We had an adventure yesterday. We had to work Agape mail, as did a friend of ours from a mission north of us. Karen got to our place, we started out nice and early, arrived in Port in good fashion. Karen had some business to do, we had some business as well, got that all done and on to Agape. We worked our hour and a half, no problem, in fact boring as there were not many customers to wait on. When we finished there at 1:30PM, we went to eat lunch (across the street). Lunch, in case you are wondering, consisted of a cheese sandwich for me (Gary has meat on his) a small cup of Haitian coffee, and a coke. (Plenty of caffeine). Back in the truck to the Caribbean Super Market. We took our time shopping because this was our first trip there since we arrived in Haiti on the 5th of September. (It's the only place we can purchase meat and a few American items not found anyplace else).
When we left the Caribbean, Gary decided to go out of Port the back way because the traffic would be horrific on Delmas. Well, the traffic was more than horrific on this back way. It's a long way out of town and we crept along, sitting for long periods and for what reason we still don't know. By now it was after four, and it gets dark at 5:30 and we aren't close to getting out of the city. (NO one ever wants to be in Port on the roads after dark). When we got to the main road, Gary decided not to go through Bon Repot because of traffic so he went left to the shorter way out of town, which was a longer way because we were far away from the shorter way, but that's what we did. Finally, after 5 PM we were headed to the highway.
Darkness dropped on us quickly as it always does but there were lots of dark clouds in the sky so it wasn't long until it was raining. Not a good thing either in the dark on the highway. Since construction has begun on our new highway there are piles of rocks that cut the road in half (because they are working on drainage systems, very important but can be quite hazardous when the road is cut down to a one way.
When we got about an hour from St Marc, traffic came to a dead stop. People were milling around and it was evident there was an accident ahead. Two trucks tried to pass one another in an area where there was a rock pile. Impossible! They collided. No one was hurt, we understand, but here we sat, in the rain, in the dark, and could go nowhere. Gary finally got out, walked to the accident site, came back with this report. If they would move the rock pile all traffic could get through. But no one would touch the rocks, they weren't their rocks to touch.
We waited until a policeman came. He moved all traffic to one side saying there was a truck coming to move the trucks. Now we were pinned in. Karen, in the meantime, called her Haitian assistant to come with his truck to get her. He was coming from De Shappelles which is about an hour or more from St Marc. We knew that if we could get turned around, we could go back to Montrouis, to Mike and Marions' house and spend the night. But, we had to wait with Karen and we were pinned in.
The rain fell harder. A guy came by selling Conche(snails with hot sauce) and of course, we weren't interested. It would have been nice had someone come by with water, but no one thought of it, I suppose. We did get a laugh out of the fact that this little business man was seizing an opportunity.
Finally, Karen's guy called to say he was on the other side of the blockage, Gary went to meet him to bring him to Karen. Karen and I discussed the fact that we didn't think things through clearly, as she should have gone with Gary but there are always those "duh" moments in what we considered a crisis.
Karen gone, we sat with the rain pouring and thoughts of "we could sleep here, couldn't we?" When thirst was about to overtake me, I remembered buying two bottles of grape juice. Gary got out in the dark, rummaged through the groceries and found them. Ah, relief from thirst!!! Now what? He decided that if the guy in front of us would pull up he could swing between two big trucks that were beside us. The guy wasn't around.
Several young men approached us to say they would show us the route to St Marc. They were pesty and this was becoming a tense situation. Just about the time Gary emphatically said, "NO" (because there was no other route to St Marc, we knew that). The truck in front of us not only moved up but moved out completely. It didn't take a rocket scientist to tell us to get out of there quickly now that there was room for us to swing between the big trucks. The thugs were still trying to stop us and get us to listen to them. We were out of there and on our way to Mike and Marion's house.
Gary was wet, we were both tired, the truck had to be unloaded of groceries (ours and Karen's). Mike and Marion asked if we'd like to sleep on air mattresses, yes that would be fine. They blew them up, we plopped down with our clothes on, and had a night's rest. This morning, we made our way back to St Marc. Had the moved the trucks?? No, they moved the rocks!!!!
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