We stopped at one village where I talked to a guy that was 24 years old and had never in his life time seen a gringo (white person) in the village. That is somewhat the same impression we got from a majority of the people we passed by. People would gather on the banks to see us as we rode by, and the kids would do that hiding just far enough away thing so they could see you but didn't have to get too close. I'm sure they knew we existed, but we truly were like an 'alien' to them.
It was also a whole village affair every time we stopped (which really made it kind of cool, but here is one village that came down the bank to get the rice we were handing out (it almost had a baptism feel you know)
And over all it was a great day, long, but really good . . . up until the very last part. The boat ran out of gas. We traveled about 5 or so hours up the river, and on our way back, with about 2 hours left, we putzed ourself to a stop in the middle of the Rio Coco. Well then. Another thing I didn't mention, the town of Waspam was out of gas, in order to get the 45 gallons we needed to even take the trip in the first place, we got the mayor to release the towns reserve fuel to us. (Talk about friends in high places!) But unfortunately, that was not enough, miraculously though, we were nearly to the village of Leimus (the last village reachable by roads), so we paddled our way over and emptied ourselves out of the boat. The thought was (because of course Leimus doesn't have any more gas either) was to just call back to Waspam, and have someone send a truck to come pick us all up. If only it was that simple. . . Leimus doesn't have cell phone signal, so one person got a ride on a motor bike someone had 6 km out of town where they finally reached cell signal. Then, the only big truck in Waspam was broken down, so they finally got a hold of a little pickup that we decided would have to do (we didn't have any other options). So we wait and wait (then find out that the bridge over a little river has been washed over, so the ride will take twice as long between the villages because they have to go around and about out fo the way). So finally the truck gets there and there are 28, I think, in a pick up truck. Although that counts the 4 kids and 2 adults in the cab, so there were only 22 people in the bed haha. But we hadn't been on the road 10 minutes and we come across the border patrol military check point (you know where they want to see your passport, and know why you are so close between the Honduras and Nicaragua line) I just sat they praying and praying thinking about all those things you hear on the news about the hispanics trying to get into the states. I was just sure this was going to end in jail. But after a brief discussion, and talk about how we were a ministry, we went right on by (thank you LORD!) I would have loved for this to be the end of the excitement, but unfortunately that was not to be. The driver of the truck was insane. To the point that we almost made him leave us more than once to just walk home. (If we hadn't been in the middle of nowhere with no humans for miles, in the pitch black (except for the moon) I would have done it without a thought). So instead we (well at least I) just sat there praying. In the end, we did end up getting out when we got into the city of Waspam and walked the last maybe 1 kilometer or so back to our hotel. NEVER have I been so happy to get anywhere.
But regardless of all the chaos, the 3 or so hours we spent in Leimus were great. We were in this
little pavilion like thing the whole time, but we sang songs, we played games, ate the last of the snacks we had packed, and over all had some good bonding time (especially with the kids we brought back with us). Although I will say that the first hour or so of waiting was much more exciting than the rest :) But, if nothing else, the running out of gas gave us this fun time to appreciate all the memories we made that day!
No comments:
Post a Comment