Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Day 6

Day 6 

ADVENTURE DAY! 
Boy oh boy did we have an adventure today. 
2 people got up with the chicken nugget disease. Great way to start the morning ;) 
After chores and breakfast, 10 of us piled into a truck. We rented it from Dodo's (our full time employee) friend. Dodo was our driver. Driving in Haiti is not like anywhere else. They don't have stop lights, they don't exactly use lanes, I'm not even sure if they have speed limits, they definitely have no laws against people and/or animals hanging off moving vehicles and they use their horn as a warning that they're coming around a blind corner, they're passing you or they're driving through what should be a four way stop.  
I had piled in the bed of the truck with 5 of the volunteers. And the other 3 were sitting in the truck. 
The 2 hour drive to Jacmel was definitely an experience! 
We drove past a Moto driver with a large hog tied up and hanging off the back. We got yelled at by someone saying, "I hate you all crackers!"  Another man politely told one of the other volunteers to, "Sit your ass there!" As he pointed to the bed of the truck (Michael had been sitting on the edge). We drove through a river where some local showed us the most shallow way to get through. When we refused to pay him he through a rock at us! With every pot hole we felt as if we were being tossed up  in the air and dropped on the very soft, very comfort able bed of the truck. Our driver stalled on a vertical cement and gravel road. As he put the the break on we skidded back down the hill just barely stopping before hitting a cement wall. This happened a few times before he slammed on the gas in first gear. The truck started to grip the road beneath the tired. We could smell the transmission dying as started moving upward. We were just glad to be passed that hill!
We finally made it to Jacmel! We took a very short hike, with a bunch of locals guiding the way and offering to carry our bags (most likely just expecting money). We had to climb down a short rope and we got to a beautiful waterfall! We jumped in and swam around. It wasn't even that cold! In Hawaii sometimes the water falls would be really cold, but here it felt nice! We climbed up, went behind the waterfall and jumped off into the pool of sea foam water.  It was so beautiful! 
Some young local boys started climbing a lot higher and jumping from way above us. A couple of them got a sprinting start from what must've been 50ft up. It started out less steep from that high up and slowly went into 180 degree angle. They ran down this incredibly steep slope until it became too steep and they ended up jumping. It was scary to watch. If they tripped or lost their balance or anything they would have a huge rocky fall. 
I tried to climb up to the middle spot. There were some natural foot holes and hand grabs a couple inches to the right from where the water fall was coming down. I fell after my first attempt. It was pretty pathetic. Luckily there was a rock ledge I fell onto so I didn't smack my body all the way down. I scraped up my knee a little. In the water it always looks worse because the blood is mixing with the water. So it looked like I was bleeding a ton when it really wasn't that bad. The locals yelled at me to not climb but I got some help and made it up the second time. I love waterfalls. And jumping off rocks into water. It reminded me of the water fall from Tuck Everlasting. But this one was greener and sunnier. 
The local boys were fearless the whole time. There was one completely naked boy who must've been around 7 years old. I have no idea how he was able to climb up (the climbing holes were far apart) but he was jumping off the second spot into the pool. I jumped off the second spot but definitely did NOT attempt the top spot. I could just imagine myself changing my mind mid sprint and tumbling down the rest of the way. 
When we got back to our car all the locals who had been with us expected money. It's always so awkward refusing to pay someone but we didn't have any money and we didn't ask them to come! 
We went to a beach to eat lunch and hang out at. There were tons of people covering the beach. Playing soccer in the sand, wading in the water about waist deep, people everywhere! And we were most definitely the only white people for miles. As soon as we sat down people started coming near us. Laying down artwork, holding out jewelry, holding baskets of snacks towards us. They weren't as aggressive as people in Israel but they definitely were not subtle either. As soon as we got into the water people started flocking toward us. I talked with a couple as best I could for a while. One guy knew pretty good English. He said he was very happy he got to swim in the ocean with me. I think that must mean or have something to do with having sex because as soon as he said it he got very embarrassed and said, "No, no, no, no! I do not mean that way..." Ha! I just laughed. We continued to talk as I moved out a little deeper into the ocean. The guy I was talking to said, "excuse me, I cannot swim."  As I looked around the beach 
Our group of volunteers separated from the rest of the people at the beach but there were a couple young men who stayed about 6 ft away from us for a very long time. It was quite strange and funny. They kept trying to talk with us. They were obviously just following the girls around. And I'm pretty sure they couldn't swim because anytime we went out passed where we could touch they didn't follow. They're all surrounded by the ocean and yet so many of them still cannot swim. 
After playing in the ocean I played "soccer" (we were just kicking a plastic soda bottle around) with a couple little boys on the beach. 
