Ben Montgomery: DELMAS, Haiti — If it had all gone according to plan, Jared Brown would not be standing here, tennis shoes planted on 5,500 pounds of American rice on a truck in the poorest country in the West, struggling to apologize.
If the plan had worked, if they had caught the first flight or the second, if all their boxes of donated tents and generators had wound up in Port-au-Prince, they might not be so angry and scared of what they're about to do.
"I apologize to everybody for the bad, bad, bad things that happened today," he says. "Everybody's angry right now. I understand that."
"Hey, let's go distribute this rice," one of them shouts. "Let's just do it!"
"The fact is I apologize from the bottom of my heart," says Brown, 31. "This trip should not have been like . . ."
"I think your point is made," says another.
"Why are we just talking?" says another. "Let's go. Now."
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