The last three days have gone by in a haze of activity and we’ve been so busy that I haven’t had time to write any daily blogs. So I am just going to roll everything from these days into one big blog-post.
On Tuesday Kira and myself were collected early by our driver and security guy for the 1.5 hour drive to Port au Prince where we were meeting with people from Teleco and Vietel. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the options for cooperation between Haiti Connect and Teleco in regards to co-locating equipment, backhaul provision etc. Teleco is largely state-owned but Vietel is in the process of buying a majority stake in the company hence we had to discuss the proposed agreement with 4 people from Vietel also.

The drive into Port au Prince was the usual high-speed affair with our driver doing his best to wear out the horn. Traffic here is something else all together and has to be experienced.

At the Teleco offices we were welcomed by their Michel Presume, their CEO, and introduced to a delegation from Vietel. The meeting went fairly smoothly and was accompanied by people emailing files to each other from across the table. Typical geek stuff.
Terms and conditions of a potential partnership were worked out and all that was left was for us to add a few more details to the draft agreement and send it back to Teleco/Vietel for the final OK.
After the meeting was finished we were picked up by our drivers and drove across town to the Digicel HQ where we had to collect the donated cellphones in person as they had refused to give them to our driver. Digicel is donating thousands of pre-paid mobile phones with credit on them to NGO’s, aid and relief workers in what is a great and much needed form of support. The Digicel HQ is a big 10 story building all decked out in red. It’s largely unscathed by the earthquake apart from a few cracks. As with most public buildings here there were a few armed security guards outside the building. It’s funny how quickly one gets used to this. We had to register for visitor passes which required us to leave a form of ID at the reception desk. After a short wait we were collected by a young Haitian guy wearing dark shades. We took the elevator up to the 8th floor and followed him to what was apparently the CEO’s office but which was now filled from floor to ceiling with boxes of mobile phones. We got talking to the Haitian guy and the mystery of the shades became clear. He had a really nasty eye infection that made his eyes very sensitive to direct light. I asked him how long he had it and if he had any medication. It turned out he had the infection for nearly 5 days and was only using some over the counter Optrex eye drops. We promismed to talk to a contact at the airport field hospital to see if we could get some better medication for him.

Anyway, after we signed some forms we received a bunch of very nifty mobile phones with internal solar chargers. A great idea in Haiti as charging phones is a big issue here and you see guys offering roadside phone charging services all over the place. By using solar power Digicel ensures that the phones can always be charged up easily and at no costs. Very smart thinking.
After this it was back to our accommodation to work on the agreement for Teleco/Vietel and to make some more calls trying to get hold of people and arranging meetings.
While we had been driving around I had been scanning for wifi networks and while there were certain clusters of wifi acticity (near large offices and especially NGO and aid providers) there were large swathes of the city with very few networks. Once you left Port au Prince the actual networks were less than half a dozen. I will be plotting all this data to a Google map and hope to put this up on our website shortly after my return to Ireland.

Back at the house we met up with Johnnie and Chris who had spent the day with Chad Snyder of the GLOW ministeries (one of the organisations) that we are working with here. They had had a very informative day and had been shown around some of the schools and camps that GLOW runs. They had also visited the University of Miami field hospital at Port au Prince airport and had been speaking to some of the patients and medical staff. Johnnie happened to get some good pictures of Michelle Obama’s chief of staff as the first lady and the vice-presidents wife were on a “surprise” visit to Haiti.

They were both very impressed and even humbled by some of the face to face contact with the Haitian people. Chad even took them straight into the middle of one of the camps and the living conditions there are just beyond primitive. Saying that, organisations like GLOW are doing a sterling job helping these people. Not only with short term aid but also with long term improvements. In the rush to provide aid after the earthquake in Haiti people sometimes forget that long term developmental aid is as much needed, and possibly more so, that the short term disaster relief. You can give person a bandaid for their grazed knee but it would be much better if you thought them how not to fall down again…..
After another home cooked Haitian meal (man the *do* love their bananas) we walked down to the hotel. That’s one of the advantages of staying where we are. It’s a bit of a drive but as we’re getting the house provided almost for free it’s helps us cut down costs. Houses in or near Port au Prince are going for as much as $4000 per month!  However the location means that after a hectic day in and around Port au Prince we can spend the evening having some downtime. Security is also less of an issue out here than it would be staying in PaP. We’ve received some comments that some of the medical staff at the hospital are staying in tents and why are we not camping out also? Well we’re not because we don’t have to. Our volunteers work hard and a bit of comfort (and belief me it is still very primitive) in the evening increases the productivity during the day. Also there are UN workers staying on a cruise ship costing over $100k per day so we’re certainly not being extravagant.

