Boy was today an adventure!!
I am currently in Haiti, just over the border actually…we were scheduled to leave this morning at 9:00 this morning. Turned out that the bus…if you could call it that…arrived at 8:58, but there was absolutely no way 31 people and all of their packs were fitting on this Love Shack of a shuttle bus.
To describe the bus, well, it roles up and in the back window it says “Amor de Madre” and it has the look of a regular old shuttle bus used for getting people to and from the airport from rental companies – except for the window treatments. Emily, you would be proud that despite their hideousness I wasn’t inspired to fashion a dress out of them or to use them in my own decorating…they were Pepto-Bismol Pink with white pompom fringe.
Again, 31 of us each have water and snacks for the day as well as our carry-on-type items, so of course I have a Nalgene, pillow, bookbag and my purse, as well as a gallon jug of water for us to each bring with us, just in case there isn’t water where we first start out.
I am going to go out on a limb here and just say that the bus was crafted to carry babies, or small children with no excess body fat, not 31 average-sized Americans (which basically means that we are mostly over 5’5″ and over 100 pounds) I sat with my teammate Rachel Falco – she is 6’3″ so let’s just say I utilized my travel-sized compactability and allowed her as much leg room as possible (she got the aisle) we were still cramped and I would have given my left leg for an armrest just to keep us from mushing out schweaty bodies all together. I also am contemplating butt implants to make my sitting for extended periods of time more comfortable.
We rode most of the way with the windows open, air conditioning was not really working, and because we drove across the Dominican Republic to get into Haiti, we drove through all sorts of small towns, each one containing people trying to sell us things and speed bumps – meaning we were slowly pulling through while people beckoned into our windows. All in all, quite the experience, but that was before the bus broke down…
The Lord blessed us in that it was a great chance to talk with people on the street and it gave us a chance to get our hot bodies up and out of that cramped bus. We made it here safely in ~7-8 or so hours we arrived at a place that AIM is connected with, a place we weren’t supposed to stay but the bus needed to get back tonight and so we decided to crash here, and we actually had dinner and ice cold lemonade waiting for us…epic and wonderful considering my Nalgene may or may not have been hotter than my body temperature…a group from CA is here right now spending the next 9 days in Haiti – and it was just great to get a chance to meet up with people excited for the Lord and connect over our mutual desire to serve.
To sum it all up, I am safe, I am sound, I am hopefully arriving tomorrow at my site – but all in all I am more ready now for an outdoor shower and alone time in my tent than I ever thought possible!
Thanks all for your prayers, keep ’em coming, amazing things are happening here and I am excited to continue to share!
