Monday, January 18, 2010: JFK to SDQ

Monday, January 18, 2010
I met Kimball upon her arrival from Burlington. [Kimball Butler is the Executive Director of the Vermont Haiti Project, and a Labor & Delivery nurse at Fletcher Allen Medical Center in Burlington. She was integral in launching the nurses union’s Vermont Relief Teams.] We had breakfast in the JetBlue terminal, caught up and exchanged some new bits of information. We attempted to use her new iPhone, which was initially a cumbersome little contraption, but proved eminently useful during the trip.
I was concerned the baseball caps I brought along would not adequately protect my head from the sun—and remembering my post-Haiti sun-related illness of July 2009—sacrificed $40 to buy a safari-style hat from Ex Officio.
We boarded our plane, bound for Santo Domingo, and discovered we had been moved to the very last row of seats—which meant our seats would not recline. It was no prize. Fate would step in and pacify us a bit by gifting us with a seat-mate that was nothing less than a hyperactive ball of fire from the American Refugee Committee: Shannon Mulholland, who in her spare time imports coffee from Africa. Although I nodded off a few times due to the exhaustion and stress of the previous days, Shannon gave us a thorough crash-course in global disaster response; and especially, the cluster process. Little did we know that Shannon would become a respected friend and invaluable resource on the ground in Haiti.
Upon our arrival in Santo Domingo, we were slightly delayed in deplaning due to the departure of Rene Préval by private plane. A military honor guard, complete with a small brass band flanked the red carpet. It was quite emotional, to be honest. And, we were rewarded in the terminal with a glass of Dominican rum on ice—not so much of a prize when one is used to 5-star Barbancourt!
The DR waived the customary ten dollar entrance fee for tourists since we were in transit to Haiti. They were mostly interested in offering this waiver to medical personnel, so Kimball and I devised that I was really a cardio-thoracic surgeon who had forgotten his license. This became a running joke. Thankfully I was never called to that service!
After meeting Elizabeth [Borger], who flew in from Florida, we made our way (via taxi—$30US) into the colonial section of Santo Domingo to locate an evening’s lodging. After several unsuccessful inquiries, we decided on the Mercure, which was a little more than we had hoped to spend, but was recommended by Shannon Mulholland as the quasi-official stop-over for many NGOs from around the world who were transiting into into Haiti. It turned out to be just that, and we made many useful connections there.
Kimball, Elizabeth and I met up with Shannon for dinner in the hotel’s half-fresco restaurant. I ordered one of my favorite dishes, Conch-kreyol. Although it was a disappointment (not tender!), it was nice to be back on the island eating a kreyol dish!
After dinner, I was able to get on the hotel’s one computer to check e-mail and update my Facebook status. Veniel had posted pictures of the recovery of victims at Wall’s, and I nearly passed out while viewing them. It was overwhelming to see a place that had been a “home away from home” for so many years reduced to rubble; and, to be confronted face-to-face with the sad reality of the lives that had been lost there. It seems ironic that those pictures would make me faint, when I never lost my composure in the midst of the massive injuries I came face-to-face with in the ensuing weeks.