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Haiti earthquake: Red Cross aid worker diary – Thursday

By Emily Knox
February 4, 2010 at 3:36 pm

Well, I’ve managed to get a cold despite the hot weather! It has not deterred me from the constant flow of waybills out and waybills in that come my way though. My current bugbear is if goods do not have their tracking number attached.. causes us lots of headaches..!! I feel sometimes as if I’m the grumpy finance woman glued to her computer in the warehouse office all day only to exit at full pace into the warehouse to ask for the answer to a question about buckets or tarpaulins. Oh, I’m not really grumpy – I would say smiley but stressed.

In one of those brief trips into the warehouse, I had a chat with one of our warehouse team leaders, Adalberto. Adalberto is 30 and from Santo Domingo and has worked for the Dominican Red Cross for 6 years. Initially during this operation he organised the warehouse at the Dominican Red Cross Headquarters, sorting and dispatching unsolicited goods (clothing, food) to Haiti. Now he is a key part of the operation here at our main warehouse. Adalberto said it was a satisfying experience as he felt like he was contributing more actually loading and unloading goods instead of sitting in an office. As for working with ‘foreigners’ like us, Adalberto said he thought it would be more difficult but it wasn’t. He said, ‘Walking down the hall you looked unapproachable, but after I got to work with you all I noticed you were wonderful people to work with’. Oh I feel better now..! But Kenny and I agreed we must work on our hall-walking…

Image © BRC

Donate now to the British Red Cross Haiti Earthquake Appeal.

Comments (4) »

Tags: disaster response, earthquake, emergency response, Haiti, Haiti earthquake, volunteer

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 3:36 pm and is filed under Emergencies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “Haiti earthquake: Red Cross aid worker diary – Thursday”

john Clar says:

February 4, 2010 at 7:06 pm

could you let me know if you employ young people to get the public to sign for charity donation?

I may be that a team were working in Watford, Hertfordshire today.

many thanks
Bettie says:

February 5, 2010 at 7:01 pm

How many tents have been distributed in Haiti so far by the Red Cross. What types of tents are being distributed? Thanks
Suzi Neill says:

February 8, 2010 at 2:21 pm

Hi John,

We didn’t have any street fundraisers working in that area on Thursday, you can check where we are fundraising here http://bit.ly/ajYpDp

If you think someone is fundraising illegally please get in touch with us.

Thanks
I.V.Lishman says:

February 9, 2010 at 12:57 pm

Hi Emily! I have beeb closely following the Haiti disaster and reading all the blogs. I have 103 young nurses.surgical trainees and interns coming to Bunbury at the end of the month for a crash course in Emergency Surgery, “just in case”.
The Australian Lishman diaspora wish you well and a safe return.Well done.Love Val

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