"What Happens If You Love It?"

So it has taken me a month to post this, but I suppose the 13-month mark is significant as well…

Maybe it’s the OCD, but it really seemed necessary for me to have some sort of blog related to the fact that I’ve now been here a year. But nothing terribly unusual happened that day. I had plans to get a ride to the first street food place I ate in PAP. Naturally that didn’t work out, since it was planned, but I did get to ride home with the police after our truck left us sit at an orphanage. Other than that, nothing to write home about. Today, however, in the midst of a perhaps not-so-wise choice, I figured it might be appropriate to dedicate a post to a few of the multiple ways I’ve been protected this year.

            My very first terrifying experience occurred about 16 hours after I arrived in Saint-Marc. Apparently I have a food allergy. Granted, I overreacted to the way the death oranges made my lips and tongue go numb, but at the time, it was quite concerning. I didn’t like Haiti, really hated that I was here, and I was convinced something bad was going to happen to me. It only seemed logical to assume the worst.

            Obviously, I lived to get into more trouble. Sometime during my first week at the clinic, I think it may have even been my second day there, I still didn’t have my consistent hired moto driver. The nurses were waiting with me to make sure that I got home. At some point, a car stopped further up the road, and Anedzia and one of the other nurses went to talk to the driver. Next thing I know, I’m being instructed to get in the car with everyone because this man is going to take us home.  We drive off down the road, Yvena and I sitting on top of each other in the front seat, dropping people off as we go. At some point, the driver shook my hand and introduced himself to me. He then did the same with each of the nurses and I became mildly uncomfortable as I realized that not a single one of us knew who this man was.

            We drove past the road back to my house and up into some hills where we dropped another nurse off. A few moments later, the driver stopped in front of a gate and everyone looked at me. “Your house?” they asked me. Not even close. We sat there a few minutes trying to figure out where I lived. Eventually, I managed to describe the park (that we’d passed awhile before) and felt mildly confident that if we could get back to the park, I could get myself home from there. As we drove back down towards the center of town, we came upon a rukus in the street. Some sort of fight had broken out, stopping a Coke truck from moving any further. More and more people gathered until they were engulfing our car like an amoeba. Vehicle violence is fairly common here…not that I knew that at the time, I was just concerned because I’d only been in the country for a week. But just as quickly as they appeared, the crowd moved on and we continued down the road to the correct gate.

            And then I moved to Port-au-Prince, where I’ve encountered a whole host of vehicle-related incidents.

Our truck is a piece of junk. A clinking, clanking, clattering collection of caliginous junk. Since we bought the truck in February, we’ve replaced the tires (who else knew that tires have little copper thread things in them?! They make funny noises when they rub against the road), caliper seals (twice), calipers, ball joints, something to do with a crankshaft, the shocks and the radiator. Apparently the engine isn’t attached right or something so every time we stop quickly, it bangs into the radiator. Still to repair: brake lights and rear window, which got broken while I was in church. I’m going to pretend the fresh oil spots in the driveway are from someone else’s car.  Mark would always say: “The squeaking means its working.” Hopefully the other noises mean the same.

            One evening, Jon and I were traveling with a volunteer up into the hills in our rear-wheel drive truck. I’d been to the house we were going to once before (in March), so I felt confident that I had a vague idea of where it was. We turned onto the correct road, which is basically a switchback, but then missed the switchback into the gate. We drove up the gravel road a bit further until I was sure we’d gone too far. At this point the road split – to the left it went up and to the right it went down, these two roads parallel to each other. We went up to the left and started backing down to turn around. I was looking out the passenger window and began thinking to myself, “Hey, we’re going to fall off the side of this road here,” but didn’t manage to get those words out of my mouth before we started leaning, as my side of the truck was now on the road down and the other was on the road up. We tried backing up a little more, but didn’t succeed in moving in reverse, only in tipping more to the side.

            We sat there for a bit at a 45 degree angle, just hanging out and discussing things. At some point, Jon said, “Okay, we’re going to roll, so Sarah cover your head on the right side.” I actually felt okay with that at that particular time, because it seemed like it was all happening pretty slowly. I figured we’d just tip onto our side and then someone would pull me out the drivers’ side window.

