It started out a normal trip to Cayes, looking forward to long, hot, stressful, and slow business. But things went a little different than planned...
It was just our family, and we headed down the mountain around 10am. Cassia fell asleep before we got on the road. We stopped at the chicken farm and bought two flats of eggs. About 10 minutes further down the road, the gravel ended and the hard road of Cavillion started. There were rocks across half of the road, with enough room for the vehicle to go by on one side. Apparently there had been some small demonstrating/blocking going on recently. After driving through town, we turned onto the main highway, but traffic was stopped. It's not totally unusual, as this is a fairly busy town, and lots of buses, motos, and tap-taps come through here and lots are making stops. There are roadside vendors, and people walking along the roads trying to sell things we would recognize as peanut brittle or tortillas. There was an older man in a black suit with a crutch - sometimes he used it to walk, and other times he carried it and waved it at vehicles - who was trying to help direct traffic. But there was no place to go, so we hung out for a bit. A few minutes later and a truck with speakers in the back went across the road, with a large group following, some waving branches in the air. Ok, that was the hangup, now we were moving.
We had only driven 100 yards before someone stepped in front of our vehicle and told us to stop. A motorcycle pulled in front of us and stopped there. Then a group of guys came up by the drivers side and we saw they had spray paint. It was all kind of unreal. Why? It didn't make any sense. They appeared to be painting on the vehicle, and of course David was super calm (as always) and kept telling me to quit reaching over and blasting the horn. A moment later, one of the guys in the group apparently noticed the Hospital Lumiere sticker on the side of the vehicle and motioned to the other guy. He stopped painting and looked over. They let us go through. About a mile out of town, we pulled over, told Orrin to not get out of the vehicle, and went to work on the spray paint with some baby wipes and a plastic card. I was shaking from frustration, the adrenaline letdown, and probably fear. Speeches of what I wanted to say to those guys ran through my head, and I wondered if pepper spray would be a Christian thing to do or not...
We got most of the paint off, and cooled down. It still didn't make sense. What did they think they were doing? Don't they get that they're hurting their own country when they do things like this? It makes it unstable and people or businesses aren't going to want to come here and things aren't going to get better. But we don't understand what it's like to be in their situation, or feel a complete lack of control in life.
We got to Cayes and got our business done, actually really fast. It was really not hot out (must be this nice winter weather) and we found a new place to eat...an outdoor cafe where the kids could run around and play while we waited for our food. There was a kitty who really wanted us to feed him, and Cassia wanted to chase. And the food was really, really good.
As we were driving through Cayes, we saw a bus at the gas station that had recently come through Cavillion, evidenced by the bright red "Viv (someone)" painted across the side. The bus driver was standing outside looking at the sign, and didn't look to thrilled. In the recent election, Cavillion's candidate lost to Bonne Fin and so the Cavillion supporters didn't want to go down easy.
We drove out to the airport to pick up our packages from Agape flights. Orrin and Cassia both fell asleep on the way there, which was good as we had to wait about an hour for plane to arrive, unload, and get our stuff. David talked to some others waiting there, and one family from the area said that they had come through Cavillion a few days before, returning from Port au Prince, and had had all of their tires on their vehicle slashed. Ah, that's encouraging news. It was then that we made the final decision to not go back that way on the way home.
The only problem with that was there is no other way home...well, no other way that we knew how to get there anyway. We knew you could take a road off of the airport road, and it would come out somewhere on the Bonne Fin road, but in between was a mystery. We had some more errands to run, and picked up our letter mail in Citi Lumiere after it had been sorted. We had picked up some chicken at a roadside stand, and ate that in the vehicle before heading out.
It was about 5 and still light out when we left Cayes. There was beautiful landscape that we hadn't seen before. Super lush plains with so many crops...it was refreshing to see. Clouds heavy with rain hung low over the green mountains, and we went past a swamp-like pond in a valley.
After about 15 minutes, we turned off the highway onto a road that was gravel and soon turned to red clay, with a few hairpin curves. We were behind a dump truck, so we knew if he could get through, we should be able to too.
David had his GPS on, and when he looked at it, it looked like a spider's web with all the roads and branches between here and the BF road. We went through town after town, some had beautiful churches and buildings, and there was usually a fork in the road where David had to choose one or the other. He couldn't believe that he stayed on the road on the GPS spot on...whoever put these roads on a GPS anyway? And how in the world was there utility power all the way out here in the boonies?? We pretty much followed the power lines for a long ways...it got dark, Cassia fell asleep. We came to a spot where the road trailed off in one direction, and the other direction looked like it fell off into a creek. David got out to look and talk to some people who were by the water. They said vehicles could go through, so we tried it. Not like we had any other choice...besides going back to Cayes and that was not exciting prospect. We kept waiting for the dirt road to end somewhere and we'd have to do that very thing. But it didn't, and we got through the water ok. After lots and lots of winding around, we finally came out on a main rock road...the Bonne Fin road! Never had David been so glad to see that bouncy, pot-holed road! Over two hours since leaving Cayes, we made it home...so so so glad to get back to our mountain :)
