Tags: 2024, ATI 10, time travel
Ten years ago, Tom and I had just met the year before. We began spending significant time together late in the year 2013. By January 2014, we had two trips planned to Haiti together in about as many months. We were going to Tom's friend Pastor Pierre's mission, La Croix New Testament Mission on the northern peninsula of the country. For the second trip we decided to meet up with a Haitian friend of mine that I'd met a few years earlier and who had stayed in touch with me through Facebook messenger while I worked in Tomazo. I had been too involved in that work to even entertain making the trip to Samuel's village. Now that I had Tom as an adventurous partner in travel, we decided to find our way to Samuel. We connected with another friend in Port au Prince and met Samuel in Petit Goave, on the southern peninsula, and a couple miles away from Piton Mountain.
In Samuel's words, he needed us to visit because his village needed a doctor (Tom is an MD). This was further supported by Samuel himself having a very tough spring cold at the moment, so severe his dark skin was pale. I could tell he felt terrible but he was meeting with us anyway. It was good to see him after a few years apart and he was the same Samuel I remembered.
We piled into a small SUV, four or five of us, and began the hour long drive - which is probably no more than 20 miles. We went a few miles out of the city of Petit Goave on Route 2 (one of two major highways in the country) and then turned right onto a road that quickly angled up. Like, 45° angle up. The mountain itself was lush and green and peppered with small enclaves of communities. A convenience store here and there, schools and churches, too. We drove past all that and kept going up. Every now and then there would be a break in the trees and you could see out across the hills and chart your progress up. It became literally breathtaking to gaze out over the mountains, being closer to the clouds than the water.
Finally we pulled off the ever-narrowing tire-strip road into a grassy area where we parked the car. The mountain kept going and the road turned into a steep rocky pathway on which we began to walk. About an 45 minutes later, we are on the last couple of turns that are even steeper, smaller, and rockier. We wind around a house here or there and on both sides are fields that are farmed, some at an angle closer to 90° than 45. A couple teenagers appear out of huts and run past us, barefoot and smiling, to beat us to our destination. I'm going slowly because I'm taking pictures every step of the way, thinking, well, these kids aren't sick.
The road leveled out and there's a building before us. Samuel tells us that's his school. As we draw closer, breathless from the hike, we realize the roof is basically in the floor of the school. Samuel was conducting classes in a quarter of the building where they had a little shelter from the sun and wind but probably not from the rain.
I think Tom's first words were, "they don't need a doctor, they need an engineer!" and indeed that was the case. If you know anything about Tom Tigar, you know he was thrilled. He whipped out his notebook, got to work, and we haven't stopped since.
♥
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