CYPRUS PHASE II

MARCH/APRIL 2024

But now it was onto Phase Two. It was only about two weeks after that the Jennifer set sail. But that also included loading all the pallets onto the ship, and then offloading them all, and then loading them all back on. The protocol was that the IDF would scan the pallets (a large X-Ray scanner that a truck with those pallets would drive through) - and there's a whole ordeal to be discussed about these scanners and the Italian scanners vs the US scanners, but that's for another time. And then once they were scanned, the would be stored in a customs controlled warehouse, that was just a warehouse that was locked at the end of the day with a seal. Then the pallets could not be removed until a representative from the IDF was present to over see this, and then they could break the seal and move the pallets onto the Jennifer. Once on the Jennifer - which had to cargo bays, and each had a ceiling that would open and close, as well as man holes to enter the bays, also with lockable entries - then the same protocols were in place, at the end of the day a representative from customs, a representative from the UN, one from the IDF, and myself would watch the sailors lock up the cargo bays, and customs would put a seal on it, and we would all take a picture of the seal being sealed. The seal was no really seal, it was more like a piece of thread that simply broke and indicated that entry was made. Well one, night, some drunken sailor that worked on the Jennifer decided to go into the cargo hold for god knows what reason, broke the seal, and we had to unload all the pallets, rescan them, and reload them.

Aside from the drunken sailor incident, everything mostly went okay for Phase Two. Until it didn't. They launched on March 30th. The Open Arms and the Jennifer together. The Open Arms was loaded as well to make it's first delivery, then it was to return to the Jennifer anchored just outside the IDF maritime barricade, restock at sea, and then keep making trips back and forth.

The art of counting pallets. It may seem like a simple thing to count pallets. I can assure you it is not. It is one of the hardest things in this life. This was certainly made more difficult due to the fact that we were building a digital tool as we were using it, but at some point you still need to physically count pallets and it seems impossible. Many late nights were spent across all three phases walking across pallets in warehouses and on ships, taking one step, and counting, another step, counting, and yet you will never arrive at the same number.

But on April 1, after the barge was offloaded successfully for the second time, our team on the Gaza side was heading back to their safe house when they were targeted by direct drone strikes from the IDF. All seven of them died. And in contrast to the moment when the Open Arms returned from it's first trip back to the Larnaca port, when they returned this time, it was tragedy.

It's a crazy thing to have something happen that is personal, professional, and global. These people were my friends and my colleagues, and the world knew about what happened. We shut down the operation, put all the food product we purchased into storage, attended services around the world, and went home while we re calibrated.