A Perilous & Difficult Journey

Six a.m. on November 21st came early enough!  Couldn’t seem to get out the door and I was already late. Tolkein said, “It’s a dangerous business going out your door.”  I’m finding this more and more true!  Our intention was to take the truck up the mountain since there is a new “road”.  The trek before was a pretty grueling 4 hours up on foot or mule. So after buying bread (160 pieces for $7.50) and water, we headed “upstairs”.

Did I say road?  A fourwheel drive obstacle course is more like it!! So steep and the switchbacks so sharp I couldn’t make the turns without backing up. Rock and gravel and dirt dozed out of the side of the mountain, up and up and up, bumping and bouncing and grinding, with the road hardly wide enough to avoid the deep crevices rain had already washed in the “road”.  From the window of the truck where only a few vehicles have ever been, we went from one beautiful vista to another.  Before this recent “road” we only beheld these views from the back of a mule or on our own two feet.

Needless to say, we all arrived in one piece. Well… not so sure about the truck.  Never thought I’d see a truck any where near our schools but there we were parked outside of Chapelle. Our plan was to visit the schools, speaking to the teachers and students that morning, make arrangements for Adrienne, the crippled girl, and Nixon, a boy with a bad hand, to see orthopedic doctors coming to Fonds-Parisien that week, and heading to a place called Calalo in the afternoon and return about noon the following day.

Time doesn’t allow a lengthy discussion, but we have decided our schools must take a different view than is the norm in Haiti. They have a focus on academics learned by rote, not at all interactive.  As I began to talk to the teachers, I saw academics like a structure, but can any structure exist with out a foundation? So I asked them, what good to the world, to our communities, to our neighbors, to our employers, is an educated person without an education built on the foundation of moral principals and character.  If we would build a better world, our “education” must be built on the foundation of truths such as justice, fairness, integrity, compassion, understanding, mercy – in short, The laws of the Creator.  I Cor. 13:1 – “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.”

The morning was getting shorter but I felt the need to share more so I talked to the teachers and I talked to the classes and I talked to myself and I talked to THE “Teacher”, first at Chapelle, and then at Pelerin. By the time we finished paying teachers for the month, visiting, eating, and making arrangements for the people who needed to go down to see the doctors, it was getting late in the day.

We found the young man, Nixon, sitting on the side of a hill.  We called him in Creole, “Nixon, come.  We want to talk to you.”  He got up and came over to us.  The poor guy had fallen on his good hand a scuffed a big chunk out of his palm.  We made plans for his father to bring him to meet us and we talked to Sonel about making arrangements to meet Adrienne in Robia the next day.  We then left for the trailhead to Calalo .

Another 20 minutes brought us to Bousee and the end of the road just as the sun was going down. Here we met the mules to take us to Calalo. We parked the truck in the local churchyard (had to take a post out of the fence to get the truck in) and got out in the damp, rather chilly mountain air. I zipped my pant legs on anticipating the chill of the three hour night ride through the mountains.

To rightly appreciate the situation I need to describe the Haitian pack rig.  You start with a pad made from banana leaves, then comes a nailed together wooden packsaddle “of sorts” tied on with a small cord (looks more like string to me) made of some local natural fiber. Over this go big panniers made of some kind of reed.  Now, on top of this rig strapped to a Haitian mountain mule, filled with all sorts of things, the passenger, namely me, is feeling none too certain of his control over the situation.

After jumping on to the back of this thing from a stone wall, we finally set off for Calalo .  Up the steep grade over boulders strewn over the trail, some as big as the mule, holding on to the wooden pack saddle (I could feel the nails working in their holes), I hoped that string down there holding every thing on would hold on too! So I swayed and rocked and lurched as that incomprehensible animal crawled and hopped and climbed up a path that I couldn’t even see.

When we turned a little flash light on, hoping the AA battery would last to the end of the trail, we found ourselves wreathed in a fog like mist that rendered the small light at times practically useless. In my bolder moments I would shine the light to the off side of the mountain, but I tried to resist the temptation because often below me there was nothing but a black unknown.

As I was pondering this going out your door thing, what do you think?  It started to rain!  Drenched, hardly being able to see, up there on that rig, and now add slipping and sliding on wet muddy rocks and boulders to the other contortions the mule was going through to bring us home in one piece (don’t know that he was so worried about me!).  It had been a warm and sweaty day so I yelled over my shoulder at Jolius, “Nou pa bezwen benyen kounya!” (We don’t need a bath now!) What a night!

We passed a broken down wall with the remains of a roof and I said, “Let’s just sleep there.” They said, “We’re almost there!” I’ve heard that before!  So we moved on through several villages and perils till at last we arrived in Calalo .  Well, arrived at a stone hut with a roof and a small welcome light. One house or many, I couldn’t tell, but I sure was glad to get off that mule!!

