Sometimes, stumbling blocks along our paths are literal.
The dirt footpath up the hill to the chapel in Aninuan is usually a bit of a challenge, but we did not expect what we found on Sunday morning.
The owner of the land between Pastor Al’s house and the chapel apparently has not appreciated the traffic across his plot, so he built a fence…
right across the road.
With a steep hill of impenetrable jungle on either side of the wide barbed-wire-and-palm-branch fence, our Wednesday night prayer meeting, basketball tournaments, and all other activities at the chapel are cancelled.
We simply can’t get there.
It’s not just the church; half the homes in Aninuan are higher up on the same hill. The road behind the pastor’s house is the fastest way from the main road to that area of the village. There is another road to get there. It winds around and crosses the river twice. It adds nearly a mile to a walk that is otherwise about 75 yards.
Monday was scheduled to be our snorkeling day, and we’ve been looking forward to it for weeks. Our soccer field deforestation project had been put on hold due to a completely separate land ownership issue, so we had the time for some fun.
But with such a literal roadblock before our ministry here, we decided a day off was not an option. So we put away our swimsuits and got the machetes back out to build a new road up the hill through the jungle.
By 9:30 Monday morning, we were covered in bug spray, sweat, and biting red ants. We had to stop by about 3:30 because we upset an impressively large hive of bees. That was not fun.
That night was my most memorable one in this country. JoJo and I sat on a blanket in the front yard, and the night sky was clear for the first time all month. We played our favorite songs on her guitar. We laid back and watched the stars. I tried to describe fall to her, and pumpkin pie, and how you can smell cold in the air. She laughed at me a lot. JoJo is barely three months younger than me. Our lives have been so different… until three weeks ago when I moved in with her family.
Today, we were back on hiatus from our deforestation so Pastor Al could be sure to check property lines for the new road. I’m still not quite clear on how permits and ownership and maintenance issues are worked out here, but it requires lots of double-checking. Whatever it was we had to double-check, it gave us a work-free day.
So all we went snorkeling.
-Katie
**Update: here’s a walk around our home this month! Please appreciate the rip-off of the MTV show. Sandy is not normally so ghetto.**
