|
9/9/07
A NOTE FROM TIM:
Within the Possibilities of a Day in Haiti
(an account of Tim's day on Friday, Sept. 7, 2007)
At 4:30 A.M. my alarm goes off for me to get up. I'm meeting a
pastor in downtown Cayes at 5:30 to head out into the country. After
reading and praying, I still find myself in a scramble to finish grabbing
the things I need to take on the trip, and still meet him on time. As I
head out of the house, I'm greeted by the resounding crow of roosters and
the thought struck me that this is so typical of Haiti. I was hoping
that I had the right gas station in mind to meet the pastor, as my
communication in Creole could still use some improvement, and thankfully
I went to the right spot. He was already waiting for me there. As I saw
him, I thought again of how typical his appearance was for Haiti. He had
jugs tied to the front of the motorcycle, a large soft sided suitcase in
front if him, a large man riding behind him, and a box strapped on behind
that man. The passenger was trying to balance his feet on the bar by the
tire rather than having foot pegs to put his feet on. I was hoping he
wouldn't get his foot caught in the tire or the chain. We started on our
way and I took the lead, but soon noticed the pastor was not keeping up
at all. After a few times of slowing down and waiting for him to catch
up, I decided to try to relieve him of the large carryon in front of him
so he could see better. We tried again and when we got into the
mountains his motorcycle just didn't have the power to go very fast at
all. I was thinking of the three different villages and possibly a
fourth that I needed to get to today, so I stopped him and offered to
take his passenger and told him I would meet him at his village. He asked
me to first look at his brakes, and I found out he had no rear brakes at
all. I made an adjustment so he had brakes in the back and shuddered at
the thought of the mountainous road ahead of us. He took off while I
reloaded, but it did not take long before I quickly over took him and
left him behind on the mountain hills and curves.
As I leave the end of the blacktop, it becomes very apparent that
they had a lot of rain the night before making the road a great
challenge. Time after time, I have huge, deep mud puddles across the
whole road and I'm trying to decide which way to go and what is below the
water that I can't see. On one occasion, I decided to try the right
side, but fell into a hole in the puddle and bogged down and couldn't go
forward. The passenger and I both put our feet down to balance the bike
and get off, but to our surprise, the bottom of the puddle wasn't where
we thought it would be and we sunk almost to our knees and lost our
balance and fell in the puddle with the bike falling on top of us. As I
stood up I realized one of my shoes was missing and was in the bottom of
the hole. After fishing with my foot I finally found it. We pushed the
bike, with the tire spinning, and finally got the bike to climb out of
the hole. When I looked back, my passenger was fishing around up to his
elbows in the puddle. I asked him what he was looking for and he said he
couldn't find his shoe. He finally found it and we were on our way
again. We found some fresh water ahead and we kind of washed the mud out
of our clothes.
Shortly after getting going again, we soon noticed we had a flat
tire. We asked around for someone who could fix a tire, we were told
that we had to backtrack to a repair place. We pushed the motorcycle
quite a ways and just as we arrived at the tire place, the pastor met us
still coming from the other direction. He stopped with us for a while
and I suggested that he go on and we would catch up with him, but he said
that he needed his clutch looked at first. I looked at his clutch and it
was half frozen up, so the mechanic took the cable apart and looked at
it. He made some adjustments and got him going again. The pastor joked
around a while and then took off without paying. Conveniently, I was
there to pick up the tab.
The rivers were running high because of the recent rain, with
murky, churning water. The farther west I went, the higher the waters
got. Without bridges and with changing bottoms of moving, loose gravel
or small boulders, this fast paced, deep water can be quite a challenge
to maneuver. I finally made it to my first planned stop, and the pastor
was there to meet me. He wanted me to check out some hurricane damage to
the school roof that was attached to the church.
