Well I have been home now since Tuesday and was back at work on Wednesday - I have spoken to a church group and my son's year 6 at school. I have uploaded all my pictures to flickr the link is http://flickr.com/photos/16178584@N02/

Thanks for your interest in my trip - Chris

I am now in Puerto Plata airport checked-in and not looking forward to the snow and cold - but I AM looking forward to hot water and a cup of tea ...............
bye for now

This is hospital with patients, there is one chap in the operating room and 5 ladies in the other room, they are all victims of the earthquake from Port au Prince and will require long term care.

I leave Haiti tomorrow as I need to go to the Dominican Republic on one bus, mayvbe spend the night in a dubious hotel in Santiago then take another bus to Puerto Plata and the get to the airport for the flight home - so I am not sure when I wi next have internet access so we will see !

These are some of the supplies in the working part of the hospital - the locked cupboards contain the medicines

This is work roaring ahead on the next ward, the Architect thinks it will be finished in 2 weeks !!

the bottom picture is the road further towards Cap Hatian and the other one is transport in Cap Haitian...
When we got back this afternoon Carwyn had 2 patients in the hospital with another 2 on the way and possibly more to follow, I will get some pictures of the hospital in action tomorrow, bye for now...

the bottom 2 pictures are the Cathedral and then the Palace in Port au Prince, these pictures ere taken at dawn this morning as we left to return to Cap Haitian. The top picture is a market on the main road between Port au Prince and Cap Hatian - this is the M1 of Haiti !!

these are some views from yesterday, bottom loaded and ready to go then a couple of views on the way.

Off to Port an Prince again

Mrs C is posting this for me as I am doing another 48 hour round trip to Port au Prince and will not be near a computer for a while.

Earlier in the blog I mentioned the five hours we have been travelling, but in fact the whole journey lasted 9 hours!!! In the UK, you would stop off for services and even a snooze, but here the roads are just one bump after another with no break. If you look at the pictures, you can see that 9 hours in that lorry was not very comfortable. At 9pm today your time we had been going for six hours, with another three to go! At least this time we have two matresses in the back to bounce on; let's hope we don't bounce out of the back, as you can see there is not much to stop us!

Morgan, our Haitian driver, two mechanics and I have been let loose on our own to drive down to Port au Prince. We will stay overnight and come back tomorrow. I have videoed some of the journey so I will be able to share that with you when I return. We will deliver some aid and bring back two medics who will work with us at the hospital and clinic.

Carwyn has been getting good publicity for the hospital, so Mrs C tells me. On Tuesday (2/2/2010) the Sun newspaper had a picture of Carwyn holding a boy. Whilst the information printed in paper with is was mostly wrong, Mrs C tells me it was a good picture. If you remember, a bit further back in the blog I have got a picture of the point where the picture was taken. My chin is in the background apparently, as I have seen it, but Mrs C says the picture on the internet shows my face! Fame at last!!

We were also featured on London Tonight on Wednesday evening (o3/02/2010), with Carwyn doing a video diary of a typical day. It showed the ambulance being loaded at one stage, with me doing a bit of work! Again, I am relying on Mrs C for this information, as I have not seen it. Mrs C will try and post the links at the end of this to see if they can be picked up by viewers; maybe I will be able to get them too.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2834822/British-aid-angels-couple-drive-ambulance-in-Haiti.html

12:41 to 16:21 http://www.itv.com/london/fullprogramme/
and abbreviated at http://www.itv.com/london/haiti-video-diary15200/

Will catch up on my return - thanks for your support!

Today I have been doing odds and ends, we understood that we were going to get some patients from another hospital in the area to relieve the pressure there, so this morning Morgan and I cleaned and set up 2 of our wards ready to receive them but at the moment 5pm they haven't arrived (it is now later please see post above) – communication here is good at the best of times so we shall see. This morning I was going into Cap to get the base for our 6 foot satellite dish but just as we got into town we were needed for and emergency transfer to hospital to back to the clinic and Jakelin took them in. Later in the day I cleaned out the ambulance and washed it as it has had a hard life recently so it looks much better now. Morgan has been out and about this afternoon trying to buy some more mattresses and sheets in preparation for more patients in the future and also more food to take on our next run to Port au Prince - he bought plenty of mattresses...

here are the 2 wards ready for the children that were due to arrive today - something happened and they didn't turn up today - maybe tomorrow.

the bottom picture is a tent camp that was being filmed by ITN as we passed, the middle one is Carwyn being photographed for the Sun then they came over to the lorry I was on and took more there - the other picture shows our nice big satellite dish - we now have internet on site -HURRAH !!!!

more pictures of Port au Prince

some pictures from Port au Prince - the bottom one is where we stayed the night, one of the translators - Donny has an uncle living in Port au Prince - he was building a new house on the outskirts of the city but thy have had to move in as their house in the city was destroyed by the earthquake.

Today has been interesting, Morgan was out shopping for more aid to take down to Port au prince, and I was out trying to get some internet access - shopping in Haiti takes quite some time, we have to go to one chap for some parts for the satellite dish and then off the to other side of town, Gideon then negotiated for the best part of on hour and we ended uo with a 6 foot dish, mountings, cable and router for $1500 makes broadband at home seem cheap and easy. tomorrow someone will be coming to set it up - but in the middle of all of this we had a call to take the ambulance to the airport to collect casualties flown over by helicopter from PaP, 6 arrived and eventually taken off to hospitals in the area. In the distance of this picture you can see the US helicopter.

Top is sunset o the way - the other are us delivering aid at Port au Prince.

More views on route - in the bottom one you can see the road we had just traveled up, the top one is the city of Gonaives - this is still recovering from hurricane's a few years ago.

here we are ready for the off - and then on the way - there is plenty of air in 3rd class !