Latvia Sends Foreign Aid to Haiti

Latvia has also decided to send aid to Haiti. A Latvian naval vessel will sail tomorrow with 320,000 sals-maize ("salt-bread") baskets as gifts for all the residents of Port-Au-Prince. "The sals-maize basket is a traditional welcome gift for friends in a new home," said Peteris Davana, spokesman of Latvia's Foreign Ministry. "We usually put salt in a basket carved out of rye bread," he said, "the sort we used to call 'bull bread,' since it was so cheap in the Soviet era we fed it to our animals! But now the Soviet bulls are all dead and what else can we do with all this damn bread?" he asked. "We would have sent money, but the IMF's aid package to Latvia has one line item for disaster relief that allows EUR 50,000 to be spent on 'hopeless and desperate countries,' and we have already spent those funds internally, ordering 10 new pin striped leather suits for our Latvian Minister of Finance."
Davana said that Latvians empathize with the Haitians, whose old homes have been obliterated in the recent earthquake, and he hopes the Haitians will have the good sense to be in their new homes before this bread arrives in two weeks' time. "If they aren't, it would be considered rude."