Update: How you can help Haiti relief efforts

by Melanie Nayer on

Over the past 24 hours, we’ve received more information from airlines, agencies and charities helping to provide relief following the 7.0 earthquake that rocked Haiti.

While people around the world wait for word from loved ones, the death toll continues to increase – latest reports have heard estimates of up to 50,000 dead. Airlines, agencies and government officials are busy bringing relief workers into Haiti to help out, but there are ways you can help out.

Here’s an updated list (as of Jan. 14) of ways you can lend support to Haiti during its time of crisis.

Donate your money. There are a host of charities on the ground in Haiti and taking your donations. We’ve highlighted a few of them:

  • Oxfam has hundreds of people in Haiti helping with relief efforts. You can donate on the American or UK site, depending on where you’re located.
  • AmeriCares has pledged $5 million to Haitian quake relief, and is soliciting donations to a general emergency disaster relief fund to help it accomplish that.
  • CARE is sending relief workers into the city of Port-au-Prince and needs funds to support its efforts. Suggested donations range from $50 to $1,000, but you can name your own amount if you prefer.
  • MSNBC.com has a great list of charitable organizations that are present in Haiti and in need of contributions.

Text. You can donate $10 to the American Red Cross earthquake relief fund for Haiti by texting the word “Haiti” to 90999

Sing. We just got word that For Darfur, Inc., the teen-run non-profit organization and contributor to Doctors Without Borders, has announced a partnership with major recording artists to promote a “CONCERT FOR HAITI” in Miami. The promoter’s proceeds, including $1 of every ticket sale, will go to Doctor’s Without Borders to aid in the humanitarian efforts for families displaced by the earthquake that recently struck Haiti.

Donate your miles.

  • Delta Air Lines is allowing customers to donate SkyMiles to Red Cross to through SkyWish.
  • United Airlines offers points donations through the Red Cross via its Mileage Plus Charity Miles program.
  • American Airlines has set up a donation page and is giving away 250 bonus miles for a minimum $50 donation, or 500 bonus miles for a donation of $100 or more to the American Red Cross
  • JetBlue has established a donation page on its website allowing travelers to donate to the American Red Cross.


Go to Haiti: Our friends over at the Matador network are working on organizing a volunteer trip to Haiti to help with rebuilding efforts.

If you’re waiting on word from friends and family members, the U.S. State Department Operations Center said Americans seeking information about family members in Haiti should call 1-888-407-4747.

Not-so Dangerous Destinations

by Katie Hammel on

“You’re going where?!” my father asked when I told him of my plans to go to Colombia. The Colombia he knows of, the one from the 1980’s, is filled with cocaine, street violence, and Pablo Escobar’s thugs. The country’s days as a dangerous destination are gone, but its stigma still remains.

Colombia isn’t the only now-safe country still considered by the masses to be too dangerous to visit. Forbes Traveler has put together a list of other destinations that aren’t as dangerous as you might assume.

Along with Colombia, the list includes places many experienced travelers wouldn’t think twice about visiting – Bangladesh, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Laos, Sri Lanka, and Ethiopia are all included – plus a few a little farther off the beaten path, like Haiti and Tajikistan. The list also includes two spots that become a lot more dangerous if you travel there illegally: Cuba and North Korea.

There’s no such thing as a completely safe destination, but still most of these spots have earned their reputations. At one point, they were lands of famine, war, and strife. Now they’ve become safer, though in some (like Haiti and certain parts of Colombia, for example) problems continue and there are still areas you should not venture.

If you plan on visiting one of these “not-so-dangerous places”, do your research and be sure you know what you are getting into. The bad reputation in some of these places can mean lower travel costs and few tourists, but there may still be an element of risk.

Life Nomadic: The Art of Getting Mugged

by Tynan on

After a safe return from Haiti, universally advertised as too dangerous to visit, my opinion on danger was stronger than ever. Everyone blows danger way out of proportion, and if you walk around confidently without being flashy, no one is going to rob you.

