NAMPA, Idaho — Nampa's Mission Aviation Fellowship has families living in Haiti but has suspended regular mission flights to the island indefinitely because of civil unrest in the country.
- MAF has served Haiti for nearly 40 years.
- MAF's work includes transporting doctors, nurses, food aid, and work teams to the rural areas.
- MAF families still in Haiti have relocated from Port-au-Prince to safer, rural areas and have food and water.
(Below is the transcript from the broadcast story)
Civil unrest in Haiti has disrupted much of daily life for the Haitian population. The Mission Aviation Fellowship based out of Nampa has a relationship of almost 40 years serving in Haiti. Many Idahoans have lived there while serving and have mixed emotions about the events happening in Haiti.
"We have friends and neighbors, people at church that we know, workers. It's home for me, but the mixed emotion is what a difficult period they're going through right now and how many people are suffering the country is actually declining and it's hard to see that."
David Carwell has lived in Haiti for over 30 years and remembers the magnitude 7 earthquake of 2010 as a real low point in Haiti's modern history "but the aid rolled in after that and there was a time of growth and prosperity."
MAF's work includes transporting doctors, nurses, food aid, and work teams to rural areas.
"We do medevac flights where we'll bring critically injured people from the rural areas back into the capital for medical aid."
MAF families still in Haiti have relocated from Port-au-Prince to safer, rural areas and have food and water. The same cannot be said for the population within Port-au-Prince. A food crisis is already happening with supplies and affordability of the food there. MAF is still monitoring the supply situation in Haiti and will make a decision on evacuating the existing MAF families from Haiti in the future.
"As much as 80% of the capital is overrun by gangs and that is impacting the Haitian employees we have. Some have been living in neighborhoods that have been taken over by gangs. A couple of our families have lost everything."
For a time, the highest risk for MAF families was the trip from the airport to their housing. To accommodate the families, they lived in the airport hangar, dubbing it the "Hangar Hilton"
"We had power there, we had internet, air conditioning. It wasn't the greatest of accommodations but it was a safe place and we were able to function."
The biggest difference that Carwell has seen in the unrest over the 30 years is the size and quantity of guns that the gangs have access to.
"Thank you for the opportunity to share, I love the country and we want to see some good things happen there reaching isolated countries."
