The UN

Yesterday, Luke and I went to the United Nations logistics base near the airport. We were supposed to be attending a meeting between NGOs to coordinate efforts and hopefully pick up resources for Esperanza. Right now we have reached the capacity of food packs we are able to give out and some organizations at the UN have the necessary supplies. Unfortunately, the meeting was cancelled. We spent our time walking around the UN instead. All over the base were hundreds of people not really doing anything. There were troops representing countries from the US, Brazil, Israel, Canada, and others. We also saw a storehouse full of clean water, I'm not sure why that was being stored rather than handed out. The sights at the UN summed up our view of the disaster response so far, including our end, there's so much being done, but if there were more organization it could go much further.

Just outside the airport and UN is the largest tent city I have seen so far. I won't try to guess at how many were living there because it would be just that, a guess. The night before was the most substantial rain since the earthquake, so we're told, and it did quite a toll. Most of the tents we saw had no floor, so people were forced to sleep in inches of mud. A medical tent that had been set up in the tent city is now a foot in water. At a gas station in the city we saw three huge hummers carrying US troops and they were filled top to bottom with tents. So while it's great that America is sending its soldiers and donating these tents why did it take a large rain before they were handed out?

Today we went back to the UN to try and go to a different meeting, this time however we sat in traffic a couple miles from the base for an hour until we eventually gave up. There's NGO meetings nearly everyday so I hope we'll make one eventually. For now, we learn a lesson in patience.