It was there I swapped passengers, picking up the pastor of my
next planned village stop. He was counseled, against his will, to go up
river further, by some local people, before trying to cross the river
again. When we reached the river again we asked the local people the best
place to cross. Since they could not all agree, it didn't appear to be a
good sign. After making it halfway across I stopped on a gravel bar to
chose the next course of action. The pastor suggested a few times that we
head downstream a little as he thought the other bank looked better to
climb out. We plunged back into the water again to only hit a deeper hole
where the current quickly swept the wheels of the motorcycle out from
under us. There was no fear of drowning because the water was not that
deep, but rather we were trying to find footing to upright the motorcycle
again as we were being drug along downstream. The motor died before I
could shut it off, but it had already taken in water. We pushed it out
the other side with some help, and took stock of our situation. We were
soaking wet, my phone no longer worked, our luggage was wet, some mail I
was carrying for a missionary up there was wet and we had no tools to be
able to take the spark plug out to drain the water out of the motor. A
Haitian went for some tools and came back with a broken wrench and a
small crescent wrench. I told him that would not work and he needed to
find another wrench. We pushed the bike to someone's yard, locked it up,
and asked the pastor how far to walk the rest of the way. He said 15
minutes, so I decided we would do that while the Haitian was finding a
wrench. Thirty minutes later of fast walking, we finally saw his church.
After measuring and clarifying dimensions and taking some pictures,
(thankful for a water proof camera), I was anxious to head back to work
on my bike because I was already late to meet the next pastor and I had a
ways to go and I wasn't sure how long it would take to fix my motorcycle.
As I prepared to leave, the pastor insisted I come up to his house to
eat and drink. Knowing this was the culture, I went and as quickly as
possible I ate a little and drank a little and he finally let me go.
When I got to my bike, the Haitian had found a wrench, so I was able to
remove the spark plug and blow the water out of the engine. We got it
running and headed back down to cross the river where I successfully
crossed the first time. I picked up the first passenger and we headed
back across the same river for the fourth time. Once again I fell into a
hole of loose, moving gravel and the current swept the bike out from
under me again. This time I was on the downstream side of the bike and
the motorcycle was pushing against me. I struggled to get to my feet and
then got the bike up with some help but this time it was a little less
time consuming to get the motorcycle back on the road because I just had
to get the water out of the carburetor.
I finally made it to my next planned stop. After visiting with
the pastor, I found out that his multipurpose church/school building was
not yet ready for the roof. My paperwork said that it had been ready for
almost a year. Since it was still another half hour away, I told him
that I did not need to look at it until it was ready.
I left for home, still carrying the man that now was taking a
ride back to Cayes and after a while I had another flat tire. We found
someone to change the tire and he had some handy little, store bought,
peel and stick patches. My passenger was holding the nuts and washers
from the tire as it was being changed. While we waited I shared some of
my fruit that I had with him and he ate it and threw the peelings away.
When it was time to put the tire back on, we asked him for the nuts and
washers, but he couldn't find them. I asked him if he threw them out
with the peelings and he got a strange look on his face and went fishing
in the huge puddle that he had thrown the peelings in. (Later, this
became much more humorous than at the time when I was in the middle of
this dilemma.) Praise God, miraculously, he found all of the parts, and
we put it back together again. The nice, store bought, peel and stick
patches lasted for about 30 minutes down the road and then the tire went
flat again. I think they need to add a little glue. We found someone
again for the third time that could repair a flat. By the time he
finished fixing it, it was pretty much dark but I was once again on the
black topped road. Some time later, but before getting to Cayes, I had
the fourth flat, but I decided to limp into Cayes since it was dark and
had been for sometime. As they were repairing my tire again, there was a
large bus that had been broken down on the way from Port-au-Prince to
Jeremy. People were standing around everywhere and one person started
begging for food from me. After I told them a little of my day, the left
me alone and seemed content that I could understand a little of what
their "normal" days are like. I watched what I think was the driver of
the bus, as he sat there with deep creases in his forehead. It was
almost 9:00 P.M. and he had hours to go with his busload of people on a
terrible road in the mountains. Having some bus driving experience, I
could empathize with him, knowing what he had ahead of him on that
mountain road.
I finally made it home around 9:00 P.M. and I had to thank God
that I am learning a little more each day about the Haitian life and
relating to what is sometimes "normal" here. This was just one day of my
life, but I wondered what kind of stories so many Haitians could tell me
about days of their lives.
|
|
