Haiti in a Time of Crisis

It has been a rough couple of months for businesses operating in Haiti. There have been massive protests since September as the people are adamant that the current president of Haiti, Jovenel Moise, step down.  Jovenel is a truly shameless man, he and his party stole a 2 billion dollar loan that the Venezuelan oil company gave to Haiti.  Under his watch, the price of core goods in the country has also skyrocketed.

One of the most popular protest methods is to block major roads.  Protesters use a variety of objects to block the roads.  The most popular way to do it is with trees, branches, burning tires, pieces of zinc roofing and really anything else they can get their hands on.  With the roads blocked like this we cannot get to DHL to ship our products to the United States.  It is extremely frustrating to have products finished for our clients orders and not be able to get those products to the US to send to the clients.  Our local bank branch has also been unwilling to allow us to make significant withdrawals since August, which has made it exceedingly difficult for us to pay our employees and other operating expenses.

We do try to keep things in perspective, it is true that our ability to send needlepoint products to the US and generally operate has been hampered.  This is hard on us and it is easy to get angry at the protesters.  The flip side of this is that the majority of Haitians are currently suffering in ways that we cannot fully comprehend.  A significant majority of the country are going hungry, unable to get decent medical care when ill and unable to find work.  We are hopeful that the president will soon step down and things will begin to improve for us and the Haitian people.