Reconditioned ASEB bus with its new logo, ready to begin its journey to the Adalberto Guirola Children’s Home in El Salvador.
Last month we let you know about the bus that ASEB donated to the Adalberto Guirola Children’s Home, an orphanage for disabled children in El Salvador. Ken Karasinski, owner of Nor-Cal Mobility reconditioned the bus that had once taken ASEB participants to their day programs. He gave the bus a complete tune-up, renovated its interior to include six wheelchair tie-down positions and two double-passenger flip-up seats, and installed a commercial-grade wheelchair lift. Janice Walker of Project S.A.V.E. and Courtney Casey from The Arc of Butte County donated approximately 20 wheelchairs, the same number of walkers, bathing chairs, chair tables, a hospital bed, and much needed supplies such as braces, canes, crutches, hospital gowns, sterile gloves, bandages, syringes, catheters–supplies worth about $60,000 to $70,000 in all.
The bus was ready to embark on its journey at the end of January, but like a lot of trips, this one encountered a few bumps in the road. “Sometimes I feel like a pioneer, like I’m in Missouri, and want to go to the West Coast,” Ken says. “Like the Donner Party, we’ve encountered a lot of forks in the road.” Not surprisingly, the paperwork is overwhelming, and information about customs policies is often both hard to come by, and contradictory. To be shipped, the bus must be drained of all fluids, have a bulkhead built, be tied down, and have the wheels removed. The cargo must be loaded and inventoried on the departure, and someone must be waiting at the other end to see the bus through El Salvadoran customs, no easy task. Any items not listed on the manifest can result in exorbitant fines, and none of this takes into account the actual journey, which can either be overland through Mexico, or by sea via container ship.
Ken, who is the uncle of two children adopted from the Guirola Children’s Home, remains optimistic and stresses that it’s just a matter of time before the bus is rumbling over El Salvadoran roads and bringing the children the services and supplies they need. “The ASEB bus is making the first trip. After this, we’ll know the ropes and things will be a lot easier,” he says. His hope is that more buses will be donated so that he can recondition them and send them to follow in the first bus’s tire treads.
In the meantime, stay tuned. We’ll keep you posted on new developments and let you know when the bus is on its way.