#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

#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.


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Church building minus the blue painting that washed off

Floods around town

Raging river

I'm wet...

My favorite flood picture 

Hog tied

Its pouring right now, look up in the top left hand corner.  All the water you see is flooding where the people live.

Broken bridge

Flood waters in the middle of town

About 2 feet deep in the middle

Pictures of the chicken run

Reuben riding on the back of the taxi motorcycle 

Bridge work in progress 

Trying to re-channel the river 

Beer garden and bus where we stayed ALL day

#8 El Bano painted and other events

Ok, El Bano being painted.  That is how you spell bathroom in Spanish right?  Well anyway, we painted the bathrooms today, inside and out.  Fortunately it was not raining when we did this project.  Mr. Klein and Ian worked on the electrical outlets today and Mr Klein hired a Dominican guy to go and mess with the power pole next to the church.  Pictures of his ladder are down below.  There were actually two ladders lashed together - it looked a little risky to me.  When my Dad asked if this was the village electrician, we were told, "No, this is just the one they found who was drunk enough and stupid enough to do it."  Kind of funny but It wouldn't have been if it had gone wrong.  Fortunately it was all fine and he had no catastrophic developments involving electricity or gravity!  The electrical situations there are frightening, compared to US standards.  By the way, if you want pictures of all the team members and missionary and his family go to jesus-said-go.blogspot.com , there are also other trip accounts there.   We had a towel fight (I did not start it) and it turned into a towel rebellion against my dad.  He took a little skin off one of the group members and stung quite a few others.

Before today's VBS, we had about 80 tee-shirts that needed to say "Jesus te Ama."  Translated this is "Jesus loves me".  Some of the more artistic members of our team added this with Sharpie markers.  To cut down on the previous day's VBS chaos, we only let kids 12 years old and under inside the building.  All the bigger kids wanted to see what was happening inside so the went to a window and oped it up and looked inside.  VBS also went well today with singing, Bible time, Bible verse games, and snacks.  Useful piece of information is that Dominican kids don't like beef jerky, they spit it out outside.  The only difference in the two days is that we only handed out snacks and nothing else, that meant that we did not have the mobs that we had the day before.  Many of the kids put their snacks in their bag to take home, like to share with family members.

After VBS we explored the town which was interesting because we got to see a little of how they lived.  There are pictures down below, also we saw one of the kids from VBS still working on the papers that we gave them an hour before that.  The river reminded us of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory because it was such a deep brown, the picture does not do the river justice.  I almost got my head chopped off by some village renegades, but I was saved by the camera and they ran away just in time!   So another successful day in Las Canoas.  Picture time!

Mr. Zeller marking hats with Amar (love)

Trying to talk with the native 

Painting the el Bano

This is the only time the girls were allowed in the boys bathroom

This is the only time the boys were allowed in the girls bathroom

Windows that played a major part of being spied on during our trip

Working on the electrical outlet

Dominican hired hand messing with the electrical wires.  The little plants you see hanging on the wires are little air plants that grow without dirt.

Two ladders lashed together

Hog tied to tree

A common sight in the DR

Child working on the papers from VBS, pool table in the background, also a common sight in the DR

Charlies chocolate river

These house foundations are found everywhere in the DR.  The Dominican people don't wait till they have money to build, they build when the have some money then stop when they run out, then start building again when they get more money.

Handywork of Mr. Zeller painting the sign on the church

Those village renegades - what's with all the white skin?

Dad tending the burn pile