South to the Dominican Republic

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Why do all good times come to an end?

Why do all good times come to an end? I think I speak for the team when I say, we were not ready to come home. Who would want to leave this lush, beautiful, hot climate. The mood of our team was a little dismal, we were all disappointed to leave, the missionarys had stuff to do, we all had school to do, and it was time to leave. Why, was the question going through our heads. Why could we not stay another month. Why did we have to fall in love with the place. We sucked up every plant, person, animal, and house into our memory on the trip to the airport. we knew that we would probably never return with the same great group that had begun this adventure together. We had battled a hurricane, saw the world that traps many children to poverty, and lived with the stench that encompasses every person when we drive through the garbage lined streets. We still would like to live here and make peoples lives more enjoyable. Maybe it was the fried chicken, or the wonderful cooking that was provided to us. I still think it is because we all were touched through and by the people and living conditions that surrounds every living creature. We packed up, ate breakfast and headed to Santo Domingo for our flight. Hearts are heavy as we walk through the door to the airport and wave as the bus leaves the sidewalk, never to return to the same group that it left.

Checking in was easy, the assistant was very nice but had to try reading all of the names on the ticket list, well, it was very comical but he did a good job on the ones that were phonetic. We got through security, very minimal compared the bigger airports and made our way to the gate. Some of our group wanted coffee and went to find a coffee shop. There is a funny account of one members experience trying to talk with the Dominican airport assistant in the coffee shop, read his account here: Coffee Adventure. We had pizza for lunch and calmly waited for our plane to leave. Alas, it is never as easy as it is suppose to be, is it? Two of the team were called up to the gate, they had pulled our luggage off, and wanted to search their bags. Something suspicious had been spotted in the suitcases. We think that they wanted the machete that someone had purchased. They found batteries, but did not find the weapon, fortunately. Finally, we boarded the plane and prepared for take off, the rest of the trip was uneventful, we played poker on the plane, read our books and listened to music. We landed in Atlanta and had 1 hour to pick up our bags, go through immigration, recheck our bags, go through security and get to our gate in one hour. Our bags had priority tags on them so they were supposed to come to the baggage claim first, they did not. We waited twenty minutes before our bags came. We did get through everything else and back on the next plane with just minutes to spare. The same activities took place on the way to Portland. We got there by 11:00 pm tired. We passed the original restaurant where the Evolution of Poker for our group began. We got our bags, and loaded into the awaiting cars to take us home. Stopped at McDonalds on the way home, ate, and fell asleep in the car on the way home. It was the end of our adventure that i'm sure any of our team would be willing to repeat again.

The mission

View of our living quarters

This is the table legs on the table in our living quarters

The kitchen, we got our food from that window

The reality of leaving is finally sinking in

Our group in the last group photo

writing in the guest book, most of the team members wrote in here

Want a banana with breakfast, anyone?

Mr. Klein in the bus

the archway in the middle, leads to Christopher Columbus's DR home

Brick doorway in the background is his house

Views of Santo Domingo

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

The last day

Sunday, sigh, our last full day here in this wonderful place. Fortunately that is not the thought on all of our minds. Today is tourist day. We get to go shopping and swimming in the ocean. First though we are going to go to the Haitians church for services. It was interesting because they were talking in creole, the Haitian/French language. Even the missionaries could not understand what they were saying. This went for two hours, the time was spent singing and preaching, in a language we could not understand. It was cool seeing how they worshiped the Lord and how different it is to what we do every week. Lunch was very good, a fried bread pocket filled with meat and cheese, I believe they were called empinadas (if any of you have a different name for the food, feel free to let me know). After lunch we went to bathe in the creek which after all the rain had just about doubled in size and speed. We decided to hike up one of the smaller creeks that fed into the big one. We hiked up three waterfalls before we decided to go back and leave the mission for shopping and ocean fun.