Here in Santo Domingo I eat at the same restaurant, Ananda, every night. It’s an amazing vegetarian restaurant that bears a startling resemblance to my favorite restaurant in Austin, Texas (Casa de Luz). It’s an eleven minute walk away through the main roads, or a ten minute walk with a shortcut.

The shortcut goes through the scariest little alley I’ve ever seen. The buildings on it are crumbling, it’s covered with trash, there are no streetlights, and just to make it a little more spooky, one side of it borders an overcrowded cemetery. Worse, the alley is a series of three sharp angles that make it hidden from nearby streets.

I liked walking through the alley. It made me feel tough, and I was proud to not have the same irrational fears that everyone else seems to have.

As it turned out, those fears weren’t quite so irrational. After the eight hour bus ride from Haiti I was starving, so I started walking towards the restaurant. At this point I’d gone through the alley so much that I didn’t even think about it. Two twenty-something-year-olds were walking towards me. I moved a bit to the right to pass them, but one went to one side of me and the other went on the other side.”Hola,” I said cheerfully.

Just as it started to register in my brain that something might be fishy about them surrounding me, they were on me. Their hands grabbed my shirt, they pushed me back against a wall, and started pulling the rings off of my fingers.

My logical mind kicked in. If I just spoke to them in Spanish they’d see that I’m not a typical gringo tourist.

“Espera! Que paso?”

They couldn’t have cared less, of course. They kept tugging at my rings and sliding their hands into my pockets. I didn’t have my wallet on me, but I did have a wad of cash. They took my passport, both rings, and the keys to my hotel. I glanced down at my expensive GPS watch which one of them was trying to take off, and realized that the longer I stood there, the more stuff they were going to take.

Cash and watch still attached, I started to run away. I figured they’d chase me, but as I looked back I saw them running the other way.

I felt calm during the actual incident, but afterwards I was rattled. I walked around the block a couple times, trying to process what had just happened. I didn’t care so much about what had been taken, but my worldview had just been shattered. I was naively optimistic enough to think that no one would mess with me because I was a nice friendly person who cared about the cultures I was visiting. It hadn’t occurred to me that wannabe thugs with probable drug habits don’t really care about any of that.

When I got home I went on the internet, determined to learn how to fight. I would buy a knife every time I landed, and learn knife fighting. If someone tried to rob me again, they would get stabbed.

Luckily, my first search yielded this site, which describes exactly why my plan was a terrible idea that might end up with me getting killed. Every post on the site links to twenty others, which meant that the following couple hours of my life were dedicated to learning everything I could about personal defense.

Here are the important things I learned, with links to No Nonsense Self Defense, in terms of avoiding getting mugged while traveling:

  • Low level criminals, like muggers, are not logical. Trying to use logic to dissuade them will never work.
  • Criminals are professionally violent. Training to fight them without the same real world experience they have, will lead to you getting hurt.
  • Mugging is a low level crime, which means that it is mostly perpetrated by younger people (18-25) with drug problems.
  • Crimes happen in “fringe areas“, places between isolated areas and highly populated areas. Isolated areas don’t have enough victims, heavily populated areas have too many witnesses.
  • To escape a bad situation, make sure you run towards a heavily populated area. Running “away” is likely to lead you into a less populated area.
  • Criminals are selfish and are obsessed with their status. Challenging them (“You wouldn’t shoot me”), is a good way to make them violent.

What I realized, more than anything, was that I was asking for it. Sure, no one ever has the right to rob me, but I entered an area that I knew was dangerous, and I did it habitually. My original idea that the world is safer than people say is probably correct, as long as I do my part to avoid danger.

Life Nomadic: What Couchsurfing in Haiti is Like

by Tynan on

I’d never been to Haiti and I’d never tried couchsurfing, but since Haiti was just a $75 bus ride away ($67 if you have the foresight to pay in Pesos), I felt like I had no choice but to try it.

A search for couches in Port Au Prince yielded a few pages of results, with Natacha and Charlene showing up at the top. The site said that they both replied to almost all of the requests, and each offered a couch for up to two weeks. I e-mailed Charlene first because she has a son and I love kids.

Charlene wrote back the same day and said to let her know what dates I wanted to come. I replied back with a weekend and she said she’d be expecting me. It was so easy and painless that I wondered if it would actually work.

