Day 1: Wednesday 8 September - Arrival into Haiti

The flight to Haiti includes an over-night stay in Miami. The flight leaves Miami at 6:20am and arrives into Port-au-Prince at 7:20am on Wednesday. I am tired but excited to be finally leaving for Haiti. The flight is very pleasant with the sun rising as we cruise over the Bahamas at 39,000 ft. The approach into Haiti is equally as spectacular with fantastic oblique views across the island which highlight the dramatic topography not apparent in satellite imagery.

Port-au-Prince appears quickly below us: a highly-dense urban centre situated on an alluvium basin surrounded by steep mountains. We approach the airport over the seaport and over large tent-filled slums. I am picked up by BRC staff and driven the small distance to Red Cross Logistics Base. Red Cross Federation and numerous national Red Cross teams work from this site. The site is impressive: large, neat and well-organised. The teams are working in air-conditioned shipping containers which can be seen to the left of this aerial image taken in November 2010:

I meet the team, grab some coffee from the canteen and get to work. I also receive a mobile phone and security briefing from Dave (logistics delegate). There have been attacks on local staff in Delmas 19 in the past couple of days so all field work has been suspended.

Throughout the day I am introduced to the Shelter team which consists of a GIS officer, data entry officer, architects and structural engineers. I spend most of my time familarising myself with the integrated project and the tasks we'd like to complete. In the afternoon we devise a workflow that will allow us to integrate GPS coordinates linked to an enumeration survey with polygons derived from a ground-based cadastral survey.

We leave base at around 6 to return to our accommodation and I have my first look at Port-au-Prince from the ground. It looks lively, lots of traffic and people. We drive past several slums and camps before winding our way upwards towards the mountains. I'm taken to my room and have some tea before heading out again. Its Ruth's birthday (Livelihoods delegate) and so we went to a small restaurant near Petionville further into the mountains. I have rice and beans but soon after start to struggle with the jet-lag. By the end of the day I had been awake for over 20 hours - it's been a long day.