Monday, April 16, 2007
To Sixaola and Back
At the risk of making our life sound more "glamorous" than it is, I'm going to relate the events of the week end. Don't get me wrong. We live in a nice house, drive a good car, and have hot water. But, from time to time, we leave the comforts of home and journey to other parts for various reasons...not for fun, I assure you. We aren't campers and don't particularly care to "rough it" without reason. But there are times when our work calls for us to experience spartan accommodations.
This last week end was one of those. Those who live in Latin America (and other places too, I suspect) learn that flexibility is an attribute that is definitely an asset. I guess I should have taken it as a sign that we were in for one of those times when I received the call on Thursday night. One of our regular bus drivers (for when we have volunteer groups) needed me to go with him to the "Tribunal" to pay a ticket he had received the day before. He needed me to testify that he was driving for missionaries that day and not tourists. The policeman took his license plates because he was in a private car which didn't have the "Turistas" sticker on it. He wouldn't accept the driver's word that the gringos in the car weren't sight-seeing, but working with a church in the area. OK. Not a problem. I could go with him even though it was going to make the planned departure for our week end trip a half day late.
After making two fruitless stops, we finally got the ticket paid, but he still didn't have his license plates. That's a whole other story...not related.
Note that all of the plans for the trip had been coordinated with a national missionary...in Spanish...on the telephone...and..."plans" are nothing more than a loose idea of what may happen...among a lot of other things. Compound that with the fact that he had made plans with other nationals as to what we would be doing. So now you have multiple people involved.
I'll try to make this short. I knew we were going to Cahuita, a small village on the Caribbean.(Mitzi and I went there a couple of times in 1999.) It's a, shall we say, different kind of place...full of beach bums, people looking for a good time (at what I'm not sure. There's nothing there.), bars, weird restaurants, and, no doubt, drugs. Several years ago two young ladies were murdered there. Why did we go in "99? Good question. Actually, it's an interesting place. But...I'm getting sidetracked.
We made the 3 hour drive to Cahuita, found the pastor we were to visit with, much to his surprise. He had forgotten. After an hour with him, Daniel, the Tico missionary, indicated we were leaving. This was somewhat of a surprise, because my understanding was that we were going to spend the night there in some cabinas the pastor had. Wrong.
We continued on to Sixaola, which is all the way to the Panama border. I had no idea we were going there, although I did get that impression during the conversation sometime during the day. After another couple of hours driving we arrived at the church in Sixaola.There were a couple of ladies waiting for us there and after a short conversation, I learned that we were staying in an apartment over the church and having a meeting with church people at 6:30 that night.
We went into the center of Sixaola to eat dinner. Well, I don't know if a little village strung out for a quarter of a mile along a gravel road has a center, but we found the bus station and a restaurant...of sorts.
Daniel had asked me if I would tell about our work and how we could work with the church during the service the next morning. I agreed but, in fact, that happened Saturday night during the meeting.
Finally, we went up to the apartment for the night. There was only a single bed in the room where Mitzi and I were to sleep, but there was a little 2 inch foam mattress leaning against the wall. That was to be my bed. I wasn't popular with the Central American tropical cockroaches when I moved the mattress. They scurried in several directions. I hoped they didn't return to claim their mattress during the night. With their size, they could have carried it, and me, off. The bed, and the mattress, had only a mattress cover...no sheets. The little bed had a pillow. I had some wadded up curtains for a pillow.
We thought about taking a shower before we went to bed, but changed our minds when we discovered that there was no hot water. Facing a cold shower twice was more than I wanted to brave. Twice, because we covered ourselves with generous amounts of bug spray before going to bed, and the smell, and feel, would have called for a second shower the next morning.
Surviving the night without incident we arose to another hot day and the prospect of a not too unwelcome cold shower.
I won't go in to all the details about the services on Sunday morning.Suffice it to say that the schedule, as we had understood it, changed at least four times before the morning was over. Rather than tell the adults about our work, I gave an illustration with a soccer ball(not a demonstration...I don't play soccer) to about 35 children.
One more story...On the way home, we stopped in Cahuita to eat lunch. Now, finding a good place there is difficult, because everything looks...well...crummy. We finally settled on a place called "Ingrid's", mainly because that's Daniel's wife's name. We didn't pay any attention to the sign which said "Health Food". Daniel wanted a fruit salad with ice cream...nope. Ice cream isn't healthy. I was having trouble deciding between a tomato, grabanzo, onion sandwich or one with olives, carrots and cheese when the waitress asked for our drink orders. Having gotten the point that this was a health food restaurant, I ordered a "diet" coke. No coke, at least not Coca Cola. I feel sure we could have gotten some of the other kind of coke...or at least marijuana, since that's a plant. Funny how that works. Some of those folks won't eat meat, but will blow their minds away with drugs.
