As I landed in Port Au Prince on May 31st the most adorable, shy, young lady sitting next
to me in her broken English said, “Welcome to my country.” It was definitely
one of those “Aww” moments. A few weeks ago though, I got my official
welcome to Haiti. It was not one of those “Aww” moments.
I was having one of those days. You know
exactly what I mean by one of those days. I started off the morning by working
out too hard and throwing up. Then I headed out with my crew to get 25 lbs bags
of rice and 100 lbs bags of beans. From there we loaded up countless
amounts of 5 gallon jugs of water. It’s not the lifting that’s the bad part but
the incredible amount I sweat in this nasty heat. It’s unbelievable! We
finished dropping off the water, got in the truck to head to the grocery store,
and the truck wouldn’t fire up. Yep, that’s when I knew for certain it was one
of those days. A local mechanic, a few hours, and 3,000 gourdes later we
were on our way.
As we got to the main road and headed up
the bridge there were two police officers randomly pulling vehicles over. Just
my luck, we were one of the lucky ones that got selected. Fortunately, we had
Budu (best driver in all of Haiti) and Zachery (an awesome translator) with us
(Kelsey and me) or we’d been in serious trouble. We pulled over and they
immediately took Budu’s license and some other paper work.
Eventually Budu got tired of waiting and
got the policeman’s attention which resulted in them having a little back and forth discussion. Even Zach one of the most mild mannered Haitians I know was getting a
frustrated. After things escalated a little more Budu and Zach were asked
to get out of the truck leaving me and Kelsey absolutely baffled at what was
really going on. First off, many believe (myself included) that the police here
are corrupt. Also, it doesn’t help that our truck has Dominican Republic plates
on it seeing that Haitians and Dominicans aren’t the friendliest with each
other. Another 10 minutes passed and now Kelsey and I were asked to get out of
the truck.
The lack of reasoning to what was happening is so aggravating and Kelsey
might have been a bit more than aggravated. She doesn’t take the nonsense very
well. I was right there with her but maybe not as vocal. Not that the police could
understand what she was saying, but I think they knew from her tone that she was not thrilled. It just didn’t make any sense though. Zach and Budu didn’t even know
what the police were doing. It had been easily over 30 minutes and nothing had
really been explained and we were all to out wits end.
We hit the breaking point when the
Haitian police told us that we had to leave our truck and that they were going
to take Kelsey and me away in a police van. Immediately I had to pull Kelsey
away because she was beyond her boiling point. We needed to come with a plan
because we were not about to get in a police van. After plotting and just
being completely dumbfounded and frustrated
I thought, “Hey we haven’t even prayed!” So we closed our eyes right there,
asked for forgiveness and then prayed that God would take care of this mess and also take care of us. Not two minutes after we said “Amen” the police handed Budu back
his license and the paperwork and we were sent on our way!
If
that wasn’t enough, later that evening as I drove back over that same bridge
there was a huge rainbow spanning across the sky. “Welcome to Haiti Ryan. Are
you going to lean on your own understanding or are you going to trust Me?” You
know, things always work out a lot better when we let Him be in control. Thank
you Lord for always being in control and never worried even when things aren’t
looking good.
