One of my tasks this summer has been to collect stories from people. Here's one of my own stories about our adventures in accomplishing this goal:
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| I really loved the colors of this rooster next to the grass -- keep reading to find out why I had a lot of time to look around me on this trip! |
It rained two days ago and there are still several muddy patches on our drive to Miniere. A few times I have to get off the motorcycle and pick my way through as best I can. At one part, a girl walking by helps me put a small log down to cross a particularly tricky patch. There are cactus hedges lining the road so it is impossible to try to sidestep a mud puddle by going through an adjacent field. At one point we arrive at a really large muddy section – a half-finished, poorly planned project by a big NGO has made the road situation far worse there by inhibiting water drainage. I get off the motorcycle. As Osse is preparing to try to cross the mud, he realizes that his back tire is flat. He tells me he used to have a kit with him to fix tires, but since he never ended up using it and it took up space, he's quit traveling with it.
A man comes by on his
horse and tells us that we should leave our motorcycle at a certain
house down the road. “That's what everyone does,” he says. Another man
in typical farmer attire -- rubber boots on his feet and a machete in his hand -- stops to agree. A motorcycle
with three passengers also pauses to assess the situation. Osse calls
Madame Philisma, our contact in Miniere. He asks her to find a
mechanic to come out and fix the tire. He pushes the motorcycle back
to the nearby house and we leave it there.
Now to cross the mud.
This section is perhaps 30 feet long. Osse has boots on, but I am
wearing dress flats (don't judge me: this is typical shoe attire for a woman here, even in the rural areas). There's nothing for it but to plunge in. The
flats stick to the mud, making it really hard to lift my feet up. I
try to take large steps to avoid the worst of the mud but can't
balance to unstick my feet that way. Osse comes back and gives me a hand, but I
still have to take small steps and “un-suction” my feet each
step. I ask if I shouldn't just take my shoes off but he reminds me that there are cacti and pricker bushes all around and it would't be wise, since I would likely step on a thorn. We make it across and then I try to walk in my super-muddy
shoes. I had rinsed off a bit in the last puddle, but there was too
much mud and not enough water in it. My shoes keep wanting to fall off, widened by
the moisture. We soon pass a stream and I wash off a bit better.
Madame Philisma and
another trainer meet us on the road. She says she hasn't been able to get ahold of a
mechanic yet, but she'll keep trying. We get to the school where we'll
be meeting and she pumps water for me to wash off my shoes and
feet and then insists that I put her sandals on, leaving my shoes to
dry in the sun. She sends someone back to her house to get another
pair of shoes for her.
The Community Health
Evangelism (CHE) committee in this area is really active, and I hear
some great stories of people's lives that have changed through the
CHE work in this community. Several hours later we are done meeting,
but no one has been found to fix our tire. One of the two mechanics isn't in town
and the other doesn't have any tools. We go to Madame Philisma's
house and she gives us some grilled corn, mmm. We then walk up to
the road – she has planned for us to see the site where, until last
year, the CHE group made “akasan” (a corn flour drink) and sold
it to people on Sunday mornings before church.
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| Off to the right is where they made the akasan. I thought the shadow of this palm tree was prettier. ;-) |
We get back to Madame Philisma's house where her daughters are dressed for a funeral the whole family is planning to go to. No one has been found to work on our bike yet, though, so we all sit down for a bit. Madame Philisma brings out a sack of oranges and starts to peel them for us. The cicadas are buzzing and I'm mentally transported back to summers in the American Midwest – then three women pass by, riding their donkeys sidesaddle. They greet us with a "Mesyèdam" (literally "gentleman and ladies," a common salutation for mixed company) and I'm back in the present.