            But at some point during these minutes where we were sitting there and the Haitians are trickling out of the bushes to spectate and offer advice (very common occurrence, but usually there are enough of them to help – this was too big of a pickle), I realized that we weren’t just going to roll onto our side. There was going to be far too much momentum and we were going to continue flipping right off the other side of the road. If you’ll recall, I mentioned that we were driving into the hills, so we had a good 40-foot fall onto the paved road below and no trees to stop us, thanks to the 98% deforestation. That’s when I began to be concerned. I was sitting half cross-legged with my foot against the door and in between thinking, “This is stupid, I really am going to die in Haiti,” I wondered if my whole foot was going to break or just my toes.

            Eventually, Jon said that I should get out of the truck. Hillari and I were concerned about opening my door because we didn’t want the weight of it to send us over the edge. Jon just kept saying, “It’ll be fine, just do it very slowly – you’re going to have to hang onto it because it’s going to fly open.” I wasn’t sure how I was going to open the door slowly and keep from falling right out onto the ground. I also remember thinking about whether or not I should take my shoes – my favorite flip flops (bought on the boardwalk in 2002). I couldn’t find them with my feet for a bit, the darkness combined with my shaking and the fact that somehow two pairs of Hillari’s shoes had ended up at my feet as well. Luckily, I was eventually successful in locating my shoes and then managed to wedge myself into the truck while opening the door.

            I emerged and rounded the truck. “So what’s going on?” Jon yelled out his window. What went on in my head was, “…I don’t really know what to say to that…our left rear tire is three feet off the ground and we’re beside a cliff?” None of that actually came out of my mouth, except maybe the part about the tire, I just kept looking at the truck and shrugging.

            More Haitians had appeared by that time, and Jon decided he would get out of the truck to assess the situation. Hillari remained inside. I stood there beside the truck holding Jon’s door open (or, rather, up in the air) because I didn’t know what his lack of weight in the truck and the shutting of the door would do. At this point, we called Sam, the person we were going to visit, to see if he could bring some people and help us. The Haitians had brought with them one ratchet strap and were attaching it to some part of our lift kit. They then decided to get Hillari out. Jon and two Haitians were standing on top of the running board and the suspended tire to keep weight on it while they pulled her out.

            At some point during all of this, while I stood there next to Hillari, our “atheist Jew,” I started praying out loud. I don’t remember what I said other than, “Dear Jesus…thanks, amen.”

            Jon handed me his camera eventually and said, “Grosh, get way down there and record all this.” So I trekked down the road a ways, watching for Sam to come driving up and hopefully rescue us. But it was another random car that drove up. It was a Haitian man in a suit, the car still decorated from a wedding. They pulled some of the bows off his car and attached our truck to it with the ratchet strap. The thoughts running through my mind at that point were, “I hope I can find my wallet with my drivers license, nursing license, credit card, and $300 of DIRT money in all the wreckage when we get to the bottom of the hill…or is it all going to burst into flames? What happens when the EMS people don’t have their vehicle?” But finally, with like 8 Haitians standing on the side of our truck, Jon turned it back on and backed it up…or the wedding car guy pulled…maybe some of both – I was intent on my filming after the “GROSH ARE YOU GETTING THIS?” and missed the details. Nevertheless, they got our truck upright again, it still runs, and nobody was hurt. Held up pretty well for a piece of junk.

            These are the things I pondered today on my walk. I had three female volunteers with me, as we had been doing education for a women’s group run by a non-medical organization. Afterwards, we had gone back to their house to wait for our ride. What was to be a one hour wait eventually turned into four. At that point, Jon texted me and said they would be there for us in another hour and a half. He suggested that we might want to borrow some money and take taptaps home. I don’t really like riding taptaps and didn’t feel like I knew well enough which ones to take. I also didn’t really want to risk getting really lost as a group of girls. I suggested to the volunteers that we could catch some motos. They were less than thrilled. So we were down to two options: wait for Jon or my new idea of walking home. I obtained permission from Jon to walk, he thought I was crazy, but agreed to it. After convincing the girls that I thought we could make it home in an hour, or at least before our vehicle did, they reluctantly agreed to it as well. And we set off on our three mile walk through Port-au-Prince.

            I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I can’t say the same for the other three. At one point, a street kid started yelling and chasing us. I initially ignored him because I naturally assumed he was going to greet me with “Hey you, sista, give me one dolla,” but then I realized that I knew him. It was a weird and kind of cool experience – personally knowing street kids is not something I’ve processed since.

            When we reached the busiest sections of town, I began wondering how dumb this actually was on a scale of 1-10. Then, coming from across the intersection, was one of the Haitian boys who lives at our house. He walked us the rest of the way home, and I went back to enjoying myself and the rainbow I happened to notice in the sky.