The majority of the time Sowers4Pastors has a blog post about shipping containers, it concerns containers filled with backpacks. Everyone is eager to hear when the backpacks they filled will arrive. Plus, there is usually some added excitement because those containers are filled with goodies that people at customs just might want to get their hands on. Interestingly enough, backpack containers account for less than half of the containers Sowers4Pastors ships each year. Shipping the 3 - 4 containers of food throughout the year is usually a simpler procedure. The same people who donate the food also take care of packing. They know what they’re doing and things almost always go off without a hitch. With only one item on the container - boxes with food in them - the paperwork is less complicated, and generally there are no major issues with getting through customs.
The latest food container was donated by the same people in Minnesota who donate multiple times a year. They are back to their pre-COVID methods, which means they are packing the individual meals at their own facility. This time, enough food packaged to fill a container, but the shipper was unable to find a good option to get the food to Honduras. They explored unique options like sending the food by train to the West Coast and having it go by ship on the Pacific, through the Panama Canal and then back up to Honduras. Fortunately, the man who heads up the food donation ministry is himself a trucker. He volunteered to haul the shipment to the Gulf Coast of Mississippi at no cost. This was a significant donation since he charged for neither his time nor the cost of gas. The person who regularly handles the Sowers4Pastors shipping arranged for warehouse space to hold the contents until it could get on a ship headed for Honduras. A couple of weeks ago, Allen received word that the food had arrived at the port in Honduras..
Then an email arrived from the shippers. The email, which was written in poorly translated English, mentioned that there were customs allegations that the container was carrying plague. Yikes! “Plague” is a poorly translated way of alleging insect or rodent infestations. There has been some speculation that any container that goes through customs now manages to rack up huge storage fees. (While it’s not outside the realm of possibility that there were some bugs in the container, it doesn’t appear there was ever a big issue.) The people on site had to contact the experts from another part of the country to examine the container. Sowers4Pastors paid for extra storage fees and a spray that went on the outside of the food boxes to kill any real or imagined bugs.
This past Saturday, the container was released. With teams coming and going each weekend, Saturdays aren’t the best days to receive a container, but they made it work. Russell was off collecting the new arriving team from the airport in San Pedro. The farm crew was on call to unload the food when the container arrived. Then word came that the truck with the food container had been in an accident. What the what? An accident? What kind of accident? The pictures of the accident soon arrived, leaving almost more questions than answers.
The answers came when the driver from the accident brought the food to Sowers4Pastors. He explained that he was having to make a U-turn when he was barely out of the port. Another driver saw him too late and had to make a large swerve to keep from hitting the food container. But wait! If the driver swerved then why was there a huge hole in the back passenger side of the food container? Well, the largeness of the swerve coupled with the apparent speed of the second driver sent container #2 airborne! It flew through the air like a giant clumsy bird that shouldn’t attempt flight and tore open the food container. A lot of boxes of food got crashed upon impact.
The police were called to secure the scene because truck accidents are always looted. Trish has witnessed such scenes and described it by saying, “A truck goes off the road and is opened up in the crash . . . and then people come like a stream of ants to pick up the contents.” Thanks to the fast action of the police, they didn’t lose a lot to looting.
The newly ventilated container was taken to a location where they could move the food to another container. Apparently this process could have been more gentle, as even the "undamaged" boxes arrived looking quite distressed. The container arrived in Gracias at about 8:00 pm. When opened, it revealed loose bags of food.
The crew filled sacks with individual bags of food. Then they got to the stacks of boxes. FYI, cardboard boxes aren’t really designed to sustain the impact of a flying container filled with whatever the 2nd container was filled with. The boxes were falling apart and falling apart boxes don’t stack particularly well in a warehouse. When the wonky boxes were moved from the container, more loose food was revealed at the back of the container. The process of unloading the container and moving the contents (such as they were) to the warehouse went on until almost 2:00 am. Allen and Kirstin worked with the crew even though Allen had to be up at 5:30 to go out with the team.
Sowers4Pastors will be submitting a claim for a loss of about $1000, but they don’t know what will happen with that. The team that is currently on the ground has three days of scheduled backpack distribution and then they will move on to other tasks. The plan had been for them to prepare backpacks to make sure everything will be ready for the next teams. Now, it’s looking like they might also be sorting through food in the warehouse. Any food that is spilling out and can’t be used at feeding centers will be fed to the Sowers’ hogs, so it won’t entirely go to waste.
The upside to this week is that Brandy is finally in Gracias. His first day of work with Sowers4Pastors was Tuesday. Everyone is quite excited to have him there, particularly Rachel and their boys.
- posted by Christi
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