As I sit here in the comfort of my air conditioned home after taking a hot shower and sleeping until 10 AM the excitement/anxiety of our squirrel chase seems almost mote. In it's moment it was huge but so much has happened in this past week that it is just part of the hardship of living in Haiti. But to be fair to my readers I will wrap up this post so I can move on to process so many other things that have impacted my heart this week...
Gwenn and Nick dialogued about what to do. The police man was now out of sight and our truck was at a stand still as the water rushed over the street. I saw in the light of day on our return trip to the airport that this area is bad even when it is good. There are ditches and potholes and most of the road here is not paved.
The gridlock is normal because of the aggressive driving in Haiti. If there is an open spot someone moves into it regardless if it is road or not. Regardless if is your lane or the lane of oncoming traffic. As I look back on this drive to Jacmel I see that God was preparing me for my next post...
I don't remember if I wrote earlier about Gwenn as a child. She was "the worrier" in the family. We would get in the car and she would ask "Are you sure we have enough gas?" as if to run out of gas was the worst thing that might happen to you. She was also my cry baby. Now I must say she is the toughest woman I know and that is saying a lot because Gretchen, my oldest daughter is a pretty tough woman. (Melody not so tough but she is after all my baby, she is strong, but not tough).
Nick and Gwenn were discussing if they should call their friend in the Jacmel Police Dept and decided to wait a bit. As we moved and stopped slowly through the rushing water in the driving rain we sometimes got small glimpses of the yellow rain slicker that the police officer was wearing. We edged our way through a narrow gap in the road past a large bus in the oncoming traffic perched it's outside wheels on the top of a hill leaving me holding my breath as we passed it for fear that it would drop on it's side on top of our truck as we passed. Cars in front of us stalled in the standing water and Gwenn and Nick and Jen discussed the work that Jen would be doing in Jacmel for the next 6 months working in a rehab tent working with people who had lost limbs in the quake.There conversation was easy and not at all stressed giving me the confidence to know that while to me this was a bad situation we were in at the moment it was not to them a fearful time. It was a Haiti normal thing.
Finally, as the traffic started to ease from the bottle neck we saw the police officer. He walked up to the car, handed Gwenn her license and told her to stop being a trouble maker. (In Creole..don't remember the exact translation.) We had a really good laugh about this!
As we continued our seemingly endless journey to Jacmel, Gwenn commented "Nick, did I miss my turn?" As we continued the road grew more narrow and the banana trees closer to the road. Gwenn stopped and turned the truck in the mud and went back from the way we had just come. We made our turn by the Texaco station and continued over the mountains hair pin turns and areas of landslide littered rubble until finally we reached Jacmel. It was a long,long, long,long,long road home.
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