We loaded up the bus, boogie boards and all and headed for town. I don't believe we went to Santo Domingo, but a different town closer to our beach destination. Unfortunately, with the mission 1-2 hours away from these places, it really sucked up time quite rapidly. We left the mission around 3:00pm and got to a Wal-mart type store around 4:15pm. We were allotted 45min to do our shopping. Well, if you don't know, if you are in a large Supercenter type Wal-Mart type store, you don't know where anything is, and all the prices are foreign, and you can't understand any of the store employees or signs directing you, it takes quite a while to shop. We rushed through the store, grabbed up what we wanted, paid, grabbed some ice cream, and darted out to the bus, 10min late.

We could swim till dark, was the agreement. Well, it got dark around 6:30pm and the beach where we swam at was another 45min away, we only got half and hour to swim. Oh, well. It was defiantly worth it though. Warm water ocean as the sun is setting. Picturesque scene. After a day of being busy, (like we had any that were not), it was nice to relax on the bus on the way back to the mission. Chicken dumplings awaited us on arrival back. Yummm, Yummm, Yummm. Packing took place after playing games and such, that was unfortunate, I mean, we played until ten and then we were told to pack all of our stuff. The one night that we should go to sleep early we stay up till 11:30pm packing. I on the other hand went to bed cause my stuff was mostly packed.

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

#10 Leaving Las Canoas Day Two

After a long day of of waiting yesterday we have mixed feelings about getting of the bus and leaving again. We really want to get back to the mission, but we did not want to wait at broken bridges anymore. So instead of leaving bright and early like yesterday, we explored the upper village of Las Canoas. We saw the river overflow, a canal, and a few boys that yelled "whiskey" when we where about to take their picture. The hike up the hill back to the church is tiring, hot sun, humid weather, tolling on the body. Can you imagine being one of the women carrying jugs of water for miles just to was their dishes or cook their food?

The kids are sad that we are leaving but we know that that is that right thing to do. We got pass the first bridge no problem, we would have missed going over it if someone had said "here is the first bridge". We shortly got to another mile and a half line of cars yet again. More waiting... We decided to go back into town where we filled up on gas and ate more fried chicken. Yummmm... In a rush we zoomed back to the bridge with the rumor that it had opened. It had not. Fun, Fun, Fun. Fortunately a stubble, strata type loose rock wall was seated next to us on the road.

Some of us, being boys decided we were going to be courageous and clime that wall. It took us about 45 min but we finally got up there with only a couple scraped knees and cut elbows. Once arriving up top we found that is dropped down into a valley with a dried creek at the bottom. It was full of cactus plants and other green vegetation because it was only a little way from the ocean. It had pros and cons to being up top, one pro would be that it was gorgeous. One con would be that the cactus plants came off in two inch sections with 15, 2 inch thorns sticking out of each piece. They seemed rather attached to you. They only made you bleed a little though. One exciting thing though, was that we found a dead, rotting goat on the mountain side. We also found an old Dominicana Policia officers jacket with patches. We each took a patch to take home as a souvenir. I wonder what would have happened if they had stopped us and found the patches?

We all reluctantly head back down the cliff because the bus is leaving and we would prefer to be on it. It was awesome on top but good in a bus with a book to read or music to listen too. Screech... Again... Stopped. Waiting in line again. This time my dad and Tim took us on a short walk down to some carpenters making wood creations with a pokey, wood providing plant called something like balka. There is only one use for this wood and it is used for making mortar and pestle tools. I bought a plantain smasher from the roadside carpenter. After a walk back to the bus, the word we had been waiting to hear all day was sounded. "The line is moving"! We are on our way! After 2 days of waiting we are on the move!!!

Once we finally left it took us about an hour and a half to get back to the mission. Three hours to get to the church two days to get back. Not a good win to loss ratio, but a good experience anyway. On all of our minds once getting back to the mission was showers. The mission had real ones that were not just a drain spout!! We all go to bed, tired but sad because tomorrow is our last day in the Dominican Republic.

They start celebrating Christmas a little early, they start in October

Mangy horse taking a sun bath

native swimming in the river

river overflow

boys that yelled "whiskey"

lady that let us use her pit toilet

Nials

Nelson

Tim and David

Roadside market

River flowing through the neighborhood

Armed guard at gas station

Crossing that occurred every 15 minutes

repair work

Armed border guards

Wood work shop

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

#9 Fried chicken and Hurricane Sandy

Hurricane Sandy, passed by us this morning, caught us by the shirttail she did. We left Las Canoas around 9:30 am bright and early, and got off to a good start. About 20 minuets into the drive we had a windshield wiper blade get blown off and we came to a screeching stop to find and re-attach the blade, three cheers for duct-tape!! No armed patrols stopped us either.

