Mountain Climbing with JRC – A Miraculous Journey

Wow… I thank God that my life is not boring.  If it were any less interesting, I may have had a bit more time to tell you more about it…. oh well.  As usual, again there is much to tell, but I’ll choose one thing from two weeks ago…

On the week of July 5th, Jean-Robert and I set out to visit a child that we returned home in the area of Jacmel last year.  She was a restavek for about a year and suffered unbelievable physical, emotional, and psychological abuse.  Her Gran Moun (owner) was a former neighbor of her family that had moved to Port-au-Prince.  This woman convinced the little girl’s mother that she would take care of her, put her through school, and make sure that her life was rosy, but every single promise was a lie.  This woman put the little girl through so much hell that she ran away.  She was found by the police, who took her to social affairs, who dropped her off at a girls shelter that we work with, and Jean-Robert took the 9-hour trek (one way) over the mountains, swam a river in the rain season, and walked for miles to her house, just to see her happily home with her mother again.  Then he took the long way back home in the middle of the night.  (For the record: There is not a man on earth with more compassion than Jean-Robert.  I thought that I loved people until he introduced me to a new standard).

We had not seen the girl for more than a year because she lived so far away.  We went to visit her because she was due a visit, but also because we were hoping that she would be the perfect candidate for the story that CNN was working on two weekends ago.  If you have seen the report (and if you watch tonight) you will notice that this “perfect” story was not chosen (mainly because we were crunched for time and could not go that far out of the traveling alone), but our trip made for an interesting experience, nonetheless.

We made our first attempt to Jacmel on Tuesday, July 7th.  (Yes, I said first attempt.  There were three attempts total).  We needed a big SUV to make it up the mountains, but we only needed the car for one day.  Big cars are on high demand in Haiti, so the smaller, local rental companies are often reluctant to rent out a big car for one day, fearful of missing a longer contract… so they charge you big bucks for it.  Everyone was asking more than we could afford to pay.  Everyone but this one man, whom we had rented from many times before.  It was a pick-up truck.  The car had its flaws, but  to me, it seemed healthy enough to make the trip (I had never been up those treacherous mountains, so I relied more on JR’s judgment).  We had already spent too much time shuffling around to get a car, so we were in a rush to get up the mountains.  We took off quickly after a cursory check up of the car.

We spent a good two hours or so in stop and go traffic, so there was no way for us to know the first problem that we uncovered until it was too late.  Once we started getting out past Mariani and Gressier we noticed that the car began to shake as we went above a certain speed.  We contacted the renter to let him know the problem.  He through out some sort of wild explanation and asked us what we wanted to do.  But we were already so far out that if we waited or went back, the trip would have been canceled.  In hindsight, that should have been our choice.  We continued on cautiously.  Not less than an hour later, our front tire went flat.  We got out quickly to change the tire only to realize that our trusty spare was also flat and balding.  Not only that, the jack that was in the car was no good… it didn’t even have its proper handle.  Someone had really neglected the regular check-ups on this car.  This was my first experience with renting in Haiti, and these are things that you don’t think of in the U.S., but I should have known better here.

Thank God we went flat near some sort of stone/gravel mining operation, and one of the men who worked there went downtown to find someone who helped us fix our spare.  It took a long time, but he did it.  By then, it was too late to go up the mountain, so we headed home.  We got a refund later that week and the man who rented the car to us may be in trouble with his job for being so negligent.  I felt really bad that day because Joycelyne decided to take a break from her studies to go with us.  It was her first road trip in Haiti and all she got out of it was fatigue, hunger, and “tet chaje” (a headache).  I’m sorry Sweetie…  Maybe in December.

We tried to rent a car the next day.  We ran into the same problem as before… no one wanted to rent it to us for such a short amount of time.  We decided to go ahead and get it for three days (the usual minimum), but when we decided to do that, we lost that contract to someone who wanted it for five.  It was like losing an ebay auction at the last minute…  There were no more of the super-big cars that we needed…  Nothing was in our favor that Wednesday, so Jean-Robert went home and I went on to try to pick up a package at the airport for my new business (there will be more on that headache soon).

Early on Thursday, we went in and got a Nissan Patrol for 7-days (since our director was coming in the next day), and took off.  That transaction went much smoother.  We checked everything on that car.  I flipped things over, punched the tires, took pictures… everything.  It was in great shape.  We went on up to the mountains without a problem… except for the fact that it was a LOOONG bumpy trip, and we left at an hour in which all roadside food was cold. (Bumpy is an understatement… perhaps “jerky” or “jarring” would be more appropriate).  We arrived seven hours after our departure.  It took us a while to find the family, but when we did, they were very happy to see us.  (Well, at least they were happy to see Jean-Robert… they didn’t know me yet).

We made a very short visit, talked to everyone, ate some grilled corn, passion-fruit, and drank some coconuts and headed home.  By then it was already past 5pm.  We had a seven hour drive to make home… so we thought.  A few hours into our trip jerky trip up and down the rocky hills, a miracle happened…  We suddenly arrived on the main road.  Jean-Robert and I just looked at each other.  How did we skip two hours of hill-climbing?  I thought that I had fallen asleep, but Jean-Robert’s confusion justified my own.  We proceeded up the winding roads to Port-au-Prince, still wondering about all of the things that we didn’t pass to get to the main road.  It is possible that we got lost, but usually when you get lost you don’t gain two hours.  Also, these mountain roads have very few turning options and very few entrances and exits.  I don’t know how we happened to find the “right one.”

As we drove into Gressier the car started to shake the same way that the pick-up did.  It was late, it was dark, and we had no tools… We had no choice but to continue.  We moved on through Carrefour and just as we pass a police checkpoint, we lose our steering.  Thankfully, we lost it on a straight away, and the car practically “parked” itself out of harms way.  So get this… we are in front of a police checkpoint, so danger is minimal.  We ask the police officer what they can do for us and they offer to take us to a hotel.  Then, when the realize that we had a rental car, they told us that we couldn’t leave it there or we would only find half of it in the morning.  By “chance” the police officer knew a mechanic in the area, and in that moment (11pm) the mechanic was sitting near the street with some friends joking around (Port-au-prince is usually dead asleep by 10).  In no time, the mechanic got under the car, replaced a bolt that got lost in the steering system with a random piece of iron, and we were on our way home.  Even after the quick fix we arrived two hours early…

The next day, Jean-Robert and I awoke to the reality that we could have died several times the night before.  If we hadn’t found the “shortcut” and continued on the rocky mountains, the bolt may have dislodged faster.  Then, if we had lost steering while navigating the treacherous curves, we could have driven right off of the edge and into the sea.  If our car had lost steering a mile before the police checkpoint, we would have been in danger and we would have had no way home.  There would have been no one there to protect us, we would have never found a mechanic, and by that time, a hotel (if we could have ever found one) was out of the question.  The whole experience was Miraculous.

I don’t know about you… but I don’t believe in chance.  I’m starting to get used to this “my life is in His hands” thing.  It makes me feel invincible.