This is from the latest update from Haiti, from Pam Mann.
Please pray for the situation with customs in the Dominican Republic and Haiti:
Tuesday late afternoon
"Hugues got the meds!" Dave called after me but I didn't catch what he had said. I had just stuck my head in Dave's office to find out if he had already given a departing team member his passport. Dave was
swamped by his English students at 3 o'clock library time, picking out hi-lo reading material. He said he'd already given the passport so I took off. Then he yelled something to me so I returned. “What'd you say?” "Hugues is coming now from Santiago with a customs-agent escort whom he'll have to pay but he didn't pay any of the $40,000 customs they were asking." "Wow, that's great!" I had been so annoyed by the recent decision of D.R. authorities to harass American teams entering Haiti with meds that I was plotting a boycott of the D.R. resort industry. That decision saved me a lot of letter writing. Poor Hugues, though, had to give up two days of his life, pleading with Dominican officials at the airport and in customs. It's been a rough few days for I.U. with customs on this island. Our new 24-passenger bus has been impounded by Haiti customs until we pay $18,000 in customs. It had been in the D.R. for weeks until we got all our papers in order. Juan, our D.R. taxi driver, had been using it for picking up mission teams. Too bad we couldn't just use it only in the D.R. No, now that it is impounded we either pay the duty or they keep it. We have sent a letter requesting exoneration to the head of customs in Port-au-Prince.