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| Madame Philisma was using the only small knife to peel oranges, so one of her daughters started using this ginormous thing so that she could help, too. Haitian-style orange eating involves peeling off the very outer layer, leaving the white part. The orange is then cut nearly in half and ready for the consumer to split the halves fully in two and suck out the juice. These oranges were incredibly flavorful and the family gave Osse a bag of them to take home. |
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| Osse asked the couple if they have been making any soap lately. Turns out they are out of lye -- which is required to make soap. They asked Osse if he can get some from the Dominican Republic. Our team has never been able to find lye in Haiti -- but as of this writing, I'm sitting in the DR with four dozen bottles of lye next to me, ready to take back! Here Mr. Philisma is showing me the maskreti plant, from which they extract an oil for the soap. |
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| Here are the seeds from the maskreti plant. You cook them and then mash them to extract the oil. |
Madame Philisma's daughters head
off to the funeral and she and her husband accompany us back to the motorcycle, even though we don't know anything yet about the mechanic. We stop at
someone's house on the way to pick up a pump. Once this is in hand
we call the tool-less mechanic and ask him to meet us at the bike.
It's a beautiful walk
back to where we left the bike, perhaps only 30 minutes on foot now that some of the mud has dried. Yellow and orange butterflies flit by.
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| Here is Madame Philisma, with Osse, and Mr. Philisma in front. You can see the flowering flamboyant tree ahead with its petals scattered on the ground. She's carrying my helmet for me and her husband is carrying Osse's. |
We get back to the
bike. No tools, remember? So he fixes the hole by tying the
innertube around it with string. I'm not kidding, here's the
picture:
I ask Osse if the
string will hold for our entire trip back. He says, “Oh, sure, if
you are on good roads a repair like that can even last two or three
days.” The tire is re-mounted, the innertube filled with air and
checked for leaks. It is still leaking – the string is holding
well but it turns out the mechanic perforated the innertube with the
screwdriver he used to pry it off. Unfortunately, this second hole
is near the valve, meaning that we cannot fix it in the same way.
The mechanic stops a passing motorcyclist to send him to
Miniere to pick up some wrenches, while he starts walking off in the
other direction to try to find a patch.
It's been over an hour
and the mechanic is still not back. We call our friend and fellow
trainer Anias, who is originally from Miniere and has a motorcycle.
He is a nearby city, Fort Liberte, so we ask him to buy an
innertube for us and come out to meet us. It's a good thing we called him,
because although the mechanic eventually returned he wasn't able to
find a patch. Osse says, for perhaps the fifth time, “You know, I used to
travel with a repair kit. . . “
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| As we're sitting around waiting, Madame Philisma spies a cashew tree. She said that Osse had told her I loved cashews and she had meant to prepare some for me but she'd forgotten. She asks a little boy to scale the tree so that she can show me the fruit. |
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| It might be a sign that a repair isn't going well when baby chicks feel safe enough to start exploring your motorcycle. |
Anias arrives with a
new innertube as well as sodapop, water, and “pate,” a meat-filled
pastry. Turns out that Madame Philisma, sorry that she
hadn't given us lunch, had asked Anias to pick up some goodies for
us! I had used up my water awhile earlier and was really
grateful for the drinks.
The innertube gets changed and we follow Anias back out the dirt roads to the national highway. He heads to the right, back to Fort Liberte, and we head left to Cap Haitien. On the return trip I
decide my job is to look out for the “donkey backs/sleeping
policeman” (French/Kreyol). The many speed bumps can be difficult
to see, especially as the sun is setting. We are able to go quite
fast on this well-paved road, and it would be dangerous to hit one unaware at those speeds. What speed, you ask? Well, I have
often wondered, but since I have yet to ride a motorcycle with a
working speedometer, I don't yet know!
As we arrive at the
last turnoff before getting into Cap Haitien, I sigh softly, “Mèsi,
Bondye. nou rive Kalfou Lanmò.” Then I laugh to myself since
this translates literally as, “Thank you, Lord, we got to the
Crossroads of Death.” (There are various stories as to why this
intersection has that name, but no one seems to know for sure.)
A moment later Osse stops to adjust something on his motorcycle and
says essentially the same thing. Traveling here is fraught with
difficulty, and the nearly universal response is to be relieved at the end of a
journey and to give thanks to God.
