Anna Sale

I remember the waiting.

It's been more than four years since I stood on the mouth of a coal mine, waiting for word on the fate of two missing miners. It was January 2006, at the Aracoma Mine in southern West Virginia. I was covering the story for West Virginia Public Radio. A fire had broken out in an underground mine and two men were missing. That alone was tragic enough, but it came just a few weeks after the Sago Mine Disaster, where 12 men died –  11 of them after they were poisoned by bad air while they waited for rescue.

UPDATED 10:30 p.m.

Alex Goldmark here with a late night update. We're calling everyone we can in West Virginia about the deadly mine explosion that has killed seven and trapped nineteen miners. Tomorrow morning we'll have an update for you on the status of the trapped men and on the conditions that led to the disaster. 

We're also, watching, literally at this moment, the NCAA men's basketball finals. So you can count on a recap of the game, which so far is pretty exciting. We also want to find out how Butler's Cinderella run will benefit their bottom line - will Butler black replace Carolina blue in the cash cow color wheel of jerseys and college merchandise? 

We're also following a stories on Toyota, legalized marijuana and yes, Tiger Woods. So, its a good mix tomorrow. 

President Obama takes to the mound tonight in the stadium of the Washington Nationals to throw the ceremonial first pitch. It's a tradition started 100 years ago this month by President William Howard Taft.

UPDATED 6:15 p.m

Alex Goldmark here picking up the evening shift. 

We're watching a few different stories in the running for tomorrow's show. First up, is a nagging curiosity we've had for a few days now. A smattering of local press a few days back labelled Memphis the hunger capital of America. We're finding out why Memphis stands out. 

It occured to us that if it is such an enormous undertaking to pull off the US census, what is it like in India where they have more than a billion people? Well it takes more than two million census workers for one. 

And we'll have  another installment of our value series with Farai Chideya looking at how the changing economy has changed people's moral outlook in some way. 

 

Anna Sale back on the dayside producing shift.

I'm just back from a week reporting at a hospital in rural Haiti, where one question kept coming up from patients and local residents alike: what's next for Haiti? There weren't a lot of answers where I was, but tomorrow in New York, representatives from Haiti, the United Nations, United States, and several other nations will discuss their plans to spend $34 billion there over the next 10 years. We're reaching out to reporters and international development experts to see what the latest thinking is on where the effort should start, and who will be in charge.

UN special envoy to Haiti, Bill Clinton, has urged international aid groups to help rebuild Haiti's government yesterday. But as Takeaway producer Anna Sale reports, some Haitians don't think their government should be trusted with the job.

I spent an hour or so yesterday learning Creole in one of the tents that house earthquake patients. We went over the basics — "What is your name?" "Where do you live?" "Are you married?" "Do you have any kids?" And of course, there's the key question that usually comes about third in any introduction — when are you leaving? These patients are used to foreigners coming in for a week or two, and knowing how long each one will be around is a vital statistic.

 

After the earthquake, injured Haitians flooded the hospital. Now, some of them are cured, but like the 700,000 other homeless Haitians, they have nowhere to go. So they turn to their doctors for help, adding to the overstretched workload of the medical staff.

Emil is going to Baltimore this morning.

The 12-year-old boy has a pelvis fracture that needs extensive rehabilitation at Johns Hopkins University, but his trip got caught in bureaucratic limbo, and for most of the day yesterday, his doctor wasn't sure it would happen. Emil needed one last paper to add to the stack of authorizing documents: A form from a local official to allow his entrance into the United States.

All week, Takeaway producer Anna Sale is accompanying a medical mission in rural Haiti. At a hospital in Milot, 75 miles north of Port-au-Prince, many of the injured have been transferred from the capital. For the locals, even those without medical skills, it provides an opportunity for them to help. They change bedpans, braid the hair of patients, and offer comfort to those who are far from home and family.

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With two full days down, I continue to be struck by the incredible mix of everyday miracles and frustrating setbacks here.

