Morning brings a meet up with our brothers Babu and Hassan at breakfast as we are all staying at the same place. The hotel is a short walk from IHH offices and we get up there before 10am. Nalan says there is a minibus going to the cargo port right now - only two spaces so Babu and I go immediately. Have to leave Darryl and Hassan. Darryl has a flight to catch from an airport that is advertised as Istanbul by Easyjet but turns out to be 60km away with no simple way of getting there. A little later I hear from Darryl to say he's got a coach to the airport. Well done and thank you so much Darryl for dropping everything for a random and exhausting journey.
We need to get on with the job of repacking the donated items from UK. There is a mixture of things from 125 shoeboxes of small items such as toothpaste, socks, toys each suitable for a boy or girl. These have been put to gether by children in Bolton UK. Other larger items include a dental chair, a baby incubator, patient monitors, dialysis machine, hospital bed. There are also boxes of medical consumables surgical gloves etc. We get everything out onto pallets and wrap it in protective clingfilm. Only Babu and I are allowed into the cargo port because are with the vehicle, Hassan is not able to get in, so we are helped by various IHH workers who are in the port to load the other cargo. The main organiser brings IHH t shirts, cling film, protective gloves, big clear tape, trays of water bottles and at lunch time (ends up around 3pm..) sandwiches and pop. By 6pm we have repacked and labelled everything with Hayfa Medical Centre, Gaza Tofa and leave it on the side of the port to be winched into the ship.
So Babu and I get into the cargo port and join a line of 10 lorries (we're the smallest). During the day I see around 20. The ship is enormous and has two massive cargo holds. The scale of the operation being mounted by IHH is absolutely massive and hugely impressive. There is an enormous crane lifting items constantly into the cargo hold. There are huge industrial size brand new generators waiting on the port wrapped and ready to go. There are lorry loads of timber, tiles, cement, bed/ sofa sets lining up to be put on.
Babu moves the truck around so we are in a good location to unload and repack the cargo from UK. There are pallets that turn up eventually but before this we get the chance to have a look around the vessel and meet the captain. There are multiple volunteers working on the ship. During the day welders come to fix a platform onto the ship which they say will support the crane that needs to lift the goods out at the other end - as there is no viable port in Gaza yet. Everything seems to have been thought of and where there is a 
problem a practical solution will be 
found. 
problem a practical solution will be 
found. 
We need to get on with the job of repacking the donated items from UK. There is a mixture of things from 125 shoeboxes of small items such as toothpaste, socks, toys each suitable for a boy or girl. These have been put to gether by children in Bolton UK. Other larger items include a dental chair, a baby incubator, patient monitors, dialysis machine, hospital bed. There are also boxes of medical consumables surgical gloves etc. We get everything out onto pallets and wrap it in protective clingfilm. Only Babu and I are allowed into the cargo port because are with the vehicle, Hassan is not able to get in, so we are helped by various IHH workers who are in the port to load the other cargo. The main organiser brings IHH t shirts, cling film, protective gloves, big clear tape, trays of water bottles and at lunch time (ends up around 3pm..) sandwiches and pop. By 6pm we have repacked and labelled everything with Hayfa Medical Centre, Gaza Tofa and leave it on the side of the port to be winched into the ship.
At the end of the day we are knackered and I'm a bit sunburned but apart from that very satisfied.
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