February 8 - 9, 2010

The Saints won their first Superbowl against the Colts, 31-17, a superb game.... I was leaving on the morning of the 8^th on a flight from Geneva to Madrid, then Madrid to Santo Domingo on that same day.

Once in the Dominican Republic, my luggage was nowhere to be found. After filling forms at the lost luggage counter, I was driven to a hotel where a meeting was set up for the next day at Santo Domingo’s MSF headquarters (HQ) for a briefing about our trip to Haiti. MSF members who were back from the front lines conducted the meeting. Standard safety measures were learned and a dozen of volunteers headed towards Santo Domingo’s airfield for a flight to Port-au-Prince where we would be dispatched to our respective final destinations.

I traveled with the MSF logs (logisticians) and administrators. The tension amongst the group was more and more palpable as we were waiting for our flight. The airfield is a transit base usually used by journalists and active NGOs in Haiti.

After a 2-hour wait filled with the same feeling as if we were going to war, we finally boarded our one-hour flight to Port-au-Prince.