The Guano Smuggling Story

1967

A True Story

Written 01/2010* 1,132 Words*

By Howard Yasgar

It was in in 1967 when I received a call from my old friend Lou, he was calling me from Port Au Prince Haiti.

Lou wanted me to fly to Haiti to assist him in disassembling and then selling the remains of the Haitian National railroad that he had acquired.

I flew over to Haiti a few days later.

Once I was in Port Au Prince, Lou drove me up into the mountains to an area called Fermathe, where he and his wife Gladys were leasing a house from Doctor Fritz Cineas, a government official

One evening, Lou’s wife Gladys invited one of their Haitian friends over for supper, his name was Doctor Marc Bulliet.

Gladys said, she thought I would like Marc because he was a consultant involved in many different things going on in Haiti.

Gladys also said she thought Marc was somehow employed by the Haitian government, but Lou jokingly said he thought Marc was probably working for the C.I.A.

Either way, when I met Marc, I thought he was a very interesting guy.

Marc was a tall light skinned Haitian, who appeared to be around 40 years old.

He was smartly dressed, and had graying hair, I thought he looked like a College Professor.

Marc said that among many things he did, he was also the Chief Archeologist of Haiti, and he handed me his official business card that said the same.

Marc also said that he worked as a freelance consultant, and over the years he had worked for many foreign companies in Haiti, so I asked him what he was working on now?

Marc asked me if I had ever heard of Bat Guano.

I said yes I knew about it, Guano or bat droppings, was supposed to be one of the best fertilizers, because it was high in Nitrogen.

Marc said he was very surprised to finally find someone that was familiar with Bat Guano.

Marc said, that while he was working as a consultant, he had discovered large caves in Haiti that had Guano several feet thick on the floor.

Marc said he thought that there were many tons of Guano that could be mined.

However, Marc said the Guano caves were very remote and located in the interior of Haiti.

Marc wanted to know if I would be interested in representing him, and selling Bat Guano in the United States?

I said that I was interested and I would stop by his office the next day and pick up some samples to take back to Miami with me.

The next day, Lou took me to Marc’s office in downtown Port Au Prince.

Sitting on Marc’s desk were several sample pouches of Guano that he had prepared for me.

Marc had used eight-inch-long pieces of three-inch diameter soft gray vinyl cloth tubing.

He had typed the chemical composition of the Guano on the tubing pouches before filling them with Guano and stapling the ends shut.

Each bag of Guano looked like an eight-inch-long gray vinyl salami, and the six of them nested perfectly into my Samsonite attaché case.

When I arrived in Miami, I went directly to the line for returning American citizens.

The airport was very busy and extremely noisy, but the line moved along quickly.

When the Customs Inspector asked me to open my attaché case, I simply placed it on the inspection table, unclicked the latches and opened it up.

It seemed like suddenly the entire airport became very quiet and you would hear a pin drop.

Everyone in the airport was staring at the neatly placed vinyl pouches of guano in my attaché case.

I think they must have thought that U.S. Customs had just caught a cocaine smuggler, and a dumb one at that.

Suddenly there were six-armed Customs agents standing all around me.

One of the agents said, “And what may I ask is that?” I said, “It’s bat Guano”.

“I’m sure it is, he said, but it looks like drugs to me”.

They gently picked up my attaché case and marched me to an office where the chief customs officer was sitting.

They placed my attaché case on his desk and they whispered something to him. I saw his eyebrows lift as he pointed to a chair, motioning an Agent to sit me down.

“What do we have here he said?”

I said, they are all packages of Bat Guano fertilizer, you can see the analysis is typed on each pouch.

I could see he didn’t believe me.

He just sat there with his finger to his lips, thinking.

He placed a piece of white paper on his desk and removed one of the vinyl pouches.

He gently removed the staples from the end of the pouch with a letter opener, and a grayish granulated powder came out on the paper.

The Customs Chief wetted his finger with his tongue, he was going to taste the powder, and again he said, “What did you say this was, and where did it come from”?

I said it came from Haiti, and it’s a fertilizer called Guano, you know, it’s “Bat Shit”.

He immediately withdrew his finger, deciding against tasting it, instead he put some in as vial and shook it.

He sat back in his chair, thought for a minute, then told me to take all my stuff and get out of there.

Everyone in the airport was still watching me as I left his office.

The following week I contacted several fertilizer distributors and a few local golf courses in Miami, trying to sell the Guano.

They all said the same thing to me; it seems that I was about 50 years too late. No one needed Guano anymore as high Nitrogen fertilizer was cheaply available everywhere.

Now that’s a guano smuggling story.