For more than thirty days we have been working on getting a hospital tent released from customs in the DR to be sent to Haiti. I can only guess I alone, let alone the others have spent about 15 hours writing people, visiting office after office, and chasing down snipes in order to get this hospital tent released.
Today something interesting happened:
Eduard Gabriel and I are sitting in the office for an hour waiting while they, the customs officials, do their usual shuffling papers, “you don't have this, you don't have that” and we are just worn out. It is Friday afternoon nine weeks after the earthquake and we are still fighting for things that should be smooth.
Without knocking, in walks a guy and our guy behind the desk shoots to attention and says "hi Senior Blanco" Our guy introduces him to Eduard and I. Senior Blanco says, “I had a meeting canceled for 5pm and since I was close by I thought I would stop in and say hello.”
Our guys says yes they are waiting for the hospital tent to bring to Haiti but we don't have the correct papers. Blanco says, what do they have, our guy hands Blanco our little letter stating we are going to fly the hospital tent out on the Embraer 110 that will arrive on Monday. It was another of the dozen letters that they had asked us for to complete some formality that we wonder exists.
Blanco says give the letter to me. He writes on it, "APPROVED" and signs it. Our guys looks at us and says that is all I need, come back in 30 minutes. DONE DEAL.
Just so happens that the Regional Customs guy has a meeting on Friday at 5pm in Santiago, he is from Santo Domingo three hours away and he just wanted to say hi.
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