It is hard to believe it is the end of October already. Halloween- All St. Day- Day of the Dead- Its a 4 day weekend here in Haiti. Monday and Tueday are National Holidays. Fiona and I will have to have our own Halloween party...or hurricane party. Somehow seems more fitting.
One more day..until the end of official hurricane season, yet here we are preparing for hurricane Thomas’ arrival on Tuesday. We are tracking the storm closely and doing everything we can think of to be prepared for high winds and rain. Today is a beautiful sunny morning and there are 4 of us in the guest house for the weekend. Our discussions center around the pending storm and all possible effects. We know we will be fine here but our thoughts and hearts are with the thousands of people that continue to live in tents. We heard the problems they had during the freak storm we had over a month ago and that one lasted just about an hour or so - this one could be so much more devastating. Voila is one of the three cell phone services here in Haiti. Everyone has a cell phone and this company has been sending messages to the people to prepare for pending storm. How does one prepare for that when you live in a tent? When one has no resources, one turns to prayer. So whatever beliefs you have, send a prayer for the safety of the Haitian people during the storm.
The team we are expecting to arrive on Tuesday was able to ship by air cargo a lot of supplies needed for their 2 week trip. About 55 boxes, bags, and w/chairs arrived Tuesday night in 3 separape shipments. I arrived Wednesday morning to begin my lessons in Haitian bureuracracy. These items were shipped to me personally, with the hope that I could arrive at airport and pick them up as if they were like all other luggage being brought in.....I knew it wouldn’t be as simple as that. For most all items sent to Haiti usually shipped by container on a boat or even by Fed ex or DHL, one needs to have a broker to deal with it. We hoped by having it shipped to me versus Healing Hands for Haiti to bypass this step. And in fact, one of the 3 shipments was addressed to me and at my personal address. The other two identified HHH first on the shipping invoice. They told me for that reason, I would need a broker, but for now I could get the one shippment. My paperwork and the rest of the day involved no less than 15 people, 6 offices and multiple trips to some of those offices. After 6 hours on Wednesday, I was told I could come back on Thursday to verify shipment. After 6 hours on Thursday, I was finally able to see the supplies, count it - and finding 1 missing- but I could not take it. There was apparently more paperwork and verification and the 1 peice of missing equipment to deal with. On Friday, along with the broker to aid the process this time we returned to find out that after all of the paperwork was done, handled by all of these people, stamped, signed etc etc one of the numbers was wrong and did not match the number it was supposed to match. I would have to start over- to say this was disheartening is an understatement but after some words and a bit of a wait, somehow and a talk with the ‘director’ of something to waive some fees, they allowed me to load the equipment without changing all the paperwork. It seems small miricles do happen and I am not questioning it, just accepting it. I will have to return on Wednesday to begin the paperwork of the other 2 shipments and with no expectations of less than what the past week entailed. Beuroacracy at its most primitive form. Only the first form was generated via computer, the rest was done by hand. One form typed on an old and partially broken typewriter, by a man typing with one hand. I believe brokers earn their salary 10 fold in dealing with this process. It takes a lot of patience at the very least. It seems that a lot of people are employed through this process however so maybe that it is more important then efficiciency of a computerized system. We are so used to instant graitification that few people can deal with this kind of system. We’ll hope for the best of luck to receive remaining shipment of goods in a timely manner but I can’t let my expectations be too high. And no doubt, the process will be affected by the hurricane status.
For now, we'll do what we can to prepare for the coming week.
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