Days 267 – 275 (7/24 – 8/01)

Tuesday – Today is filled with emails and phone calls to and from the Dominican Republic. The factory is supposed to be shipping my wall and roof panels today, but the roof panels won’t be off of the production line until this afternoon. Actually it works out a little better for a couple of reasons. One – I can have the people there get the material and equipment that I can’t find in Haiti and include it in my shipment. Two – it gives me an extra day to get the import paperwork completed.

Doug Ahlfeld from Homes for Haitians is building a large project for the EMH in Musac, in the mountains northwest of Jacmel. He is also using some Styrofoam products from the D.R. and we are working together to get our shipments across the border. We have been told that the paper we need is a copy of the Quitus which is issued to the EMH by the Haitian government and shows that they have non-profit status and are therefore exempt from customs fees and taxes. The Quitus and the invoices and bills of lading should do the trick. After being directed to several different people at the EMH District Office, I was able to finally get a copy of the Quitus. I faxed the copy to the factory in the D.R. and they sent the first truck to the border with the first of Doug’s containers.

Wednesday – Late this morning I received word that Doug’s container didn’t make it across the border. There were no problems on the D.R. side, but Haitian customs was demanding some more paperwork. In typical fashion, no one could tell us exactly what it was that we needed. The factory sent their shipping broker to the border to try to find out what the problem was. About mid-afternoon – just when our new team from the States was arriving – I got a call from the border saying that the Haitian customs officer was demanding proof that the taxes on the shipment had been paid. We thought that the Quitus took care of that, but apparently he needed something from the Minister of Finance. Doug and I called several people at the EMH to find out what it was that we needed, but no one seemed to know. They did, however, refer us to a member of the Mellier congregation who was the Director of the Haitian Port Authority. We were able to get him on the phone and made an appointment to see him first thing in the morning.

Thursday – Doug and I left early this morning for the Port Authority and were able to see the Director as soon as he arrived. We explained our situation to him and he told us that we really needed to talk to the ADG – the Haitian Customs Department. He said the Director of the ADG was a friend of his and called him. The ADG Director said to come to his office and he would see if he could help us. We sat down with the Director – the number 1 man in charge of customs in Haiti – and he explained that the Quitus merely showed that the EMH was a non-profit. It had nothing to do with the material we were trying to ship. We needed to have a letter from the EMH, signed by Pastor Paul, stating that this material was going to be used for a church project. Then we needed to have that letter signed by the Minister of Finance. We then needed to bring the letter back to the ADG and they would give us a document showing that these shipments were in fact exempt from duties and taxes. We thanked him and our friend from the Port Authority and rushed back to the EMH District Offices and spent a considerable amount of time trying to explain to Pastor Paul’s secretary what we needed. She finally typed up the letter and we rushed out to Paco, to Pastor Paul’s house to get his signature. By the time we got to the Ministry of Finance it was after lunch. There we hit a wall. We were unable to take the letter to the Minister and get his signature. It had to go through channels and actually needed 2 signatures before it went to the Minister – and – we could not hand carry it from person to person, it had to be carried by an official courier even though the offices were only a few hundred feet apart. So, we surrendered the letter and got a receipt with a routing number and waited for 2 hours at the office of the 2^nd signature until it finally arrived. After explaining our situation for seemingly the 50^th time, we final got signature #2 and walked with the courier to the Ministers office only to discover that he had left for the day.

Friday – I need to tell you about Carnival. This year President Martelly decided to hold the National Carnival in February in Les Cayes because the traditional parade route in Port-au-Prince was still a mess. Needless to say, this upset all of the people in Port-au Prince. So to appease the Port-au Prince voters, Martelly decided to have a 2^nd carnival in July and he called it Carnival de Fluer. Then he decided, just last week, that he would create a non-work holiday from noon Friday through Sunday. (I thought that it was interesting that in a country with 80% unemployment that they needed a non-work holiday).

So – I got to the Ministry of Finance the first thing this morning; located the courier and marched over to the Ministers office only to be told that the Minister had decided not to come in this morning because of the holiday. My “But the holiday doesn’t start until noon!” comment was met with a blank stare. I was told to come back Monday.

Saturday – Fortunately, most of the workers at the Guest House decided that they would rather have a day’s pay rather than a day off. So, today was productive for us even though the rest of the country was shut down.

Mario has relatives and/or friends that have a stand on the parade route so he is participating in the Carnival proceedings. Lauren James from UMCOR got a couple of tickets on a stand for Sunday night and invited Danette to watch the parade. Tom and I will watch some of it on local TV.

Sunday – Today was a true day of rest. The combination of being a Sunday and being a holiday has pretty much shut everything down. It’s a good day to catch up on my reading.

Monday – I went early to the Ministry of Finance to finally get the Ministers signature on our letter. When I got there with the courier and our letter I was informed that the Minister would not be in today because of the holiday. “But the holiday was over last night”, I protested. “Oh, we always take the day after Carnival off,” was the reply. Only in Haiti! In the meantime Doug’s container is sitting at the border.

Tuesday – I had a lot of last minute things to get done today since I am leaving for home tomorrow. I have to leave every 90 days to get my passport stamped and since we have only 1 team in August, we are going to shut the office down from 8/5 to 8/19 for vacation. So I’ll have about 2 ½ weeks at home. Hoo Rah!

Jesula, Doug’s project manager came by the office and picked up the file on our import paperwork and will get the Finance Ministers signature and the form from the ADG and drive everything to the border. Maybe we can get the container across by tomorrow. It’s been there a week. My container is sitting in the factory’s yard waiting for Doug’s container to clear.

I spent the afternoon going over the work schedule with the engineers to make sure everyone knew what had to get done while I was gone. We only have a limited time complete the work at the Guest House before the big influx of teams starts again.

Wednesday – I left for the airport at 7:00 AM and Eric dropped me off in front of American Airlines for my 9:30 flight to Miami, Dallas and Sacramento. I bade goodbye to Haiti knowing that I would be returning in a few weeks and looked forward to seeing friends and family.