Friday, October 13, 2006
Ummm... oops!
We were finally back online with electricity and internet on Wednesday afternoon following 2 days of outage but I didn't post an entry fast enough before the power and internet went out again! I don't know how long I'll have internet this time so here is the long-awaited update from Sunday's events.
On Sunday Mark and I headed into PAP to attend Renald's church, Port au Prince Fellowship. Although it was an English-speaking church led by American missionaries - the pastor was from Boston and the acoustic guitarist in their worship band was Jimmy Buffetesque - most of the congregation was Haitian. Renald played drums. Afterwards we went to the big grocery store and this time I didn't have to worry about calculating my purchases since I used my credit card. (Solved that problem!)
The exciting part about our trip into PAP was discovering that we had a near flat on our rear-wheel drive van and then getting stuck while trying to make it up a steeply-graded unpaved hill. The roads in PAP can go from paved to unpaved at any moment without warning. And "paved" should not be confused with "smooth" - there are massive potholes everywhere! You need a keen eye and quick wrist to keep your vehicle out of danger - and that's after avoiding all of the people walking, biking or selling their wares up and down the streets, not to mention all the other equally crazy drivers. Haiti sure keeps you on your toes!
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After returning back to Double Harvest, I noticed that the water pump in my kitchen wasn't working. I decided to just leave the faucet turned on so I would know when I was able to get water again. "Don't forget to turn the faucet off if you leave", I told myself. Shortly thereafter the Spaldings invited me over to have lunch at their house. Following a lesuirely meal with dessert and conversation, I finally met one of the optometry guys (Jon), but not how I would have wanted. He informed us that one of the apartments in the multi-purpose building was leaking down onto the first floor. Immediately I knew what had happened - I forgot to turn the water faucet off.
I ran over as fast as I could to find that both sides of my sink had been plugged with the stoppers and there was about an inch of water on my kitchen floor. Yikes! Mark, Andrew and I did as quick of a mop job as we could while the rest of the crew assessed the damages to the administrative offices below my apartment. Luckily the only casualities have been the accountant's power inverter, which produced a nice electronic burning smell, and some of the floor tiles in my apartment. But due to the water issues, the Spaldings used this as an impetus to complete the move of the admin offices into another building on Double Harvest grounds that had previously started last week. Everyone who was around, and a few who hadn't been prior, pitched in to get everything out of the two offices and moved over to the other building. With so many hands available, we were able to complete the move in only a few hours whereas Arthur mused that they probably would have drug out the move over a few weeks hadn't this situation occurred. We were even able to get ready and have our evening church service as planned.
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Thank the Lord that the optometry guys (Jon, Jim & Russ) from Florida were downstairs checking their email in the admin offices when the flood occurred, otherwise who knows what could have happened! Not a single person has said anything that would make me feel like a numbskull for doing something like this and we are all just kind of treating it like a blessing in disguise.
# posted by A*Dub @ 7:04 AM 
