have been rescued from their kidnapers in Port-A-Prince. The latest bit of news is that the jailed priest, Jean Juste, was also released from prison and taken to Miami for medical treatment of his leukemia. These events may make the situation in Port-A-Prince a little less volatile. We will be in Port-A-Prince for a very short trip from one end of the airport to the other in order to transfer from American Airlines to Tortug Air for the trip over the mountains. Tortug Air is much safer than driving on the road and much faster. Most things are packed and checked. I will run a few errands tomorrow and just wait for 11 PM. We’ll have a nice dinner at our favorite restaurant, The Fish House, about 8:30 PM and relax till time to get on the bus. The weather here calls for some snow. We usually leave in a blizzard. With the strange weather that we are having this year, who can predict what will happen. This is likely the last entry till late Tuesday night or sometime Wednesday. Please know you are in my thoughts and prayers.

Monday, January 23, 2006

Packing party success

Yesterday, most of the team was able to show up for the packing party. A big thank you to Interim Healthcare and Randy Lawson for allowing us to use his conference room. With the new American Airlines policy of 50 lbs per bag, we were forced to leave behind some of our cargo, especially clothes, soaps, lotions, and toys for the Haitians. I'm not sure that the weighing crew was as careful as they could be as all 4 of our bags were almost 10 lbs light. We adjusted them at home. We will have to carry the blood glucose strips in our personal luggage as we failed to take them to the packing party. It was nice to meet the new team members and visit with the old timers. There remains some concern about the political situation in Haiti and also for personal safety confessor. That will be an issue that will be on our minds for the next 24 days. We are looking forward to next Monday night when we will finally get on the road.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Picture from 2005 trip

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Haiti Preparation

Today was spent getting pharmacy information organized for the trip. I hope that I have ordered all of the medications that we were shorted on the incoming orders. I've prepared some provider tools to assist the doctors and nurses at patient side. I've worked on the packing party information and times so that is done till Sunday. I'm just about ready to go.

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Haiti trip soon

I am sitting here trying to figure out how to get news of our Haiti trip into a place that is accessible to a reader. I hope this will work