A Tour of the Samaritan's Purse Basecamp: Lahaina, Maui
Take a walk with me through camp!
Happy Thanksgiving from the Samaritan’s Purse Basecamp near Lahaina, Maui!
We have amazing tents and we have amazing cots. But it has been a loooooooonnnngggg time since I’ve slept in a tent or on a cot and when I woke up this morning, I discovered muscles and joints and tendons I had forgotten I had! The tents are things of wonder: temperature controlled in the evenings when the generators come on, electrical outlets set up at every bed for charging phones, the cots have another cot underneath, like a mini bunkbed, which we can use for storage. The attention to detail in our rooms and in the camp as a whole is very, very impressive.
Come take a walk with me through camp and see for yourself.
(Disclaimer: We did some camp chores this morning and I just realized I have dirt on my face in the video! Ah, well…)
Tomorrow will be the first day for me, and for the rest of the volunteers who arrived yesterday, to go to the sites of the homes and begin sifting. We've been told (affectionately) that the Tyvek suits are like wearing our very own saunas in this 80-degree island weather. In orientation this morning, we were fitted for our respirators and were warned about ants, mini scorpions, and big centipedes, all of which are predictable here and which do bite (but they are not any more dangerous than the sting they produce, but still, I don't want them in my shoes or clothes)! Our leader Matt also covered electrical safety, falls (“just don’t”), hand hygiene and gloves (of course), heat stress and working in warm climates, portable generator safety, and personal protective equipment.
And, stepping on nails at the sites of the burned and destroyed homes was again reiterated as the most common injury out here. I don't have work boots but I think the thick soles on my hiking shoes should work just fine.
We also got the following info sheet:
Yes, we’ll be up at 5am and out the door at 6:15am. I’ll try to send out a report on the day tomorrow but will only be giving general information in order to give the residents their utmost privacy. I want to honor them and respect them in equal measure and am actively seeking that balance. I do not want to harm. But the world also needs to know more than we do. It’s a little bit precarious.