Here’s the story of the 3 Day trip to Haiti….yep… 3 days…
You wouldn’t think that it would take 3 days to drive across
the tiny island of Hispaniola. Getting
from the Dominican Republic to Haiti isn’t exactly like driving across the
United States or anything. But when you
are a World Racer, life is different. It
takes 3 full and adventurous days.
Here’s the story…
After a great debrief with the teams in San Juan, Jenny and
I were trying to prepare the teams to make the transition to Haiti. Because we have a group of 54 people, we had
to work some things out in advance. The
bus company only sends one bus a day from the capitol of Santo Domingo to Port
Au Prince Haiti. We would just about
fill up the entire bus with the number of people in our group so we had to
purchase tickets in advance. After
getting Anna Coffey to ask the lady at the bus company all my questions over
the phone, we were pretty sure we had tickets for everyone and that they were
in our price range. The bus to Haiti
leaves at 11:00 AM and because we were in San Juan, 3 or 4 hours away from
Santo Domingo, we couldn’t make both trips in the same day. We were going to have to spend the night in
Santo Domingo and Jimmy had arranged for us to stay at another mission’s base
in town. We had the teams compete in
their very first Race while they spent the day in Santo Domingo to kill some
time and see the sites. Our contacts in
Haiti were aware of our arrival and we all had arrangements to get to our
ministry sites. Sounds like it’s all under
control right? Again, when you are a
World Racer, life is different.
Jenny and I told the teams they had to get up at 4:45 AM to
get out of the house in San Juan, finish cleaning it, and lock it up. We were going to leave at 6:00 AM for Santo
Domingo. While they were cleaning, we
took off to the bus station in San Juan to get our tickets on the first bus out
of town. We had already arranged with
Dave Brown and the team leaders to announce the first Race Day and let the
teams loose at 6:00 AM. We waited a long
time for the bus station to open up and just as we got our tickets, some of the
teams arrived to buy their own tickets.
Most of the teams were on the same bus as we traveled to Santo
Domingo. When Jenny Brown and I arrived,
we went to pick up our tickets to Haiti.
We sat in the office for almost 2 hours while the one lady that was
working that morning wrote each individual ticket out by hand… round-trip.
After securing our tickets to Haiti, we took off to the
missions base to drop our luggage off and have a good Squad Leader day
out. We found a very “western” grocery
store, ate at Burger King, and traveled to a mall with a movie theater. All the stores in the mall were closed, but
they were going to show a movie in English at 4:20, so we decided to sit down
in the food court and wait. And we
waited… a long time. Maybe we were just
shell-shocked and tired from a busy month of ministry and a good, but fast-paced
debrief because we sat at that table all day long. In retrospect, I think we are still trying to
figure out what we were thinking. We
texted back and forth with the teams, and caught our movie that afternoon. We returned to the missions base, had some
worship time, and went to bed. I was
catching a cold and had a head the size of bowling ball.
Early the next morning, we got up, packed again, and departed in heavy Monday
morning traffic for the bus station.
Once everyone’s taxi arrived, we collected passports, and went to the
bus company office again. We were told
to be at the station two hours before our departure. We spent an hour finalizing our tickets and
paying our border fees and taxes. We loaded onto our super nice bus with
reclining seats, stewardess, cold drinks, and lunch. There was one other guy on our bus. Poor guy.
If he had only known what he was getting himself into.
Everything was going great as we went back across the
Dominican Republic. We came within an
hour of San Juan, but since you can’t catch the bus to Haiti any place but the
capitol, we had to go a little out of way.
This little glitch would account for an entire day of travel. Awesome.
As the afternoon wore on, the scenery and culture started to
shift slightly, and before we knew it, we were at the border. We pulled up to the border, looking out the
window at the obvious differences from one side to the other. The mix of people and cultures in “no-man’s
land” was intense. We stopped and our
stewardess got off to process our passports and get us officially checked out
of the Dominican Republic. We waited….
And waited… And waited.
After a while the bus driver got involved, the stewardess
was talking fast, and Rocio (another Spanish-speaker) asked what was going
on. The driver told us that they didn’t
want to let us across the border because there was a “protest”. We asked some questions and found out that it
was a protest against the bus company, and while we were safe, they didn’t want
us to cross the border. The driver and
stewardess were trying to work out the details.
Jenny Brown and I looked at each other, “Really? Is this going to
happen?” I told the racers to start praying, I didn’t want to take the bus back
to Santo Domingo just so we could “try” to cross the border again the next day.
I called Jimmy and Casey in the office because it was cheap to call the US on
my cell phone. I told them we were fine,
but we needed prayer to get through to Haiti.
We sat and waited by the border for 2 and a half hours.
After singing, praying, and believing God would bring us
through to the promised land of Haiti, the bus driver got back on to tell us
that they were going to let us through! We were very excited! We pulled in, got off the bus to officially
get stamped out of the Dominican Republic, got on the bus, drove about a mile
down the road, exited the bus again, got officially stamped into Haiti, and got
back on the bus. We were finally back on
the road and headed to Port Au Prince. Apparently
the bus company had sent two buses to Haiti that day, one for all of us, and
the other for the regular customers. They had been required by law to only send
one per day, so when two buses showed up, it caused a commotion. There wasn’t a protest, more of a
“dispute.” 3rd world communication is my
favorite.
It was dark when we arrived in the capitol. People lined the
streets on both sides, and brightly colored buses honked and swerved by us on
either side. Street Vendors sat all
along the road and intersections with candles lit to show off their merchandise. We weren’t in the Dominican anymore.
Our bus pulled into the station behind a locked gate and
high walls. When we exited the bus, some
of the team leaders got connected with their contacts. Gentle Warriors and Spectacle took off to
Jacmel for their month of ministry.
Koinonia and BLING met up with a friend of Liz’s that has a ministry in
Canaan. Tikvah, Luminous, Indelible, and Manna were going to meet a guy named
DouDou and spend the night in Port Au Prince before leaving for their ministry
sites the next morning. Jenny Brown took
off with the teams to Canaan and I was left with the teams in Port Au
Prince.
Doudou showed up and put everyone and their luggage on a bus
to go across town. We pulled into
another walled and gated complex. It was
a hotel/guest house that we would be camping out at for the night. We had three rooms, and the parking
area. After a late night dinner, we
crashed from our busy two days of traveling.
The team leaders and I went to bed thinking that there were only two
tasks we had to complete in the morning, and they we could get on our buses to
the two separate ministry sites. But
when you are a World Racer, life is different.
(To Be Continued…..)