On our drive home we pulled over for a potty break. Our driver wasn't even phased. That's completely normal here. People just pee literally wherever and mwhenever. A couple min after we started driving again we began to go up a steep hill again. Dodo (our driver) tried to shift down to be able to drive up the hill but the car wouldn't shift! He turned the car off before we started to roll backwards. He said something to Matt in Creole. Matt then jumped out of the car real fast and started searching for something. I asked him what he was doing and he said we needed to find rocks to put under the tires. 
They then lifted the hood of the car and started trying to figure out what was wrong with it. Because of the transmission smell coming from the car earlier that day and the problems shifting I was pretty sure we weren't going to be able to fix the problem right there on the side of the mountain. 
Not too long fate we had stopped the car an empty taptap pulled over along with another car. I couldn't understand what they were saying. I just assumed that they wanted money because they saw a bunch of white people stuck on the side of the mountain. I felt a little bad about assuming that when they pulled out a chain and started hooking up the little truck to our very large truck. They somehow thought that their little truck would be able to pull ours up the mountain. I don't want to say I had a lack of faith... But I did. They had the majority of us sit in the back of the little truck while it tried to pull and then they had a few of us (myself included) get in the other car. The truck tried pulling for about 3 seconds before the both started rolling backwards. They quickly detached the two trucks from one another and then started attaching the car I was in to the very large truck. I had just watched the two cars before begin to slide back do again I was lack faith that this would work. Especially since the car we were in was smaller than the truck that had just attempted to pull! We didn't budge more than a few inches forward before we started rolling backwards with the truck. It wasn't going to work so the driver quickly breaked and then unattached us. 
It was all quite strange. The man whose car we were in didn't speak English. He, Dodo and the other taptap driver kept communicating but I had know idea what was going on. I was sitting in a random Haitian mans car with three other sustain Haiti volunteers. About a min later the driver of our car got in, shut the door and started driving away... With me and the other three volunteers in the car. I couldn't communicate with him and I had no idea why we were driving away or if he had communicated with the other members of our group. None of us had a phone. Nathan, the only boy with us, speaks French and tried to ask if we were going to wait for everyone else. The driver didn't respond. Nathan tried again and the driver pulled over to the side of the road so we assumed we were waiting for the rest of our group. We looked and saw the taptap, that had all the other volunteers in it, driving up the hill behind us. But as it drove past us we saw that it was empty. The rest out group wasn't sitting in the back anymore! Our driver began to follow that taptap anyways. We were quite confused and our driver hardly responded as Nathan tried to communicate. We gathered that he was driving passed the city we were staying in so he would just drop us off. 
Before we got to Leogone there was a police checkpoint. They stopped us and asked the driver to show us his papers. Apparently his registration was over 2 years expired. There was a lot of yelling back and forth. I had no idea what was going on. I was just chilling in the back of a strangers car, with cops yelling at him while in a foreign country. Rhiannon, one of the volunteers, took a picture through the window. One of the cops saw her, opened her door and told her to give him get phone. He angrily started telling the other cop that she had taken a photo. The other cop grabbed the phone walked over to us and said it was no problem, we could take as many pictures as we wanted. I knew he was being sincere but it almost sounded like a threat. The cop then explained to Nathan, in French, that they had to confiscate the car so we would have to find a different way home. 
Luckily the taptap driver had stayed and waited through this whole process. We ended up jumping in the back of the taptap and getting a ride back to Leogane. They dropped us off in the city center, we had hardly any money so we only gave them a tiny bit but they were happy with it. I felt a little bad for thinking they were only helping us for money. We then walked the rest of the way home. Stoked to make it to food and water. 
The rest of the group made it home about an hour and a half later. They had quite the adventure as well. They ended up getting pulled out by another truck. Dodo's friend who had loaned us the car wasn't even mad about his truck! People here keep surprising me. 
We were very glad to have all made it home safely! 

The boys I played with at the beach. Matt gave them some water. 

Stuck on the side of the mountain. The black car in the front is the one that "kidnapped" us. 

The police security checkpoint. 

Riding in the back if the taptap after being stopped by the police. 

Dropped off in the city center trying to find our way home. 

Watching the sunset from the roof. 

1 comment:

  1. my goodness girl... a little too much of an adventure for a mothers heart. Please stay safe and come home in one piece.. have fun, please make good decisions... you are doing a wonderful work...

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