The South

September 8th 2009 8:30pm

I was having one of those dreams that I was running late for work today, and when I woke up at 5:00am, I was pretty convinced that it was actually 8:00, which would make me considerably late for my ride from Freddy. I was so convinced that I got out of bed and as I headed into my bathroom, I saw the time on my computer, which is still on Cincinnati time. So thank goodness it was only 7:00, and I was not going to be late, heck I could even sleep for another 15 minutes.

I fell back asleep until I woke up to the sound of a truck honking outside of the apartment. I felt stupid for waking up earlier and not checking my alarm clock first. It was really convincing though.

When I woke up for the second time, it was still a little early, but I decided that I would try and be productive, and I went up to the roof and rode the stationary bike for a while before coming back down and showering. I prepared myself some oatmeal, and met Freddy outside to go to work. We shared about our weekends, and without very much traffic this morning, we got to the office early, where our only other coworker that was there was Elmer.

Freddy and Elmer talked for a little bit, and then asked if I wanted to go to the south today. Absolutely I want to go to the south today. They told me that we would be going to two separate places, Pespire, and Choluteca. They are about 90 kilometers from the city, so the trip would take all day. That was all I was told.

As people slowly trickled in to the office, I tried to get the Word of the Day from everyone as fast as I could, knowing that I was leaving soon. I left before everyone got there, so I left my notebook with Nancy, to try and get words from everyone.

By 8:30, Elmer, Alfreddy and I were on the road. It took us a good half hour to get out of the city, and when we were almost out, we stopped and picked someone up on the side of the road. It turns out he works for one of our partner NGOs, and we were supposed to pick him up, which was news to me. I didn't catch his name, but I wanted to call him Marcus all day, so I will do that here. It turns out that Marcus works for one of our partner NGOs which is focused currently on the Free Wheelchair Project, which supplies easily assembled wheelchairs to the needy all over the world. Fortunately for me, Marcus also speaks a little bit of English, so we were able to converse through most of the trip.

The hour and a half long trip to Pespire was moderately terrifying as I did not have a seatbelt, and apparently the double yellow line is more of a guideline here than a rule. Luckily for me, I was distracted by the green mountains that seemed to go on forever. We curved our way up and down back and forth until we stopped halfway through one of our descents. Slowly, we crept down the mountain and we saw that the cause for our delay was an overturned Coke truck which was sprawled across the road. The whole of the surrounding village was there either watching or picking up as much coke, sprite, and various other beverages back to their houses.

We continued on until we reached Pespire, where we stopped at a restaurant, I thought for snacks. I wandered around the outdoor patio area of the restaurant for a bit, while Elmer talked with the owner. This restaurant was awesome. It had a very nice fountain, a walled off area just for turtles, of which there were about 20, and a swimming pool. Also, it turns out that the restaurant has a storage facility that we are using to store the wheelchairs. Just as I was about to ask what exactly we were doing at the restuarant, an empty semi truck pulled up. Empty semis need to be filled.

We spent the next two hours loading up equipment for over 200 wheelchairs. First, we put in about 20 boxes filled with the metal skeletons of the chairs, which was fairly simple. When those were moved out of the storage facility, they revealed hundreds of plastic chairs, of which we loaded 200. When those were gone, a mountain of boxes filled with wheels was staring at us. As I was the tallest, it was my job to climb to the top of the 20 foot tall mound of boxes and pass them down. Each weighed about 50 pounds, which really adds up when you are doing 200. Also, I was in my work clothes, which are the best for hard manual labor. In the confines of a storage room, when it is over 90 degrees outiside, and you are in pants and a collared shirt, you sweat. I'm talking more than ho-down sweat.

By the way, I'm saying 200 wheelchairs now, but I didn't know how many it was when we were doing it, because Elmer insisted upon keeping track in his head. Eventually, when we had reached a breaking point, and the mountain had deteriorated to half of its majestic height, we stopped for water.

A lady brought each of us out glasses of water. I wasn't sure if it was okay to drink or not, and Elmer and Marcus both noticed my hesitation. They assured me that it was okay to drink and that both the CCD and Marcus' NGO often took groups here to eat and drink.

The water was cool and good, and made me briefly forget about the remaining stacks of boxes to be moved. I climbed back up the half gone mountain, which really was more of a hill at that point, and began lugging the boxes to Elmer, who then stacked them for Alfreddy and Marcus to load them into the truck. Two minutes into stacking boxes, Elmer told me to stop, and that we were done. Before the break: 188 boxes. After our break 12.

I do not understand.

The truck headed off and we loaded up into our pick-up. Marcus stayed at the restaurant as we headed on to Choluteca. Well, I thought we were going to Choluteca. First, we went through Pespire to a school there where Kevin (the Global Ministries Intern before me) had worked sometimes. The road to get there was very rough, and was essentially like driving through a dry creekbed. I do not know why we went there, because Elmer and I stayed in the car while Freddy went out, spoke with a woman briefly, and got back into the car.

We then went from there to San Lorenzo, where we stopped for lunch around 1:00. I was so hungry, I was ready to eat everything. This included the very large, very whole fish that was staring at me in the face. I wasn't really sure how to eat a whole fish, because the only time I had ever seen it done was in the cartoons, and I wasn't about ready to put the whole thing in my mouth and pull the whole thing out by the tail leaving only the bones of the fish.

I watched Elmer and Alfreddy eat theres and tried my best to follow suit. We ate outside, and I thought I could smell the ocean. I asked if we were close to the Pacific Ocean, and they informed me that San Lorenzo is a port on a bay that leads out to the ocean.

At one point, our waitress, thinking I couldn't understand her told her co workers that I had very pretty eyes and that she enjoyed looking at them. She then encouraged all of them to look at my eyes if they got the chance. I pretended not to hear them, and looked around the table before glancing over at them, as I did, they all looked over to see if they could see my eyes. So, I began moving my eyebrows up and down rapidly (like eyebrow excercises). I think they were embarassed, but Elmer and Alfreddy thought it was hilarious. Joke landed.

Elmer and Alfreddy decided to take it a step further, however, and told the waitress that I don't have a phone yet, but that when I do, I'll come back and give her my number. I didn't really know what to do, so I just laughed. It was a very funny lunch.

As we continued on our drive to Choluteca, we passed by close enough to the Pacific Ocean to be able to see it. It was very brief, but also very exciting. I've always loved going to the beach, even if its only to dig holes.

We arrived in Choluteca somewhere around 2:00 and crossed over the Choluteca on a bridge described to me as "the Golden Gate...exactly the same." By 2:08, we were done in Choluteca. we had met with another NGO that we work with, spoke briefly with their manager, then got back into the car to leave. As we crossed back over the bridge, I couldn't believe we had driven an extra hour and a half just to do what could have been accomplished over the phone.

"Is that it? That's all we need to do here in Choluteca?" I asked.
"Yes," Elmer told me.
"We haven't seen them in a little while," Alfreddy explained.

It was very simple, and very profound to me.

We then began our very long trip back, and when we got back to Pespire, we picked up Marcus, and continued to traverse the mountains that laid between us and the CCD. After getting stuck behind some slow trucks, and caught in a traffic jam outside of the city, I didn't get back to my apartment until 6:30.

I was exhausted, and decided not to really cook for myself like I had planned on doing earlier. Instead, I popped a pizza into the oven, and ate it while watching some of Pineapple Express in Spanish. As I was finishing up dinner, Marisela called and we caught up for a while about our last couple of days. We talked about plans for the rest of the week, but at this point, I've learned to stop saying, "I should get a phone tomorrow."