Tomas

So Tomas has been downgraded to a tropical depression, which is good, but it is still tracking for us and will bring a ton of rain, which is not good.  The volunteers will be fine, but the community is likely to be flooded if the predictions are correct.  We will likely have some strong winds (40 mph), but they won't be the 60 - 100mph winds we were looking at before.  Hopefully, this will minimize the damage done by winds.

So far, I haven't been out of the base much because we have been working on getting things prepped for the storm.  I have been to the market.  Luckily it was a quiet day - it was crowded as it was and it was very difficult to get through (especially being almost 6ft tall, as all of the spaces had tarps strung up to block the sun and they came up to my neck. :)

The trip from Port Au Prince took quite some time.  There were traffic jams where rubble had been dumped in the middle of the road and only one direction of traffic could go at at time.  Also, my driver had to stop to try and fix his car (he thought he needed a new battery - I'm pretty sure it was his starter).  I'll try to write more later about the camps and the UN troops I saw on my way here, but I have to get to work now...