Chilling with Customs in PAP

     I planned to fly back to Haiti for a week in mid-June to meet with some people about my project and also to attend a graduation ceremony at the school that my church supports in Baradères. The beast arrived in my lab in Bethesda three days before my departure. The beast is the GeneXpert IV, a real-time PCR machine that I was going to use for rapid diagnosis of Chlamydia and gonorrhea. The GeneXpert is a loaner from Cepheid, the manufacturer, who agreed to lend me the instrument for one year for my STI surveillance study. The instrument itself is not large but with its shipping case, it was a beast. The wheeled shipping case is a heavy black plastic cube about 18 x 20 x 24 and weighing 67 lbs. Perfect for safely shipping the instrument but it proved to be a red flag for Haitian customs.

GeneXpert IVV shown here with desktop computer

     As is our tradition, early Thursday morning Pierre drove me to DCA for my flight to Miami. I had no problem checking the beast at Reagan National. Overweight? No problem. You just pay extra, which I did. During the flight, I tried to think about what might happen at customs in PAP. I had never been stopped there before and I was almost certain that the beast would be my ticket to a special interview with a customs agent. It was.

     I collected my suitcase and the beast in baggage claim and got in the line that moved slowly past a customs agent who collected our papers and then directed people (seemingly at random) to another room for bag inspection. I was selected. While I waited for a customs agent to appear, I watched a family of five being questioned about what they were bringing into Haiti. Acetaminophen, the father explained as the rest of the family looked on anxiously. The customs agent pulled out a Costco-size bottle of acetaminophen from their open suitcase. I had eight of the exact same bottle in my suitcase. And I had the beast. This could be bad. The customs agent asked a few more questions and let the family go.

     Soon a young man appeared. It was my turn. He asked me in English to open my suitcase. I did and he was soon looking intently at the top layer of 30 boxes of rapid diagnostic test kits for syphilis. What are these he asked? Test kits for syphilis, I answered. He directed me to open a box. I did and he looked curiously at the individual packets and then pulled one out and inspected it. He returned it to the box and asked if I was a doctor. Yes (why not? Otherwise it gets too complicated).  Okay. He told me to close the suitcase and turned his attention to the beast. He told me to open the case. I carefully undid the latches and soon the customs agent was staring down at the beast.

The beast in its box

I told him what it was and explained that it was on loan from the manufacturer and that it was for medical purposes. He looked at the laptop that comes with the beast and informed me that I needed to declare the beast and pay customs duty. How much? I asked. It depends on how much the beast is worth, he replied. I have no idea, I said; it is on loan. I showed him the contract with the manufacturer that explained that the beast was on loan to me. It was not enough. The young man wanted to know how much the instrument cost so that he could calculate the customs duty. He pulled out a smart phone and asked me how to spell the beast’s name, GeneXpert-IV. The customs agent typed it in his search engine. He had an app for searching prices, very smart for getting an item’s value. But I knew, and the young agent soon found out, that no amount of searching would yield the actual price of the beast. Medical and scientific instruments that are this expensive do not have their prices listed on any web site. The young agent searched and searched and re-typed the name and searched again but he came up empty. Now the room was empty, too. The last passengers who had been selected for inspection had long since left. The young agent sighed. You can go, he finally said. I carefully re-fastened the latches on the shipping crate, pulled out the handle, thanked the customs agent and left the room. It was not until I exited the airport building into the hot sun that I realized that I had gone toe-to-toe with Haitian customs. I had stared them down and won.

     Outside in the reception area, I found my Christianville driver and we loaded the beast and my suitcase into the Land Cruiser. Danette was already waiting in the Land Cruiser (her flight had come in at about the same time as mine but my detour through customs delayed me almost 20 minutes). What’s in the big box, Danette asked. One of my instruments for the STI surveillance project, I said. In reality, it was a small victory and a big step forward in actually getting the project underway. Welcome to Haiti, beast!