The Guano Smuggling Story
1967
A true story that happened in
Haiti
Written 1/2010 and Re-written 1/2015
Howard Yasgar
In 1967, I was living in Miami Florida when
I received a phone call from an old friend named Lou Gladstein.
I knew that Lou
had moved to the country of Haiti, and he said that he wanted me to fly there
as soon as possible to help him with a project.
At the time I
knew that there was a country called Haiti, somewhere, but I didn’t exactly
know where it was, however I was soon to find out all about it.
Once I arrived in
Haiti, my friend Lou and his wife Gladys picked me up at the Francois Duvalier
airport and we drove up into the mountains to an area called Fermathe, where
they were renting a beautiful home owned by Dr. Fritz Cineas, a government
official.
Once we were
there at the house, my friend Lou told me all about why he needed me to help
him.
It seems that he
had acquired the entire Haitian railroad and he needed my help to disassemble
and sell it.
I agreed to help Lou, and I stayed at their
house for a few days discussing the project.
In Haiti, in the
evenings, it was customary to have friends come by for a cup of local coffee, or
a drink of rum and some conversation, so one evening, Lou’s wife invited a Haitian
friend over for supper. His name was Doctor Marc Bulliet.
Mark was a tall,
light skinned, distinguished looking Haitian fellow.
Lou’s wife had said
she liked Marc, because he was an interesting guy, as well as good looking.
Lou jokingly told
me that Marc was a bit of a story teller and probably worked for the C.I.A.
One evening over
coffee, Mark told me that was Haiti’s chief
archaeologist, and he showed me a business card to that effect.
There was no
question about it, I found Marc to be a very interesting and entertaining
fellow.
Besides
from telling me that he was the chief archaeologist in Haiti, it appears that he
also got involved in all sorts of interesting projects and side deals.
Actually I think
it was best to say that Marc was always getting involved in anything that he
could make a buck off.
Marc seemed to
like the fact that I was also interested in getting involved with some of the
deals he was talking about, and believe me Mark had plenty of deals to choose from.
Later that same day,
Mark asked me if I ever had heard about Guano, and I told him that I had read
that Guano or bat droppings was one of the best fertilizers to be had.
I knew that bat Guano was very high in
Nitrogen which made it ideal as a fertilizer. Marc was over-
joyed that he had finally found someone that knew what Guano
was.
Marc said that
he had discovered a big cave in the interior of Haiti that was loaded with Guano.
He said the cave was in a very remote location, but the Guano could be dug up,
bagged and brought to the capitol of Port Au Prince by burro.
Marc wanted me to team up with him and sell
the Guano in the United States.
Well, never
having tried selling Guano, I didn’t know, if I could, so Marc said if I
stopped by his office in downtown Port Au Prince, he would have some samples for
me that he had already prepared, and I could take them back to Miami.
Mark said that
he had already had an official chemical analysis done on the stuff, and I could
use that information to help to sell the Guano in the States.
The next day, Lou
drove me down to Marc’s office in Port au Prince so I could get the samples
before I left Haiti.
We easily found Marc’s office, it was in a very old French
style building with tall rounded top
doors.
His office was on
the ground floor right off the noisy and dusty dirty streets of Port Au Prince.
Mark’s office was
clean and uncluttered.
On Marc’s desk, he had already prepared
several beautiful samples for me.
It appeared that he had obtained some soft
gray, three inch wide soft vinyl tubing, and he had made it into pouches about
eight inches long. Each pouch had the Guano’s chemical analysis neatly typed on
the gray vinyl.
It appeared that the ends of each pouch had
been stapled shut with a simple office stapler. I opened my attache case and
found that six of Marc’s vinyl pouches nested in it perfectly.
I left that morning on an Air Haiti flight to
Miami.
When we arrived
at Miami International Airport, I went directly to the line for returning
American citizens.
The airport was
crowded and noisy, but the line moved quickly.
When the customs officer asked me to open my
attache case, I simply placed it on the inspection table, unclicked the latches
and opened it.
It seemed like
suddenly the entire airport became silent, there wasn’t a sound to be heard.
It was so quiet
that I’m sure you could have even heard a pin drop.
it appeared that everyone in the airport was
staring at the neatly placed vinyl pouches of Guano in my attache case.
I think no one
in the room could believe it, they must all have thought that U.S. Customs had just
caught a cocaine smuggler, and a really dumb one at that.
Suddenly there
were six armed Customs Agents around me.
The head agent in front said, “And what may I ask is
that?” I said, that’s bat Guano, looking
him straight in the eye.
“I’m sure it is”,
he replied, “But it looks like drugs to me,”
They gently
picked up my attache case and marched me to a glass walled office, where the Chief
Customs officer sat.
They placed my attaché
case on his desk and said something to him. I saw his eye brows lift as he
pointed to a chair for me.
“What do we have here he said?” I said they
are all packages of Guano fertilizer, the analysis is typed on each pouch, but
I could see he didn’t believe me.
He sat there thinking
with his finger to his lips.
He placed a
sheet of white paper on his desk and removed one of the pouches. He gently
removed the staples from the end of the pouch with a letter opener, and a
grayish granulated powder came out.
I could tell this was going to get serious.
As the Chief
wet his finger with his tongue, he was going to taste the powder.
Again he said,
“What did you say this was, and where did it come from?”
I said I came from Haiti Sir, and it’s a fertilizer called
Guano, you know “Bat shit”. He immediately withdrew his finger, and decided
against tasting it.
He sat back,
thought for a minute and then told me to take my stuff and get out of there. I
think everyone in the airport was watching me leave.
So as not to
leave you guessing, the next week I made several phone calls to golf courses
and fertilizer distributors, and I got the same story from every one.
I was about fifty years too late with trying
to sell Guano. It used to be popular, but now commercial high Nitrogen fertilizers
are available, they can be made to order and done very cheap.
Oh well, I couldn’t sell the Guano but at
least I got a good story out of it.
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