We got to the first bridge, which had washed out. No cars or trucks or buses could pass, which meant that we got to start our waiting period. First Mr. Klein and the bus searched for a way around that bridge which was unsuccessful. We took this side road that was almost all covered in water while the rain was dumping 50 gallons of water a square foot a minute, and when that turned out to not be a good idea, we ended up having to turn the 50 ft long bus around on a 20 feet wide piece of land, it did eventually work. We headed to a spot near the bridge and waited. It turned out that the spot we were waiting at was a beer garden, with pool tables and all. Fortunately they were not open while we where there... most of us were minors...!!

The rest of the day looked like poker, drawing pictures, reading books and whatever other things we could find to do. We happened to all be soaked during this time as well. We went looking for a soda store in pouring down rain and then we walked down to the bridge and and surveyed the progress. It was about a half mile walk, then it started to dump while we were looking at the bridge and thus we were soaked to the bone. No food, wet, bored and tired of rain, no way to dry in the middle of Hurricane Sandy... what shall we do?

Well if we had to pick the top three heroes of the day they would be, my dad, Reuben and Tim, the missionary's son-in-law. They went across the bridge while it was raining, found motorcycles that would taxi them around the city, looked at three different restaurant before they found one that had fried chicken. They bought nine take home boxes of fried plantains, french fries and fried chicken, a box of water bottles and then tried to get back to our hideout with all the food. On those motorcycles it was almost impossible to ride without any luggage racks so you can imagine how difficult it was with food. Plus none of them had rain gear...

Fortunately they did get back to to the beer garden and served us the food. I would have to say that was was THE BEST fried chicken I have ever eaten. Dominican chicken is great. We also had Coca-Cola while we were there and it just hit the spot. After lunch, we attempted to start another game of poker, but it failed. By this point in the trip, we have played about 50 games and we really don't want to play another. Instead we all retreated to the bus where we took up paper and pen and drew group pictures. It went like this, I draw and eyeball, someone else draws a mouth. In the end it turns out looking goofy, and stupid... well, I thought it looked cool.

Well, all good times come to an end. The missionary had talked to some people, thought about what we should do and finally decided that we were to go back to the church for the night. That was the last thing that we wanted to do, but even if we got past the first bridge, there was a second that was worse off than the first. Sooo... we all went back to the church. It was very disappointing but it was the right thing to do. We told jokes on the way back to the church to lighten the mood and it worked. We were all pretty sure that the preacher was getting ready for a nice, peaceful, quiet evening, when his plans were shattered by the arrival of our group of 12 loud teens, who had been stuffed like sardines in a can for the entire day. We smelled like a football locker room after a hard game from being wet all day long and then packed tightly into a bus. In other words, we probably messed up his idea of peaceful.

A daring attempt, failed. Who, what, when, where, and why? Well why, where and when are all easy to answer. Why there was an attempt at robbing our bus was is because of the poverty stricken people that live in that town. This was a particularly corrupt village. When it happened was about an hour after we arrived back at the church. Where it happened was on the bus and right outside the bus where he was tackled. We were all eating inside when from outside a crash and a bang, thud, crash was heard. The Haitian cooks had tackled a notorious village thief. Mr. Klein ran outside to help but the thief got away. Fortunately his cellphone fell out of his pocket and fell on the ground where it was picked up and traced to the owner of the phone, the son of one of the elders from the church. He was reported and the elder said he would be punished. That was the climactic point of the day. When he fled, he'd done it empty handed so we did not lose any of our stuff.

We all played a game of spoons, and had great fun, and went to bed tired and ready to go the next morning. The upside was that the first time we left, we had not been able to say goodbye to all of the kids. Coming back to the church for the night, afforded us that opportunity and to have a little downtime with them the next morning.
Adios.

.