On Sunday, I watched an airlift transfer of an earthquake victim who is paralyzed from the waist down. Her name is Marilynn. She's 32 years old and has three daughters. This was her fourth trip on a helicopter since the earthquake, she told me. This latest transport would take her from the hospital in Milot, where she had surgery last week to stabilize her spine, to a spinal cord clinic that's opened in a town about 10 miles away. The road, though, was too rugged to keep her healing back immobile en route, so she took the trip in by air.

On Monday, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush visited Haiti. All this week, Takeaway producer Anna Sale is also in the country, but at a rural hospital 75 miles away from Port-au-Prince. Today, she reports on the journey of 17-year-old Joseph Maxon, who spent his day navigating through Haiti's bureaucracy in search of a birth certificate.

Takeaway producer Anna Sale is accompanying a medical mission in Haiti. At a hospital in Milot, 75 miles north of Port-au-Prince, many of the injured have been transferred from the capital. For some of the patients there, the biggest fear comes at the prospect of leaving.

We arrived Saturday afternoon on a charter flight to the north Haitian town of Cap-Haitien – after a stopover on a Bahamian island, because it's difficult to get gas in Haiti. The airport was bustling, filled with aid workers coming and going on top of the already steady flow of local traffic. A guard stood in the lobby to manage the crowds, it took a minute before I realized the flag on his shoulder wasn't the Haitian flag. It was from Jordan. He's here on a UN Security mission to maintain airport security – just the first of many signs of the continuing international presence here.

On most days, I work with The Takeaway's dayside production team, but today I'm leaving on an eight-day trip to rural Haiti. I'm traveling with a medical team to Hôpital Sacré Coeur in Milot, a town about 75 miles north of Port-au-Prince. Doctors, nurses, and rehab therapists from across the country will spend the week there, joining the effort that local staff and foreign volunteers have sustained at a breakneck pace for more than nine weeks now.

UPDATED 7:25 p.m.

Alex Goldmark here.  

Now that the health care bill is out, we're put our man in Washington on the case. Todd Zwillich is hunting for changes in this, likely final, version of the legislation that might change your mind on reform, either in support or against it. He'll have the most persuasive pieces of the plan ready to go by tomorrow morning. 

A couple interesting stories out of the science section of The New York Times got our curiosity twitching. We'll bring you the connection between mummies in China and ancient dogs in the Middle East. They both reveal something about the roots of humanity - and how some of our historical assumptions might be wrong. 

We'll also talk with a young woman who rowed across the Atlantic, check in on the flooding in North Dakota and play a little movie trivia. It is Friday, after all. 

UPDATED: 8:10 p.m. 

Alex Goldmark, Senior Producer, here on the evening shift. 

We continue to follow the developments in health care reform, clashes in Israel, and of course the NCAA tournament. Our curiosity was also piqued by a recent study on women of color and wealth. They found: 

 

"Single black and Hispanic women have one penny of wealth for every dollar of wealth owned by their male counterparts and a tiny fraction of a penny for every dollar of wealth owned by white women."

We'll find out how bad it is, and why. Also as part of our DIY bailout series, we'll have some suggestions for building your own wealth. 

We'll also check in on the fiscal health of our nation as Moody's hints at lowering America's bond rating and the Federal Reserve plans to keep interest rates low based on moderate economic expectations.  

 

 

Posted 1:00 - On tomorrow's show: FCC national broadband plan; Border violence in Juarez, Mexico; The view from the stage at South by Southwest, and more ...

POSTED 2:00 - The future of public education; Lessons learned from Massachusetts' attempt at universal health coverage; The author of the book that inspired 'The Green Zone,' opening ...

UPDATED 10:00 p.m.

Arwa, here on the night shift.

Not too much have changed this Anna blogged this morning. We’ve added a segment to the show to talk about Vice President Joe Biden’s trip to Israel. He’ll be wrapping up a four-day visit tomorrow and will be delivering a speech at Tel Aviv University. We’ll talk with Aaron David Miller from the Woodrow Wilson Center about where things stand when it comes to US-Israeli relations.

South by Southwest kicks off this week, and it’s for more than just music and movie fans. It’s also one of the most prestigious conventions in the technology world. Twitter was actually introduced there in 2007. We’ll talk with our Tech Correspondent Baratunde Thurston about what to watch out for this year.