En route

Over the past few days we've been busily preparing for our trip home to the U.S. for the Christmas season (yay!). Mostly things went smoothly, but there were a few little hiccups:

Leaving Dezam on Monday, we were all set. Our bags were packed, the house was cleaned, the worms were fed with hopefully enough food (but not too much) to tide them over the next few weeks, and Jides was all lined up to water our plants. We even brought a motorcycle with us in the truck to Port-au-Prince, knowing that the vehicles in Port would be few and far between. Everything was set. Almost.

The first hiccup was Jean-Remy telling us - halfway to Port - that he wasn't staying there until Wednesday (the day of our flight) as originally planned, so he couldn't drive us to the airport. Also, the motorcycle he was going to take back with him now needed to go back on Tuesday afternoon. Okay, sigh. Let's try to find another vehicle and someone to take us the airport.

The second hiccup came when we were using the motorcycle to run some errands after reaching the Port office on Tuesday. Within 15 feet of leaving the office, I ran over a seemingly innocuous black pile of dust...which turned out to be the remnants of a burnt tire. Unfortunately, this was a steel-belted tire - and by "belts" I mean hundreds of steel wires embedded in the tire that hadn't burned away with the rubber, a mass of which entangled in our rear wheel. The rear sprocket looked like a perfectly executed moto-destruction weapon. Fortunately, a passerby found some wire cutters for us and we cut and pulled until it looked like we could escape, so we did.

We made our way to the street and onto the main road, which was clogged with traffic. I slowly drive up the hill...until 5 cops caught up to me on foot and demanded that I pull over. Hiccup. Apparently, my license is bad, I don't have the right motorcycle designation, hiccup, I don't have the registration, hiccup, and the license plate is the "old" kind. Apparently, hiccup. Kurt came to our rescue and talked them out of confiscating the motorcycle and my license. Shockingly, we were allowed to leave, sans bribe, sans problem - just don't use the moto again until it's legal. OK.

Tuesday night we were presented with a pleasant hiccup, if such a thing is possible. Joel and Rachel invited us to their house for dinner, and we also got to go to the surprise birthday party of a new friend's fiance (two social activities in one night, wow!). We had fun watching a very stubborn pinata get whacked while cries of excitement and laughter floated up from the Haitian guests. After that we hotfooted it over to Joel and Rachel's and had a great night eating pizza (thanks!) and talking about all sorts of things. It was totally great, since we never have dinner with people in Dezam and never ever ever have two things to do in one night.

Our last hiccup came this morning as we left around 10am for the airport to catch our our 1pm flight. Usually this drive takes about 20 minutes, so as we sat in traffic, cars inching along, we started to sweat. Alexis, our intrepid chauffeur, was driving fast-and-furiously (okay, mostly slowly but still furiously) and managed to get us around a roadblock and to the airport about an hour before our flight. That's a little too close for comfort given that things in Haiti can sometimes (read: usually) get complicated. We got in through security, through check-in and another security point, and we started to calm down. Once inside, we bumped into not one but two friends who were also on their way home for the holidays.

So here we are safe and sound in Ft. Lauderdale, taking advantage of nice and fast and free wireless internet, a live band playing jazzy tunes about 15 feet from us, coffee, pizza, and English. On a super happy note, our only checked bag was the first to emerge from the luggage carousel, (when does that happen?) and when we got to the torturous customs check they waved us through (again, when does this happen?), which means we did not have to unpack and show each and every one of our stashed Haitian goodies.

This might be the last post for a little while as we will be seeing most of you shortly. Once we are back in the land of eternal summer we hope to return to posting frequently posts.

Merry Christmas! (hopefully without hiccups)