To All Groups Considering Coming to Haiti and/or Matthew 25 Center February 3, 2010
Posted by stefmanderson in Uncategorized.2 comments
From the staff at the Matthew 25 Guesthouse:
Mesi Anpil, thank you, thank you for all your expressions of support, prayers, and thoughts in this hour of greatest need for our sisters and brothers here in Haiti. As you have seen on all the broadcast and in print media, this has been a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions.
We have been overwhelmed and grateful with the desire of our PTPA members to help, many of whom wish to organize teams to come to be of whatever assistance they can . These volunteer requests range from individuals who wish to bring medical teams, work crews, students on spring break, Jesuit novices, those who want to go to their parishes in the countryside, etc., to those who will do anything that is needed at Matthew 25. We have received many inquiries about the best way to get down here: are cars available to rent, is fuel, water, and food available, etc.
Because we are one of the few guest houses still functioning in PaP, (Norwich House, Hospice St. Joseph, and Providence House are down) and have had almost uninterrupted power (with our batteries, inverters, and generator) and Internet access, we have had many requests from journalists, small NGO’s, medical people, etc., for housing, such as it is. Our first priority has been for the medical volunteers that are working in our makeshift field hospital, and for workers from the small NGO’s as they have contacts and resources to get things done. Several of them attend daily meetings of the UN clusters on health, food, housing, etc.
As much as we would like to respond to each individual question and request, we simply do not have the resources to do that at this time. People in the US must research their own travel arrangements. Most are coming through the DR, or hooking up with a mercy flight or Missionary Flights International from Florida. As you know, no commercial airlines from the US are flying into PaP at this time. Some who are scheduled on Delta say they are flying to PaP as of Feb. 9; others scheduled on AA say they start on Feb. 19, but these dates have been pushed back several times.We do understand that Lynx Air is flying from Ft. Lauderdale to Cap Haitian
Information about the condition of Matthew 25 structure
We have just had earthquake engineers do an assessment of our property. Their report indicated moderate damage to our building, and certified it for restricted use only. That means we must not sleep in the building, and no one should be upstairs. The immediate need to make the building safer is to remove the third level porch, and the second level penthouse rooms. This will do away with the possibility of the upper levels collapsing upon the bottom floor or falling over (part of it is leaning) into an area where it could damage vehicles or people walking by. The perimeter walls around the immediate building have also been compromised. A section of wall about 6 feet long has come down.
Therefore, we are all (staff and visitors) sleeping outside in tents in the area directly behind the house. All visitors staying on the grounds must bring tents and some type of camp mattress. We do use the house during the day, and have two working toilets, sinks, and showers. Our in house kitchen is functioning as is the kitchen out back. Theremise our cook is working out there.
We have been averaging about 25 to 30 people sleeping on our grounds. This is of course in addition to the 1500-2000 sleeping and living on the soccer field next door.
All our visitors are doing some kind of disaster relief work, whether working directly in our field hospital or going into areas of PaP supporting already existing clinics or running their own mobile clinics.
The Immediate Future
We will accommodate visitors up to our normal capacity of 31, sleeping under the stars in tents. However, because the situation is so fluid regarding the airlines, fuel availability, and the medical needs of our community, visitors are not able to give us exact dates of their comings and goings, how many nights they will stay, etc. Some groups coming in on corporate jets or mercy flights have told us they are coming on a specific day at a specific time as they had a landing slot, only to be told by the US military (who have taken control of the PaP airport) that they had to give their slot away and they had to be rescheduled several days later. Some have told us they have a ticket from AA on such and such a date, but find out later the first day for flying to PaP has been pushed back AGAIN!
So we are doing the best we can with what we have. We will accept visitors on a first come first serve basis, and remain flexible. Please be understanding if we tell you we cannot accept your group at Matthew 25, or if we cannot help you find a way to PaP. If we can we will, but if we can’t we will tell you so.
Thank you,
Sr. Mary, Patrick, and Vivian
