Date: 30th July 2011
The Syracuse University Haiti Project Group had an early morning flight from Syracuse (Hancock Airport) to New York (JFK Airport) to one of the largest cities in the Caribbean region, Port Au Prince. Our project team consisted of the Syracuse University Networking & IT Gurus: Christopher Sedore, Lee Badman & Peter Morrissey along with our locally renowned Haitian, Achille Messac (Department Chair, Mech. & Aerospace Engineering, SU). With such bright minds, just add a dash of enthusiasm and creativity of the selected seven Syracuse University students and you get a perfect team for this project. We came with a mission in our minds, a mission to provide better network and internet facility to the disrupted State University of Haiti.
Our arrival was on time, probably a little ahead of time as we landed on the Airport of Port Au Prince at after noon. As we stepped out of the airplane we soon realized that the heat was a little over the bearable limits. It was like a never seen before view at the airport; looking around we could see numerous people trying to get in the line for the immigration check. It took us more than the expected time reaching out to the baggage on the conveyor belt and struggled to get the bags through people to reach our much adored air-conditioned mini van. On the way to the hotel, sitting in the mini van we viewed different parts of Haiti which was surprisingly unlike from the much believed terror filled stories about Haiti. Though the place is devastated by the natural disasters and the political chaos, it was still running strong with people carrying out their daily routine.
- The Hotel
- Our Ride
We reach Hotel Karibe after a 45 minute journey around mid-afternoon and quickly got settled in our lovely rooms. The first thing I checked in my room was for internet connectivity, and luckily we had an Ethernet jack to connect our laptops but with a cable of course. Later we got down and had a discussion on the next day’s plans for a tour around the city. We made plans to start working from Monday as our network equipment shipped from Syracuse to be installed at the University was supposed to be reaching Haiti on Monday. After the meals and a swim in the extra chlorinated waters of the hotel pool we finally called it a night.
– Shivesh Ganotra
