PLATTSBURGH — Sister Debbie Blow still hates flying but has developed some travel smarts over the years.
The executive director of North Country Mission of Hope, who arrived late last night with 40-plus volunteers in Nicaragua, had been told there would be no customs complications for the Plattsburgh-based group that has traveled there on 44 missions to help the needy.
"But they tried to confiscate four suitcases of reading glasses," she said in a phone interview from Nicaragua on Wednesday afternoon.
Up to that point all had gone smoothly. The mission volunteers had felt like celebrities, Blow said, when at the airport in Houston, a Continental Airlines supervisor had broadcast priority boarding for North Country Mission of Hope.
"We're really proud of the work they do," Blow paraphrased what came next.
And the volunteers, more than half of whom are newcomers this trip, were amazed at how many travelers stopped to ask them what the logo on their bright-pink mission T-shirts stood for.
They arrived in Managua very late Tuesday night and looked forward to reaching Mission of Hope headquarters in Chiquilistagua.
JUST ONE SUITCASE
But the reading glasses got in the way.
Longtime mission volunteer Bill Calmbacher of Schroon Lake had initiated a collection of non-prescription reading glasses after learning the poor in Nicaragua rarely have access to eye care, including glasses to help them see better.
Many people contributed to the effort, and an employee at Walmart in Plattsburgh contacted the company, which donated hundreds of reading glasses.
Mission of Hope had checked beforehand to make sure the eyewear would require no special paperwork when it came off the plane at Managua Airport.
But then an official insisted the four suitcases be held for examination, but Blow, who once sat on a conveyer belt in that same airport to protest impoundment of other mission goods and supplies, found herself protesting.
"You don't need all four" suitcases, she told the official.
Just one contained eyeglasses only, while the others held items of no interest to customs but much needed in the coming six days of mission work.
SEALED FOR SAFETY
Blow won that skirmish, but pushed her luck further.
They could keep the suitcase, which held 300 pairs of glasses, overnight, she asserted, "as long as you put a seal on our container so it is not opened unless I'm present."
Theft of goods entering the country is a big issue.
The official said they had no such seals. Blow pointed out she'd just seen one on a table in an adjacent room.
"I have great peripheral vision," she said, chuckling.
That point won, the Dominican Sister of Hope insisted she wanted to write down the number on the seal.
"Otherwise, they could have cut the (first one) off and put on another one."
That wasn't necessary, the official told her. She said it was.
Late Wednesday afternoon, Blow and others with Mission of Hope were in the town of Jimotepe, ordering supplies to make improvements at the farm owned by Parajito Azul Disability Center, one of many projects volunteers will undertake this week.
Blow had her note with the seal number at hand.
"Next," she said, her tone determined, "we're going to the airport."
Email Suzanne Moore at: smoore@pressrepublican.com
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