7 days later

Alexis and are grateful for all your emails over the last week. We haven't responded to many but are grateful for receiving them. Alexis and I have been really busy and have felt a huge urgency to our work. When I'm out on the street so many people are hungry and thirsty. There is still a small amount of food for sale but most people don't have any money to buy food or water. Some of the large camps have water tanks that have been set up by the Red Cross and others. Alexis is busy working for IOM today helping them build a database of IDP camp locations. Everybody else is busy, some with food distributions other's trying to coordinate medical supplies and food shipments and fuel from the Dominican Republic.
Something to remember when sending money is that this is going take Haitians years to rebuild so yes there is an urgent urgent need on the ground right now for basic survival items but in a few months people will need work, help rebuilding, and stronger local agriculture to meet their food needs...
I've visited a ton of IDP camps and a good number of them have had no contact with NGOs but have already formed committees and have organized leadership to control security, build temporary shelters, designate bathroom areas... Some of the these camps are really impressive. It's cool to see this, it's something to remember that even though we're doing emergency relief we also need to be doing development.