A Man with a Mission – Liberate a Centrifuge

     Shipping things into Haiti is a nightmare. It is slow and expensive. Containers sit in customs for weeks and months. Things don’t move. It can take months for a piece of paper to travel from one desk to another desk in the same room. When you finally manage to get your shipment out, the duty fees are outrageous. So one possible solution is to work with a non-governmental organization (NGO) which has a “franchise”, an exemption. This designation allows the NGO to obtain the shipment without any customs duties. However, it usually takes so long that whatever money you would have saved on customs duties is exceeded by the storage fees that you are charged while your shipment is sitting in customs waiting to be processed as a franchise shipment. You can’t win. We know.

     The University of Florida Emerging Pathogens Institute (UF-EPI) tried to use the franchise of the Haitian Ministry of Health and Population (Le Ministère de la Santé Publique et de la Population – MSPP). The reasoning was that since the UF-EPI Haiti Lab 1-Gressier is performing public health research that is shared with MSPP, we should be able to use their franchise to bring in equipment duty-free. A tabletop centrifuge for the lab was ordered in July and shipped to Haiti under the franchise of the MSPP. It arrived in Haiti in July and has sat in customs ever since while the paperwork moved slowly through the system. Every time Madsen came to Haiti to visit the lab, he made a stop at customs to try and move the paper work to yet another desk. Months went by and still the centrifuge sat in customs, racking up storage fees. And Madsen continued his pilgrimage to the customs office each time he came to Haiti.

     Yesterday afternoon, six months after the centrifuge arrived in Haiti, Meer, Madsen, and I got into the Everest and Makendy drove us to customs in Port-au-Prince to pick up our centrifuge. We picked up the guy who was handling the paperwork for MSPP and drove to the customs office. We drove along the airport and at the end of the runway, we turned down a long and dusty road. Makendy pulled into the lot of an unmarked building and we all got out. We were at customs. Our centrifuge was somewhere in that building. The sound of jet engines pierced the afternoon calm. The JetBlue flight from Ft. Lauderdale, FL passed low over our heads and landed on the PAP airport runway a few hundred meters away. We entered the air-conditioned building. The lobby was completely empty. No receptionist. We followed Madsen as he walked to an office off to the left. Madsen had been here before, many times.

     Three women sat at three desks in the large room. They offered us chairs. We politely declined. Madsen presented his paperwork to the woman at the first desk. Woman #1 went to get the centrifuge file and came back with the file and the bill. She sat down at her desk. Madsen took a chair opposite her. Woman #1 opened a folder and handed it to Madsen. It contained the final papers with the bill for storage. Madsen glanced at the bottom line: $7,500. Madsen was astounded and a bit angry. This is not possible. He told woman #1 that $7,500 is more than the cost of the equipment! “Is that in U.S. dollars?” Madsen asked. “Yes”, she replied, “U.S. dollars.” Madsen asked to speak to her supervisor. Woman #1 left the room to speak to woman #2 (the supervisor) in the office next to where Meer and I stood. I heard woman #2 tell woman #1, “No, pas dollars. 7,500 gourdes.” (not U.S. dollars, Haitian gourdes). I was somewhat relieved. The difference between the two amounts is 43.5X (43.5 gourdes to $1.00 U.S.). Woman #1 returned to her desk and sat opposite Madsen. “Excusez-moi, monsieur. C’est 7,500 dollars Haitian.” (Excuse me, sir, but the amount is actually 7,500 Haitian dollars). What??? That’s not what we heard woman #2 say! Woman #1 was dropping the cost but it was still outrageously high; the conversion from “Haitian dollars” (which do not exist; see 11-07-13 post) comes out to $1,500 U.S. Madsen sat back in his chair. He was not moving. He argued, he pleaded, he pointed out that we were helping Haitians, we were not out to make a profit for ourselves. Woman #1 returned to consult with woman #2.  She returned to her desk and sat across from Madsen. “7,500 gourdes,” she said. Madsen still pleaded and tried to get her to reduce the fees. It eventually got to about 7,000 gourdes, that is, $167 U.S. (Obama dollars, as Makendy calls them). We each reached into our pockets to pull out twenties and tens and came up with the money for woman #1. She stamped the precious customs papers. We thanked her and left the office to look for our centrifuge.

     In the back warehouse was a wooden crate from South Carolina marked “ThermoScientific”. There she was, our centrifuge. We opened the crate, verified that all the boxes were there and that there was no visible damage from shipping. Makendy backed the Everest up to the loading dock and a forklift gently positioned the centrifuge next to the truck. We placed the packing cushions in the Everest and three men lifted the centrifuge into the back of the Everest. We climbed back in and left customs. It was like leaving the final circle of Dante’s Inferno, or something like that.

     So what did we learn? Everything is negotiable. The $7,500 fee? If Madsen had not protested, woman #1 would have taken his money. End of story. What about the 7,500 Haitian dollars? Same thing. If Madsen had not persisted, woman #1 would have taken his money. What did the actual bill look like? Was the 7,500 written in $U.S. or in $HT or in gourdes? I’ll be home for Christmas. You can ask me then. Right now, I am happy to report that our centrifuge is in its home in the lab.

The centrifuge in the lab