Day 3...

Still no water but we were able to help with structural assessment and food distribution. We joined up with Food for the Hungry and World Concern. We met downtown to join for a FH distribution with World Concern and we were able to distribute 15 Sawyer water filters. From there we met up with a truck from the DR that went to the middle of the slums in very hilly terrain. On the way we passed by a group of a few families under a tarp about 150m away up the hill beyond several houses. One of the men stood up waving his arms and yelling “HELP!”…we had to press on. The destination was a church where several hundred people had gathered. We brought out 15 water filters and explained their use, maintenance and limitations. They were all very calm, attentive and appreciative. The truck with the food arrived but was unable to climb the final hill. We took the pickup and shuttled the food the 80m up the hill to the church. We transferred the food to the truck, the truck would go up the hill and then offload to the church where it was stored in the back. There were already a lot of people and this was a very visual display of food so more and more people starting gathering and becoming increasingly anxious. People were yelling and grabbing and it was getting worse. We hurried to finish before it became violent. One of the DR workers began tossing out some supplies into the crowd but it was only the strong and violent that would get anything. This disabled the weak and encouraged people to become more violent. Quickly we closed the truck with a little remaining in the truck and drove it a little distance away. Once the food was in the church it calmed down a lot and we moved on.
The truck needed to continue to another location and we needed to move the remaining supplies into the back of the pickup. We drove to a location in the city were not many people were so we could discretely move the remaining supplies. While we were moving it a small group gathered and asked if there was going to be a distribution. We were quiet as long as we could be and finally explained that it was for another location. The people became angry and began quickly grabbing things from the truck, one here, one there but it was quickly getting out of control. We let people take a few cases of water located about 8ft from the truck to distract them from the truck. We all jumped on. At first I fell off but then was pulled back on and we all pounded on the truck, “GO!” we yelled and barreled away before the crowd got any bigger. We arrived at the FH house tired and dirty. I enjoyed sharing the day with the lead FH worker named Lionel from Guatemala. Productive day but still no systems for us to install (the other eMi team has 5 systems they are siting and installing in Leogane) and we are not sure what tomorrow holds for our schedule but tomorrow is quickly arriving and we will just wait and see.