Since it turns out I can get a signal out here at the end of the Earth, I just had to share about our ride to Haut Moustiques (I learned how to spell it).
Let’s just say it was a good thing I stopped typing when I did earlier. If I had to sum up the ride in 2 words, here goes:
“HOLY *@!#” – for adult ears only.
Imagine going 70mph on a 2 lane highway playing chicken with oncoming dumptrucks. That went on for 2hrs until we left Gonaives. We were then treated to a mix of roads that resembled washed out river beds, actual river crossings, deeply rutted/washed out dirt & rock roads with 12 inch round boulders strewn across them and my favorites: roads that made double black diamond mogul runs at Aspen look easy AND a cross between Supercross and the Baja challenge course.
Cerel accomplished all this while traveling at speeds up to 55 mph, with oncoming traffic on single lane roads; with pedestrians, goats, dogs & chickens everywhere; motorcycles and mules in the way; we even came upon an 18 wheel tractor trailer on these roads-unbelievable. The kicker was Cerel getting cell phone calls and taking them with ease while driving through this.
This went on for nearly 3hrs straight. Imagine riding a professional bull for 3 continuous hrs – that’s as close as I can come to describing how it felt. I think Cerel missed his calling – he could probably win the Baja challenge easily. After all, he was doing all this in a Nissan SUV with 7 other passengers and we did arrive safe.
It was a hair-raising ride but there was also an awful lot of laughter to go with it. Needless to say we are exhausted and a bit delirious now that we have arrived and will be turning in quickly. (Hope nobody wakes up peeing blood.) Tomorrow brings our first day in clinic in a whole new environment…with NO meds. Welcome back to Haiti!
Love to all. Sleep well and please don’t worry. We are obviously in “good hands”.
More tomorrow,
The Team
P.S. I am sending this Sunday AM because I did eventually lose my signal last night when I tried to send. Here is a teaser for tonight’s message. We are waking up to some familiar and some new sounds out in the country.