Oh well. We made it home, took a nice hot shower and slept in our own bed with clean sheets.
Please do pray for Manuel, the pastor at Cahuita. He is discouraged, as are the people of the church at Sixaola, because they don't have a pastor.
This last week end was one of those. Those who live in Latin America (and other places too, I suspect) learn that flexibility is an attribute that is definitely an asset. I guess I should have taken it as a sign that we were in for one of those times when I received the call on Thursday night. One of our regular bus drivers (for when we have volunteer groups) needed me to go with him to the "Tribunal" to pay a ticket he had received the day before. He needed me to testify that he was driving for missionaries that day and not tourists. The policeman took his license plates because he was in a private car which didn't have the "Turistas" sticker on it. He wouldn't accept the driver's word that the gringos in the car weren't sight-seeing, but working with a church in the area. OK. Not a problem. I could go with him even though it was going to make the planned departure for our week end trip a half day late.
After making two fruitless stops, we finally got the ticket paid, but he still didn't have his license plates. That's a whole other story...not related.
Note that all of the plans for the trip had been coordinated with a national missionary...in Spanish...on the telephone...and..."plans" are nothing more than a loose idea of what may happen...among a lot of other things. Compound that with the fact that he had made plans with other nationals as to what we would be doing. So now you have multiple people involved.
I'll try to make this short. I knew we were going to Cahuita, a small village on the Caribbean.(Mitzi and I went there a couple of times in 1999.) It's a, shall we say, different kind of place...full of beach bums, people looking for a good time (at what I'm not sure. There's nothing there.), bars, weird restaurants, and, no doubt, drugs. Several years ago two young ladies were murdered there. Why did we go in "99? Good question. Actually, it's an interesting place. But...I'm getting sidetracked.
We made the 3 hour drive to Cahuita, found the pastor we were to visit with, much to his surprise. He had forgotten. After an hour with him, Daniel, the Tico missionary, indicated we were leaving. This was somewhat of a surprise, because my understanding was that we were going to spend the night there in some cabinas the pastor had. Wrong.
We continued on to Sixaola, which is all the way to the Panama border. I had no idea we were going there, although I did get that impression during the conversation sometime during the day. After another couple of hours driving we arrived at the church in Sixaola.There were a couple of ladies waiting for us there and after a short conversation, I learned that we were staying in an apartment over the church and having a meeting with church people at 6:30 that night.
We went into the center of Sixaola to eat dinner. Well, I don't know if a little village strung out for a quarter of a mile along a gravel road has a center, but we found the bus station and a restaurant...of sorts.
Daniel had asked me if I would tell about our work and how we could work with the church during the service the next morning. I agreed but, in fact, that happened Saturday night during the meeting.
Finally, we went up to the apartment for the night. There was only a single bed in the room where Mitzi and I were to sleep, but there was a little 2 inch foam mattress leaning against the wall. That was to be my bed. I wasn't popular with the Central American tropical cockroaches when I moved the mattress. They scurried in several directions. I hoped they didn't return to claim their mattress during the night. With their size, they could have carried it, and me, off. The bed, and the mattress, had only a mattress cover...no sheets. The little bed had a pillow. I had some wadded up curtains for a pillow.
We thought about taking a shower before we went to bed, but changed our minds when we discovered that there was no hot water. Facing a cold shower twice was more than I wanted to brave. Twice, because we covered ourselves with generous amounts of bug spray before going to bed, and the smell, and feel, would have called for a second shower the next morning.
Surviving the night without incident we arose to another hot day and the prospect of a not too unwelcome cold shower.
I won't go in to all the details about the services on Sunday morning.Suffice it to say that the schedule, as we had understood it, changed at least four times before the morning was over. Rather than tell the adults about our work, I gave an illustration with a soccer ball(not a demonstration...I don't play soccer) to about 35 children.
One more story...On the way home, we stopped in Cahuita to eat lunch. Now, finding a good place there is difficult, because everything looks...well...crummy. We finally settled on a place called "Ingrid's", mainly because that's Daniel's wife's name. We didn't pay any attention to the sign which said "Health Food". Daniel wanted a fruit salad with ice cream...nope. Ice cream isn't healthy. I was having trouble deciding between a tomato, grabanzo, onion sandwich or one with olives, carrots and cheese when the waitress asked for our drink orders. Having gotten the point that this was a health food restaurant, I ordered a "diet" coke. No coke, at least not Coca Cola. I feel sure we could have gotten some of the other kind of coke...or at least marijuana, since that's a plant. Funny how that works. Some of those folks won't eat meat, but will blow their minds away with drugs.
Oh well. We made it home, took a nice hot shower and slept in our own bed with clean sheets.
Please do pray for Manuel, the pastor at Cahuita. He is discouraged, as are the people of the church at Sixaola, because they don't have a pastor.
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