I had lingering worries in the back of my mind. Haiti was supposed to be a pretty dangerous place, so if she changed her mind at the last minute, I might be stranded. Besides, we all know that everyone on the internet is a demented weirdo (except for me). How much weirder do you have to be to invite strangers into your home for weeks at a time?

After a long scenic bus ride, I arrived in Haiti. I took a taxi through the unlit streets and arrived in front of a night club, where Charlene’s sister was waiting for me.

“Charlene is at Toastmasters. Come with me.”

I followed her down a narrow concrete alley (everything is concrete in Haiti), through a nondescript doorway, up a winding set of railing-less stairs, and into a small kitchen. As soon as I got in, Olivier, Charlene’s son, ran up to me, jumped, and latched on with a giant hug. Quite a welcome, I thought.

The power was out, as it often is in Haiti, so we sat and talked by the light of a single candle.

An hour later, I learned that it doesn’t much matter who you couchsurf with in Haiti. All of the surfers are best friends, and by signing up with one of them you put yourself at the mercy of a mob of hospitable Haitians determined to show you everything in Haiti. I ate home cooked food in four different houses, never once having to go to a restaurant.

Natacha picked me up to bring me to a club. I was terrified, not of the danger of Haiti, which I’d already begun to suspect was overhyped, but that I might have to dance. I am a terrible dancer.

We wove through the dark streets of Port Au Prince and finally arrived in front of what appeared to be a walled off apartment building. The only indication that it might be something more was a kerosene lamp sitting in the middle of the walkway. We descended into the backyard which held five or six large tables of people, a group of traditional Haitian drummers, and the flicker of kerosene lamps which served equally as functional light and ambiance.

Our table was already stocked with Natacha’s friends, some couchsurfers and some not, whose origins ranged from Haiti to Ghana to Belgium. French was the common language, but enough people spoke English that I was still able to be part of the conversation. When things got too French I would zone out and watch the drummers and the dancers that they attracted.

The next two days flew by. By the time I woke every day Charlene had already made breakfast and had coordinated with Natacha to plan my schedule. In just two days I visited an orphanage in the ghetto which Natacha takes care of, a Montessori school that she started, the landmarks downtown, a rehearsal for the Port Au Prince dance company, and a jazz concert. I quickly realized that I would have had a much different and less authentic experience if I hadn’t couchsurfed.

I went into Haiti knowing no one and left feeling like I have a whole social circle there. They prodded me to stay longer and asked when I would come back.

I used to see couchsurfing as a cheapskate’s alternative to a hotel, but now I realize that it’s a lot more. Couchsurfing offers the unique opportunity to have an instant group of friends in a new place and to really get to see it through the eyes of a local. I like to rent apartments wherever I go, but from now on I’m going to consider couchsurfing for the first few days to make some friends and learn about the city from someone who actually lives there.

To create a profile on Couchsurfing, check out www.couchsurfing.com

Side note: For anyone wanting a good charity to donate to, consider Natacha’s orphanage. I’m always leery of how much of the donated money actually gets to people who need it, and I can tell you that there is no overhead here. When they’re short for the month, Natacha takes money out of her own paycheck to make sure that the kids eat. If this is something you’re interested in, e-mail me at tynan.gadling at weblogsinc dot com and I will put you in touch with her.

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Cockpit Chronicles: Haiti after Hanna

by Kent Wien on

Cockpit Chronicles takes you along on some of Kent’s trips as an international co-pilot on the Boeing 757 and 767 based in Boston.

New on the schedule for us this month is a two-day trip to Miami. The first day is rather easy with just one leg from Boston to Miami. The second day involves a trip to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, then back to Miami and up to Boston.

We’re required to sign in for our trip in the pilot operations room at least one hour before departure time. That give us enough time to check the weather, pull up paperwork and check our mailbox. Even though we ‘sign in’ an hour before, we don’t get paid until we’re pushing back from the gate.

