I took my first trip out of the office yesterday and travelled to x. Depending on traffic ( and Haitian traffic puts Atlanta's to shame), it's a 1 1/2-3 hour trip. We went to check on the progress of the transitional shelter building. For those of you who don't know, Habitat is offering a 3-fold response to the disaster,including emergency shelter kits, t-shelters and concrete core housing. The t-shelters meet basic housing needs and are meant to last 2 years until the core housing project is complete. We'll be building 440 of these in Cabaret and work commenced this week. Everyone was hard at work when we arrived, and was amazed at how quickly the shelters can be built. Today, families will be moving into the structures I saw being built yesterday. We met the owner of one of the first shelters constructed. Through a translator, we learned that she has 10 children and her 11th child died in the quake. She and her husband Antoine kept thanking of for their home and for "bring us peace."

Our impromtu translator, Clifford, was going to university in Port-au-Prince before the quake and he hopes to become an international reporter. Now he lives with his mother and siblings and works the family farm. Although many of the elementary schools have relocated and reopened in some capacity, the university is shuttered closed.

Bob, the architect of the t-shelters came along on this trip and told me that, "poverty isn't about money; it's about unmet promises." I can't get that out of my mind.

It is so complicated. The destruction is so vast, it's easy to get discouraged. I felt hope seep out me on the ride out to Cabaret. There were people who had pitched a tent in the road because all available land was taken. How can you even begin to right this wrong? But you do. I must tell you, though,that hope returned to me during the afternoon as we walked through countless makeshift dwellings. Suddengly I head the sound of hammering in the distance. It was coming form the t-shelter construction site. When you consider that approximately 1.3 million people are in and around Port-au-Prince alone, it is difficult to see how true reconstruction is possible, and yet, there soon will be 440 families in Cabaret who soon will have a place to call home. It was a very emotional day, and I left feeling quite privileged that I witnessed, first hand, Habitat at work.