Honduras. Day 16.
Me, Nol, and Karis got up and went and grabbed some Dunkin' Donuts, and then hurried back to the apartments for devo at 7:00 (even though devo starts when we get there because Nol had it this morning). He talked about serving in humility, and then we did a circle prayer and everyone prayed for the day ahead of us.
Hahaha... The day ahead of us...
So we all load up in the Galloper and go meet Marc, Luis, David, Milton, and Michelle at the Texaco at the bottom of El Hatillo. Then we all go to the work site in a village underneath El Picacho. What is El Picacho, you ask? El Picacho is the enormous statue of Jesus that you can look up and see from Tegucigalpa. It is on one of the highest mountains. So today we were building a house right under the feet of Jesus, on a mountain high above all of Honduras, and it offered one of the most breath-taking views I have ever beheld (and, of course, I had forgotten my camera today).
I have done some bad house sites before, but today's takes the cake. It was an enormous hike straight up, literally, the mountain. Carrying the tools up alone was miserable. Taking the wood there was kinda like a bad mixture of a never-ending nightmare, having cancer, and Hillary getting president. Marc had to go get the TORCH team and the tin, so I went with him and Michelle. We delivered the tin to the other site (I lost my phone; that will be an important detail later), and then we took the TORCHers to the Site of Death (oh, the look on their faces when they saw the mountain). Once we got them there, they got to work and we kinda stepped back. Marc is real big on us getting the hard work started for them and then letting it be their project, which I completely understand.
So it was a long day of playing with kids, blowing money on Taco chips for all of them and Natura's Pear Juice for myself (I'm an addict now). Now let me tell you what happened at the end of the day.
We took the tools to the top of the mountain to wait for Nol to come pick us up. At first, it was just me and Karis. That was at about 4:30, not too bad yet. We sat and waited, and sat and waited, and sat and waited. No Nolan. We looked down the mountain and saw Marc's truck pulling out. Eventually Steve and Felicia came up to watch the tools with us. That was about 5:00, getting a little worse. Then we saw Luis, the last TORCH helper on the mountain, get on the bus and leave. Still no Nolan, and now we are alone on the top of an unfamiliar mountain with a whole bunch of tools and it's getting late. And there's still no Nolan.
Steve wanted to walk back down the mountain (a 30 minute task) and look for Nolan, thinking he got lost in the Galloper or stuck somewhere. But seeing as how there were a bunch of strange guys gathering around, waiting for Steve to find Nolan was not an option. Then we thought we could just call him and Marc and tell them to come find us. Oh wait. Karis' phone is dead. Felicia left her's in the car. Steve's is charging at the apartment. And I lost mine today.
Yeah, it was getting a little scary.
We finally decided that we couldn't wait any longer. We gathered as much as tools as we could, placed Steve walking in front, Karis and Felicia in the middle, and me in back carrying the Fat Max hammers and a Stihl chainsaw for, as much as I hate to say it, protection. We got a ways down the mountain, ignoring all the drunks, until we met a cabby. We loaded our stuff up with him and started driving around looking for Nolan. We found him with the Galloper, which had a dead battery on the side of the mountain. We tried to jump start it with the cab, but it was pointed uphill and wouldn't go. So we tried to push it over the hill. Uh uh. Then some Mormons walked up and helped us push.
Oh, the Mormons...
We got the Galloper down the next hill, found another cab driver to jump us off, and started on our way. We called Marc (on Nolan's phone) and told him to meet us at the apartments with a new battery. Little did we know, we wouldn't make it that far. We got into El Centro (which translates "THE Downtown") and, guess what, the Galloper died again. And it died pointing the wrong way. Down a one way street. Blocking traffic.
So me and Steve managed to push the Galloper around the street while Nol cut the wheels until we eventually got it parked on the curb. We went into Dunkin' Donuts and got the lady at the counter to give directions to Milton (who could then in turn give them to Marc) and told them we need a new battery in El Centro a.s.a.p. Me and Nol stayed with the car, which was conveniently dead outside of a bar, thus attracting several drunks that came up to see how they could "help." Eventually we paid off the Dunkin' Donuts guard to help watch the Galloper with us (we paid him off with donuts; how stereotypical). Marc and Milton showed up 30 minutes later with a new battery, and we were off again. We dropped Milton off at his house, went back to the apartments to get some spaghetti, and then chilled the rest of the night.
Ok. Here's a phrase to sum up the day that some of you will understand: "Welcome to Honduras."
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