Crash and Burn... Out

Our journey to the border...

Today we “went” to the Dominican Republic. You’ll see why I use the parenthesis in a bit. We loaded up a truck with all five of us and some snacks and headed out on the 1 hour drive to the border. We had no reason for going other than to renew our visas to Haiti. Our visas are good for 3 months, so in order to be in the country legally we have to leave every 90 days. We planned on driving across the border, eating lunch, then returning. Sounds easy right? Wrong. We bounced along the mile long gravel road that leads out of Chambrun where we live and turned onto the paved road toward Croix-de-Bouquets where the road to the D.R. runs. About 100 yards onto the paved road we came upon an accident that had just happened. And I mean, it JUST happened. A tap-tap had run off the road into the ditch and people were laying in the road and grass bleeding, crying, wailing, etc. Tap taps are a form of public transport around here and are everywhere. Sort of like cabs in New York but a lot more colorful and a lot more dangerous.

Anyway, we pulled over and jumped out to help. I scanned the area praying that I wouldn’t find any lifeless bodies and was so relieved to see that everyone seemed to have survived the crash. We quickly decided that Aaron would drive back to our campus and grab the two nurses while I stayed behind to start first aid with my weenie little first aid kit I always carry with me here. Soon after Aaron left, a police truck showed up. Fortunatly we know these guys and they know us and were happy to help. I talked them into loading all the injured into the back of their pickup and we transported them back to our clinic here to see Dr. Edmond, Kacie, and Aubree. We flew back with sirens blaring and me sitting in the back of the police truck in between two larger Hatian policemen, one of whose machine gun was digging into my side. When we reached the campus we were met by everyone at the doors to the clinic. And I mean everyone came out to help. Even our babysitter was carrying people into the clinic. Most got treated for cuts and bruises. Anna Shultz and her friend Katie worked on the first aid patients while Kacie, Aubree, and Dr. Edmonds triaged the others and started suturing and evaluating. There were lots of cuts and scrapes, a broken nose, and a dislocated hip. Kacie even sewed someone’s ear back on that had come unattached.

After a short while things were all in the very capable hands of the clinic staff so we started back out on our journey. The hour long drive would have been quite lovely as the scenery is great. Much more exciting than driving around Indiana. There are mountains and beautiful lakes. In fact at one part the road literally went right through the lake. Cool flamincos, pretty green water.

Water on both sides… no bridge. Just gravel road with rocks piled up on either side. I guess the lake is swelling over its boundries and eating away the border crossing. It would have been a lovely drive… except we had 3 kids in the back seat. The hour was filled with an episode of Isabel car-sickness, lots of “he/she is touching/hurting/biting/sitting on/annoying me”, complaints of hunger/thirst/fatigue/bumpy roads, and a pit stop for Syd to pee on the side of the road (no public restrooms). Not a fun drive. The first thing we reached was a police post before the border. We had to get out and go up to the station and have them record our names and passport info into a book (by hand, not a computer). Never really did figure out what that was all about. Next we hit the border. It was NUTS. There were soooo many people and it looked like a parking lot of Mack trucks. There was a solid wall of semi trucks coming into Haiti from the D.R. as far as the eye could see. And they were taking up the ENTIRE road. After driving around the back of the building complex and dead ending into a lake, we turned back around and tried to make it against the grain. It was like a tadpole swimming against a pod of Blue Whales. Needless to say we didn’t make it very far and it looked to be HOURS before we ever would. So I got out and ventured around trying to find out where immigration was while Aaron stayed with the kids in the pickup. I wish I could tell you exactly what happened in the next 3 hours, but I really am not sure myself. All I know is that we needed to get stamped OUT of Haiti, get across the border, stamped INTO the D.R., them get stamped OUT of the D.R. and back into Haiti. And no one speaks English. At all. Somehow I managed to get us stamped out and in all at once in Haiti but they wouldn’t give us our visa cards because we hadn’t actually ever went anywhere (which we couldn’t because of the traffic) so we had to walk (all of us) across the border. All in all, the kids were quite the troopers considering what we drug them through!

Again I am not sure what all happened in the D.R. but we had multiple people who may or may not have worked with immigration wanting money and our passports. After we got stamped into the D.R. they wouldn’t stamp us back out. They wanted us to go somewhere…. anywhere… and they weren’t happy with just crossing over and going back. But we couldn't go anywhere since our car was back on the Hatian side of the iron gate and we didn't have enough money or sanity to take a taxi. So we told them we were going to lunch (which we originally had planned on but by this time it was 2pm and we just wanted to get home. At one point we were standing outside trying to explain to someone that we just needed to get back to the Haiti side so we need our D.R. exit stamp, while someone was trying to sell me sunglasses, while a fight broke out next to us and someone got punched then someone picked up a huge rock to bash the other in the face, while Sitota was throwing rocks and Sydney was crying because she had to pee. I lost it. I was just burnt out. Finally we got our passports stamped out of the D.R. but the immigration official was NOT happy with us because we never really left immigration and went into the D.R. We walked back over to Haiti and got in our truck and navigated out of the traffic gridlock and headed back to Chambrun. We made it back in 45 minutes for a grand total of 5 hours of D.R. journey.

So, to recap the day, we saw a pretty bad accident, help treat the wounded, rode in a police truck, drove an hour to the border, spent $200 and 3 hours arguing with people to get a passport stamp to a country we never actually went into, saw a fight and multiple other “fun” things. It was quite a day. I am burned out. Tomorrow is another day. We have 3 flights (2 teams) arriving, a grocery trip (always at least a 3 hour ordeal), and are moving to our new house. Should be another exciting day!