The trip from Canada to Haiti started, for me, at about 2:30am in the morning of November 16th. Dave picked me up a little before 3:00am, and we headed to Belleville for Emily and Scott. The drive to Montreal took several hours, most of it in darkness... but we eventually reached "Pierre Trudeau" airport without incident.

We checked our luggage, passed through several security cordons, and settled in to wait for our flight (AC950).
Once our plane arrived, we had only a short wait before boarding and taking off. I was lucky enough to have a window seat just forward of the wing. I watched the move "Salt" during the first two hours of the flight, as there was nothing to see out the window... just featureless clouds. Once we reached the Caribbean, the cloud cover cleared up enough for me to actually see the sea and islands!
I am unsure of the above island, but according to our flight-path it must be one of the Turks and Caicos islands. The next photo shows the same island as we passed over it.

Less than an hour after passing over the above island (as well as circling a bit over Hispaniola Island), we came in for an exciting landing at "Toussaint Louverture" Airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Much of the landing was over water, with touchdown on a rather short and rough landing strip. We taxied to the main arrivals terminal (which is closed, due to extensive earthquake damage) and offloaded.

We loaded into a bus and were transported to an undamaged hanger for customs and immigration processing. Air Canada had given us the wrong customs forms during the flight, which caused a bit of confusion and delay, but eventually we made it through to pick up our luggage. The heat was was not too bad, with temperatures around 30C, but there was an unpleasant smell of unwashed bodies and garbage. After a 30 minute delay, our luggage arrived and we left the temporary terminal to find our ride to the Mission Possible compound.

We made our way through several gates and past groups of baggage handlers that really, really wanted to help us carry our luggage. As I was the only one with two checked bags (I carried our food), and I had dealt with these tactics on trips to Russia, we had no problems with them. Outside, in the sun, the heat and smells were magnified. We walked along a fence towards the main gate, and tried to take it all in.

We made it, to Haiti!!

The odd person, perhaps curious, perhaps begging, stood on the far side of the fence, with heavy but slow traffic just beyond. On our side of the fence, we had a wide road to follow, with small groups of people wandering about.

Once we made it to the main gate (the gate we were warned not to pass without our escort) we waited. A large number of people were waiting as well, most just outside the gate, as were a couple of stern looking UN troops. Lindsay and Pastor Herve were there, but we did not recognize them until Jackson the one-armed baggage handler (seriously) found us. We had been told to look for him, and were very happy to see him.

We loaded into the back of a covered/caged-in truck, and set off to pick up Rod (a member of the construction team) at Eko Depot... a Home Depot clone. He had been left behind to finalize purchase of some construction supplies. We picked him up, and (braving the traffic/noise/smells/heat/dust/pollution of Port-au-Prince) we made our way north to Lanzac and the Mission Possible compound.

The ninety minute ride was eye-opening, as we drove at break-neck speeds along the highway (National Road 1).
I took a considerable amount of video and ate an incredible amount of dust and diesel fumes on the drive, but I also managed to snap a couple photographs that turned out.

Eventually, we made it to the Mission Possible compound in Lanzac, Haiti. We arrived well after dark and needed to help the registration team organize for the next day, so I did not take any more photos. We settled into our dorm, already filled with the construction team, joined the group for a meal, then set to work organizing birth certificates and name tags for M.P.C.A, the largest school run by Mission Possible.


The work was difficult and tedious, partially because of the French names and partially because the bad photocopies of handwritten birth certificates made matching them very difficult. We worked at this until 11:00pm, at which point we went to bed (it having been a LONG day since 2:30am, with all the traffic and us needing to get used to the heat and humidity). The rest of the team finished around midnight.

More about the compound, our extended team, and the schools to come!