Transportation Woes

For our mobile clinics, we´ve been riding the mission´s four-wheeler. We stick our suitcase full of medicine and supplies on the front, and two or three of us ride. The others of us have to ride bicycles, or sometimes a motorcycle, but those break down and get flat tires about every time we ride them. The four-wheeler isn´t in good shape either. It´s welded and duct-taped together all over, it doesn´t have brakes, and the rear axle is broken. That means that we only have drive power in the front wheels, which makes it really hard to climb hills. Every time we come to a hill, we all lean forward to put the weight on the front and cross our fingers.

Last Tuesday, we were headed to Tasba Pain to run a mobile clinic. Predictably, the motorcycle got a flat, and Jeremy had to drive it back to Francia. The three of us girls continued to Tasba Pain, where we met a very steep hill that curved sharply to the right, with deep ditches on either side. We tried to shift our weight to the front to climb up, but because of the broken rear axle, we lost momentum quickly. We tried to downshift, but ended up in neutral and started rolling down the hill backwards. We decided to steer to the bottom of the hill and try again. However, because the four-wheeler does not have brakes, we could not control our speed. It was difficult to steer with all three of us, and then a small child ran across the road. We swerved, fish-tailed on the gravel, and ran into the left-hand ditch backwards. We fell on our backs on the ground left of the four-wheeler, and it almost rolled on top of us. We had to push it off of us with our feet, and, praise God, it settled on its wheels.

I landed on top of Mindy, so I wasn´t hurt as badly as she was. :P I just have a bump on my head, a bruised and scraped left elbow, and a bruise above my left hip. Mindy has scratches acroos her whole back and she feels like she pulled a muscle in it. She also has a big skinless patch on her left elbow. Right after I finished cleaning and bandaging her scrapes, she started blacking out and feeling like she would throw up. Fortunately, she was OK after sitting still for a few minutes.

We went ahead and opened our clinic to treat people that day. After we finished, we had to get back on the four-wheeler and drive home (thank God it started again). We had no way to tell someone at the mission to come pick us up. That drive home was the worst part of the day. We were intensely afraid we were going to crash again, and Mindy and I got off and walked up at least five of the steeper hills, just to reduce the weight on the four-wheeler. We got stuck in a mud-puddle, too. All in all, a bad day.

I really wish we had better transportation here at the mission. It´s frustrating to feel like I have to risk my life just to get to the people I want to serve. Please pray that we can get something that works better--soon.