Our pilot operations is a place where you’ll regularly run into captains and co-pilots who you may have flown with on a different airplane and hadn’t seen in years. I ran into my longtime friend Russ on this morning’s trip. Russ and I worked in a hobby shop together in Seattle when we were both in high school, so it’s always nice to visit with him. He’s currently an MD-80 first officer (co-pilot).
While walking to the gate later, I saw Russ checking over his Super 80 at the gate with the sun coming up behind our airplane. I just had to take a moment to capture this shot.

A few minutes later I was inspecting the tires of the 757 we would be flying to Miami. Russ’s flight began to taxi past the tail of our airplane so I pulled the camera from my pocket and snapped him going by. It’s a pain to get up at 2:30 in the morning to go to work but I always enjoy the sunrise at Logan and sights like this:

The morning departure to Miami was uneventful. The original captain was sick, so they called out a reserve captain to cover the trip. He would fly down to Miami with me before getting on an airplane to deadhead back to Boston.

So I was on my own for the layover, but fortunately my friend Dave from Ohio would also be staying at the hotel by the beach. We decided to meet up with the rest of his crew for dinner.

One of the pilots knew a great Cuban seafood place up the street. He didn’t steer us wrong, as the food was fantastic. We sampled appetizers that were rather good before eating the main course of sole, which we were able to inspect before ordering.

It was great to catch up with Dave and meet the other co-pilot on his trip, Joe, who plans to begin commuting from Anchorage, my home town, to Chicago soon. That’s a commute I wouldn’t wish on anyone, but I can understand the draw for some to live up in Alaska. For Joe, it allows him to be closer to his sport fishing business outside of Anchorage.

That’s one of the advantages this job provides; the ability to live just about anywhere and commute to and from your base free of charge. The only cost is the extra time you’ll spend on an airplane each month.

Dinner was great and I hope to go back there on the next layover.

I met the next captain at the gate the next morning for our flight to Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He was a Miami-based pilot who was called out on reserve to continue the trip with me. Occasionally, when one pilot calls in sick, the trip is covered by more than one pilot from different bases.

The weather was nice as we were descending over Haiti, and I was interested to see if the effects of Hurricane Hanna could be seen from the air.

The town of Genaives was the hardest hit and it’s easy to see from these pictures. This is just north of Port-au-Prince as we were coming through 20,000 feet.

What looks like a river flowing out to sea below…

…well, there’s a town in the middle of that river.

Just past Genaives, we were cleared to 10,000 feet, which takes you right by some ‘naked’ mountains which are a big part of the reason for the flooding that occurs in Haiti.

No country in the western hemisphere has had worse fortune than Haiti. They just can’t seem to get a break, and their plight hasn’t adequately captured the attention of the rest of the world.

I’m constantly amazed at how friendly the Haitian passengers and ground crew are. And you won’t find a cabin of nicer dressed people than the Port-au-Prince passengers.

On approach we flew over a U.S. Navy ship which was full of supplies that were being delivered to Genaives. Two of the helicopters based on the ship were idling on the ramp when we parked, and a third one landed by the time we were loaded again for our return back to Miami.

I’ve been flying to Port-Au-Prince for years now and I don’t really feel like I’ve actually been to the country. Arriving at the airport, doing a walk-around inspection and then departing an hour later doesn’t really count, does it?

I even arrived on the day Port-au-Prince was under a coup, but it was impossible to tell from the activities at the airport. Here’s a gallery I made up from that trip:

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As I flew back to Miami and then Boston, I couldn’t help think of the challenges for those living in Haiti. If they’re not trying to survive a political uprising, then they’re likely dealing with the aftermath of a major hurricane.

While I can’t say I’ve really been to the city of Port-au-Prince, flying international trips like this has given me a perspective that wasn’t possible when I was working the transcon flight from Boston to Seattle years ago.

We may not get a chance to fly to Haiti for some time, since the airline has canceled the PAP trip that has been flown lately by Boston crews, and I’m not sure if we’ll see the trip come back anytime soon.

Here’s hoping things look a little better for Haiti if and when we go back.

Cockpit Chronicles takes you along on some of Kent’s trips as an international co-pilot on the Boeing 757 and 767 based in Bosto
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