A very muddy tale

Well, I´ve been absent from my blog for almost two months now, and I´m almost afraid to try to catch you all up to speed on everything that´s happened since. But I can try, at least a little bit.

Wed, Feb 11: I go with Rusty and Jenny on the deuce to Port to pick up supplies for the groups coming in.

Thur, Feb 12: I go with Rusty and Jeremy on two deuces (yes, we have two that work now). We head to Leymus to pick up IRR (International Rescue and Relief from Union College), who are supposed to be crossing the river around noon there to leave Honduras and enter Nicaragua. We wait by the river all afternoon, from 1pm on. Finally after dark, at 6:30 we leave to spend the night in nearby Waspam. We check email there to see if they sent us anything, but no. We sleep in a sparsely furnishing hotel of questionable cleanliness. The barrel of water that I am supposed to use to clean myself has mosquito larvae in it. I entertain serious questions about whether this ¨shower¨ is worth it.

Fri, Feb 13: We go back to Leymus and get IRR. Apparently they reached the river about 20 minutes after we left. Oops. :P We load up and head back to Francia Sirpi.

Sat, Feb 14: Valentine´s Day! We take IRR to church. Then in the afternoon, we hike to the Wawa river. It takes about an hour through the jungle. It´s still muddy, but not nearly as bad as the first time I hiked it last August. And the rapids are totally worth it - cold and fast and fun. After showering, we spend the evening eating candy hearts and giving each other back rubs. :)

Sun, Feb 15: IRR sits in lecture, and Jenny, Mindy, and I get to organize their pharmacy! Apparently all the hours we spent organizing our clinic´s pharmacy were meant to prepare us for something. :) We get faster every time we do it.

Mon, Feb 16: IRR´s first mobile clinic in Tasba Pain. Some of the students treat a little baby with bad pneumonia. Everyone´s worried about it - Dr. Duehrssen especially thinks it needs to go to the hospital. We´ll send someone back tomorrow to check on him.

Tue, Feb 17: Mobile clinic in Kwiwi Tingni. We get back late, and then Mrs. Brown comes up on the hill to tell us that her daughter, Dexli, who´s almost ready to have a baby, is having pains. Several of us head down to check on her, but it turns out she is not having contractions, but pain in the area of her liver, maybe gallstones. By the time we figure that out and get her pain medicine, it´s past midnight.

Wed, Feb 18: Break from clinics. I go with Rusty, Mindy, and Jeremy to Port to buy groceries. We leave at 4am or some such ungodly hour so we can pick up the baby and his family from Tasba Pain and get them out to the main road where they can catch a bus to Waspam. We also send Dexli to Waspam. We get back from our grocery trip around 10pm, very tired.

Thu, Feb 19: Back to clinics again! Today we go to Kapri, a town down the road past Miguel Bikan. But I´m using the term ¨road¨ very loosely. It has huge mud puddles at the bottom of each hill, and after a while it cease to be a road for vehicles and turns into a footpath for horses and muddy humans. Rusty says he got the truck all the way to Kapri last year, so he can do it again this year. But it´s been rainier this year . . . Rusty tries to take the deuce through one too many mud puddles, and it gets stuck. Very stuck. The men of IRR start trying to pull it out while Rusty jumps on the motorcycle to go back to Francia and get the other truck. The problem is, the second truck has no brakes. It gets stuck too, without doing the first truck any good.

Meanwhile, we girls have hiked a small amount of medicines into Kapri and are setting up a limited clinic. Some of the guys join us, and we go until early afternoon. We hike back to the two deuces - by now they are both unstuck. But it´s rained while we´ve been in clinic, and we still have several steep hills to go up. Here ensues the great battle with the mud. Our pack of IRR guys gets the trucks up one hill, two hills - but not three. The third hill is much too steep. But we don´t realize that until we´ve tried for two hours or so. First all the guys push at the back. Then we load all the girls onto the truck for extra weight to create traction, and all the guys push again. The tires spin mud up into their faces, and many of them are soon coated. (I promise to post the picture of Jeremy after I get back - he was the best monster.) Then all the girls jump up and down in unison while the guys push, again to create more traction. It helps, but not enough, and we decide the danger of us falling off the truck is greater than the benefits. So all the girls go in front of the truck and pull with the chain while the guys continue to push. We still only make it to halfway up the hill.

So when it gets dark, we start walking, and Jeremy and Ryan Veness take off faster than us. They get to Miguel Bikan first and borrow bikes so they can get back to Francia and ask Mike Halverson to come get us on his truck. We get to Miguel Bikan a little later and settle down to wait for Mike to come. We bunk down on the wood floors of a church. After a while, it gets cold, and, prepared IRR souls that we are, we have metal matches, so we build a fire outside. Cow poop covers the ground all around us, but we try to avoid it when we lie next to our fire. Between the fire and the Space blankets, everyone manages to get warm, some inside the church, some out. And we sleep. Mike never comes.

Fri, Feb 20: We wake up at dawn and start walking. None of us have eaten since, at best, late afternoon yesterday. None of us have water left. We don´t talk much - walking takes a lot of concentration right now. When we´re getting close to Francia, Clint Hanley, another local missionary, comes along with his pick-up truck and takes some of us the rest of the way in to Francia. He explains that Mike didn´t come last night because one of the axles on his truck was broken. When we´re finally home, food and water have never been so sweet before.

Sat, Feb 21: We rest our beaten bodies.

Sun, Feb 22: Mobile clinic in Esperanza.

Mon, Feb 23: Off day.

Tue, Feb 24: We go back to Kapri, scene of the disaster. Wiser this time, we stop the truck in Miguel Bikan and hike in. We split our group in Kapri, and half of us go into Polo, a village even further back. We make it back to Francia on the same day. :)

Wed, Feb 25: We pack for the river trip.

You´ll notice the above account of the truck getting stuck in mud is different in some details from the story Union College´s Clocktower published about the event. The date, for instance, is incorrect in the CT, as is the statement that we were back in mobile clinics the next day. (No way did we want to do that). Just thought I´d set the record straight...