By Rita McInerney

Food for the Poor in February, 1992, shipped half-a-million pounds of wheat, rice, oats, beans and flour to Haiti for the poor in that troubled island country.

About three weeks ago, Sister Maureen Haggarty, CSJ, a staff member, spent four days in Port-au-Prince, trying to assist in getting the desperately needed food cleared through customs. The shipment, loaded into 40-feet sealed containers, had been unloaded off the carrier ship from Miami and placed in the customs yards in Port-au-Prince weeks earlier.

It was the first food shipment Food for the Poor had been able to send since last November, not long after the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti’s first democratically elected leader.

Getting the food cleared through customs is proving to be a long and difficult affair, Sister Haggarty said in a telephone interview April 9.

Ronald Aubrey, who works for Food for the Poor in Haiti, has the task of “walking it through” customs, she said. This takes him to customs offices “all over the city.”

Most of the trouble she attributes to the change in regimes. “People brand new to their work” are in charge of the customs offices and the other government offices. Aubrey, Sister Haggarty said, is “very polite” in his dealings with the untrained officials and visits the customs yard often to make sure the Food for the Poor shipment is still intact. Security guards patrol the locked area, she said.

“Food for the Poor is extremely lucky. Our goods don’t get touched,” she said in answer to a question as to whether military and government personnel take control of relief shipments sent by world organizations to the destitute Haitians.

She finds it “incredible” that hundreds of containers holding relief supplies are being help up by customs despite the dire poverty of the Haitian people for whom they are destined.

Food for the Poor purchased one million pounds of food for Haiti and will be shipping the remainder as soon as possible.

During her four-day visit, Sister Haggarty found gasoline selling for $3.85 per gallon and rice for $2 per pound. While the poor can’t afford to purchase any goods at these inflated prices it is the “trickle down” effect they feel.

“Now they can’t afford the little shuttle tap taps (pickup trucks with wooden covers) that they use for transportation.”

Food for the Poor has weathered five coups in the six years that it has sent relief to Haiti. In that time, the agency has replaced hundreds of rusted tin shanties with one-room lumber or concrete homes, repaved much of the capital city’s vast slum and has continued to be the pipeline of food, medical supplies and educational materials to missionaries of all denominations.

Food for the Poor’s self-help projects have taught new skills to an otherwise uneducated people and have brought employment to hundreds.

“In all of these coups, the only thing Food for the Poor has encountered is a slowdown in the process of getting materials to Haiti,” said Ferdinand Mahfood, founder of the non-profit organization.

Two weeks after the Aristide overthrow, Food for the Poor used costly air transit to send greatly needed medical supplies into Port-au-Prince.

For further information write: Food for the Poor, Dept. 4115, Building #4, 550 S.W. 12th Avenue, Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442, or call 1-305-428-3333. Ext. 354.