On Wednesday Johnnie, Chris and myself went to the University of Miami field hospital to meet up with their IT people. Chris had discovered the previous day that the Internet access being used by them at the moment was far from ideal and very expensive. Their were running email and web access as well as telemedicine applications so it was all very important to the functioning of the hospital. One of their guys had mentioned that their was a source of backhaul available at the UN base less than a mile away but that they had no means to connect to this.
This is just the kind of thing that we’re in Haiti for, we offered to put in a point-2-point link for them using some of our Aruba Networks equipment. This was great news for them and after having a look at their setup and getting grid coordinates for their site they took us across to the UN base were we were introduced to the guys in charge of the UN communications cluster. After a short discussion on what the hospital needed, what the UN could offer and how we wanted the connect the two it was outside to the nearest mast for a quick site survey. At 0.8 km in distance and perfect line of sight this will hopefully be one of the easier links that we put in.
While at the hospital we also took some time to chat to some of the medical staff who we had met on our flight over here. The huge amount of work that these people put in combined with their great spirit and positive attitude should serve as an example for many others. The conditions at the hospital are primitive to say the least. Everything is in tents to begin with. Procedures are carried out in tents, wards are in tents and even the mortuary is in a tent. Yes, that’s right, the *mortuary*. In case that people forgot, there are still people dying here on a daily basis. Some of injuries sustained in the quake, some from disease and I would guess some also die from malnutrition. Aids is also a huge problem here.
As I was sitting outside talking to some of the medical staff bodies were being carried out on stretchers covered by a sheet. The one that got to me most was the shape of childs body outlined under a sheet. A child no older than one of my own.
Sometimes I look at the suffering here and I am close to tears, there is just so much of it. Most of the time I just wish I could do more.

The rest of the afternoon was filled with a frantic search for petrol as a shortage had been announced and while some petrol stations were not selling any the ones that were had huge lines of traffic waiting to buy some. We eventually pulled in at a petrol station near our house where a crowd of about 100 people in all kinds of vehicles had gathered. Our driver tried to jump the qeue by waiving his police ID card however the locals did not take nicely to this and the scene in front of us went from people shouting to people shoving to our security guys drawing their firearms in the space of a minute. None of the locals seemed to be fazed by the display of firearms and I was just waiting for it to spark of big-time. Luckily someone managed to calm everyone down enough for our guys to jump in the vehicles and drive out of there (rather quickly).
It was one of the more “interesting” moments of this trip so far. We still hadn’t managed to get any petrol…

On Thursday Chris stayed at the house to work on link plannning while Kira, Johnnie and myself with into PaP for some meetings. We first located the local radioshack for a quick round of supplies. After that it was of to Pettionville for a meeting with Sam from Foundation Espoir. The Foundation runs a large number of schools, hospitals, camps and even runs a number of reconstruction projects. I had been in regular contact with Hans Tippenhauer their “main man” for some time but as he was out of the country we were meeting up with Sam. The point of the discussion was to work out a list of the locations of their schools and other facilities so that we can see which ones we could connect and in what order. We obviously needed the location so that Chris can do his magic and by planning the links.
The meeting went very well and I am impressed by the Foundations work. Like GLOW they are trying to improve Haiti by improving the people. Education is very high on their agenda. After this meeting we took a quick scoot down to the presidential palace for a obligatory photo opportunity. Next we met up with Renee, a native Haitian we prior to the quake ran an IT company. However the quake flattened his business premises so he has not been able to operate since. He has however offered his skills and contact to help Haiti Connect with our work. Renee also introduced us to the owner of one of Haiti’s largest radio station. This contact can prove really useful as they own a number of masts around the country, these masts would be ideal locations for our equipment. After that it was of to source some more petrol. We eventually bought some of a street vendor forn $19 per gallon (4 times the normal price) and the fuel was supplied in large plastic bottles. Anyway we made it back to the house safely and after a meal of (amongst other things) more bananas it was time for an early night.