#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

Post #7 Las Canoas: Day 2

It's gonna rain.  When it rains in the Dominican Republic, it RAINS.  That is what it did today - it poured. Down below you will see pictures of the road, I mean river, yes, that is the road turned riverish.  Today was the same as yesterday except we did some electrical work, fixing fixtures, and finished the interior painting.  We also did VBS in the afternoon/evening which went well, but I was making balloon animals the whole time so I was not part of the first day of VBS.  More about VBS tomorrow.  At the beginning of VBS only 20 or so kids were there and making balloon animals in front of the kids was easy.  In the pictures you will see the kids sitting nicely, watching me.  Then, as more children arrived, they got closer and closer to me leaving their chairs behind so they could see better, until they were packing in so tight on me I felt a little claustrophobic.  There was such a huge group of them, my dad took one picture and you can't even see me anymore!  The rest of the group started doing the rest of the VBS activities, so I went back in a small room in the back of the building with a helper and started making more balloons to give out once they were finished with the VBS.  After about an hour I peeked my head out and to my astonishment there were over 100 kids out there instead of 20!  "Back to making balloons." I said, kind of like the "Time to make the donuts..." Dunkin Donuts man.  After we were done it was time for the kids to leave and the plan was that they would get their balloon animal on the way out.  We were imagining a somewhat controlled departure similar to what children would do when leaving an American VBS program.  Well, giving each kid one and not two balloons and getting all of them out was like trying to stop a pack of hungry wolves from getting the meat that we had in out hands.  For the first five minuets it went fine, until the first kids out gave their balloon to someone else and came back in to get another one.  Kids going out, kids coming in, balloons in the middle of the pack,adults clamoring for balloons too (in Spanish, of course) ...  You get the idea.  Chaos ensued.  Finally we got all 130 some kids and adults OUT THE DOOR.  That was the exciting episode for today.  Atleast we know the kids loved the balloons.

We did have showers like we'd never had before, that night before bed. We'd been told ahead of time that we'd be bathing in the "pristine" river, but once Hurricane Sandy rains began, the river was too swift moving to be safe.  Instead, we showered in the down spouts on the church building!  These were very G rated showers so there are even pictures. Adios!

Bathing in the downspout

Fixing light fixtures

Girl washing her hands in the runoff from the bus

Our muddy river, er, road

Making balloons for the children

Our hideout

Our pile of supplies 

Doing a various activity with the kids

Handing out the balloons