Friday, January 29, 2010

Lasstic Ship Containers are In Port!

Dear GNIF Friends:

Everyone knows what happened to Haiti. It seems like it really made people stop and think. A big reason is because Haiti basically had no infrastructure before January 12, 2010. The bigger reason is because at least 3 million people will never be the same. Tens of thousands of that number lost their lives in an instant. Whats happened after that day? Shock. Aftershocks, 52 to be exact. By January 24, at least 52 aftershocks have hit that were a 4.5 or greater. Another type of shock, is what people are experiencing now, what is left of their life.

Raymond is friends with a Haitian Senator as some of you may know. He did survive, but not without some injury(broken leg?). The Hatian government is shut down, birth records are destroyed, adoption records(what were in the process) and the judge that signed them is dead. The land records have also vanished! No records of property lines only adds to the confusion.

All the houses that have been destroyed need to be demo'd to build new ones. People are starting to do demo work by hand, which is very difficult and very dangerous. Since all land records are gone, surveying will need to be done also. GNIF could keep two crews going, one to do the site prep for the tent cities and one on the demo work. This would mean equipment rental, fuel, living cost, etc. On their way to the canyon the other day there were lots of boulders on the roads, it would be a job just to clear those off, and lots of other road and drainage clean up, if we want to do it.

Lastic Canyon Project - A native brother whose business is importing trucks from the US, and is very familiar with the port area was hired to go there and check on our shipment. Sure enough, our ship came in! The Senator is negotiating the duty and taxes. They are finding trucks to haul the containers and hope to have them available by sometime early next week.
In wanting to be as transparent as possible, there will be a financial update next week. Reg has gone to his Uncle's funeral in Alberta this weekend, so when he gets back we will update you on that. Thanks.

--
Good News International Foundation
Associate Writer - Daniel Jantz

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