There’s a bed in the little “house” we were to sleep in so Dr. Jolius says, “I’ll sleep on the floor, Dad, and you can have the bed.” Bless his heart!  So he takes my thermarest (really comfortable) and I jump in bed… Almost broke my back! The mattress is a couple of boards nailed together (must be iron wood) with a blanket thrown over them!  Dr. Jolius is comfy on my thermarest and I’m marooned on an iron ferrite asteroid. Can’t ask for my thermarest back after he humbled himself and took the floor. Morning came none too early!

Just about daybreak, the roosters had been crowing for a while.   I could hear folks stirring so I decided to see if I can track down a cup of coffee!  I wasn’t prepared for the beauty of the morning that met my eyes. The grandeur of Pic la Selle sometimes called Morne la Selle, the highest peak in Haiti, rose off to southeast, standing like a sentinel in the morning light. A lesser range of mountains to the south dotted with family homesteads across the steep and narrow canyon that I was looking across. The greens and browns and blues and yellows of the flowers and rocks and sky and bananas and did I mention coffee!

I looked for the hut with the most smoke coming out of it and there sat a mom and some kids around a pot on three rocks over a smoldering fire and, yes, boiling in the pot was homegrown Haitian coffee. Well, I was bold to make myself known and after a morning greeting I sat with the mom and kids with a steaming cup in my hand!

We met some guys in the little village including the village headman called the casek, a nice young man named Isaac with a crippled arm and hand since birth. He was responsible for the school we had come to visit. We walked over to the school with him and walked and walked…. Finally came to the remains of a church building with a few huts scattered around…. and all full of kids.

We visited all the classes and talked with them about just what learning is all about, especially the education of the heart. Then I talked with the teachers and Isaac, the casek.  Asked how they managed and if they had any help. There must have been three hundred kids there. The parents that could afford it bought them a book. Didn’t have much. The largest class didn’t have a roof. Isaac said they just did what they could.
“Do you have any support?”
“No.” they replied.
“No missionaries come to help?” I asked again, not sure of the reply.
“No, you are the first.”
There were lots of kids so I asked, “How many people are there in Calalo?”
“2000 or more.”
“What do you mean I’m the first?” I asked again.
“You are the first white person to come to Calalo.”

Now that’s a stretch.  A mountain area of 2000 people 600 miles off the coast of Florida where no white person had been before?  I couldn’t believe it so I asked around and they all said no white person had been to Calalo before!  Is this possible? I made arrangements for Isaac to see the doctor about his arm and to return with Operation Christmas Child gifts for the children of Calalo and then loaded the mule for the trek back.

It was late, maybe 2:00 pm, and I had made plans to meet Adrienne in Robia around noon. That would mean we wouldn’t get there till 5 or 6. Not good as she would have no idea if we were coming or not. So we started on our way. It wasn’t long before I started thinking about that “going out your door is a dangerous thing” saying again! That mule was a little harder to stay on going down than he was going up the night before. And I got a close up look at what was only blackness the night before.

Only a few feet from the edge, the trail was a gorge that plummeted, it looked to me, a sheer 3,000 feet! I could make some judgement of the depth because of the 8000 + foot peak of Morne la Selle that loomed above.  I began thinking that what they said about no white person visiting just might be true! Certainly not for the faint of heart!  About half way down I decided I would rather walk than straddle that critter another minute!

I would need the words of a poet with the skill of a painter with a brush and colors to give you eyes to see!  Beautiful, frightening, majestic, tender, and hard, the trail was alive with more than these as we passed the flora and fauna of mountain and vale with the evening coming on.

Adrienne was fit to be tied when we finally arrived back in Robia. Crippled for the last ten years (she is twenty now), barely able to walk, she had left home at 4:00 am and had hobbled all the way to our rendezvous, a three hour forced march for us!  She had arrived around noon and when I arrived in the evening, she had tears in her eyes thinking I had forgotten her. When I had sent word for her to come to meet me so I could take her down to see the doctor, I had no idea arrangements would not be made for her to take a mule as I had two mules up there not very far away. Almost broke my heart!

And so we made the treacherous drive down with Isaac, Nixon, and Adrienne, arriving back “downstairs” not long before dark. Our thanks to everyone for all the help making all the wonderful things happen in The name of Jesus!

Di yo “Mwen nan wout”…..Jezi
Tell them “I’m on my way”…..Jesus of Nazareth

In Love We Work,  In Hope We Wait, Bill

(Epilogue: Dr. Chris Banwart from Joplin took X-rays of Nixon’s hand and sent the x-rays to a specialist in the U.S. with hope to operate in the spring.  He operated on Isaac’s arm, hoping to give him more range of motion and sent pictures home as well to the hand doctor. He saw Adrienne and said that we could fix her in the states but feared the possibility of infection here, needing maybe six weeks to heal. We will explore possibilities in PAP.  As they say here, “Bondye konnen!” (God knows!)