So today Ronel and I trekked up the mountain to seek his family. That sounds much simpler than it was!
Let me start at the beginning! Almost 11 years ago I adopted an amazing 6yo boy who’d lost his family violently up in the mountains of Haiti when he was 5. He also lost a limb in the attack as well as suffered other injuries. That boy is now 16 and decided it was time to go find his homeland.
His family lived up in the mountains, far far up in the mountains, it’s incredible that he survived the trip down. For the journey we were informed that the mountain road eats trucks, so we opted for Moto’s (motorcycles). Luckner rounded up Daniel (the policeman they hire regularly) and another security guard (who speaks English) and 4 moto’s drivers. We were forewarned the trip would be arduous. We knew that and though still didn’t GET it…
We were up at 5:30am for our expected 6am departure. In Haitian time it was closer to 6:45. I’ve not been on a Moto since my teens, what an experience. We started off on the paved roads, awesome. Ronel and I thought we went much of the way on paved and then would zip up the mountain for the last hour. We turned off the pavement in less than 10 minutes. Ummm…. What? I have a bad back from a car accident and am undergoing treatments and Dr’s orders are no lifting, leaning or reaching. Bad back or not there is no way my boy would make a trek back to a place of sadness, horror and loss without me! So, we hit the off road part and I think, ‘oh s…, is it going to be like this the whole way?’ It wasn’t. That was the GOOD part of the road, lol.
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| Preparing to leave |
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| Not too sure about doing this on moto |
Ronel and I were both flabbergasted by what was considered a road, it was giant chunks of rock on a dirt or rock path. Even going slowly we ‘got air’ numerous times as our behinds flew off the seats and we hung on for dear life. I wish I could have gotten a good photo of one of the steep trails we zipped up on the moto’s. My moto and I stopped once about an hour in, because the moto couldn’t get up with a passenger on the back. As I walked up I took photos. Such a beautiful lush area! 20 mins later it’s still just my driver and I…. I am delighted to discover I have cell service even in this remote wilderness (are you reading this Bell?) and call mom, who calls Daniel. Soon after that the bikes show up with a Quad. Awesome, we picked up a random stranger. Second stop was on another hill that my Moto driver got part way up and had to stop to let me off. I discover the iPhone that was deep in my back pocket has jiggled it’s way out. CRAP! We all stop, I go down to tell the team at the base of the hill that we’ll carry on and just leave word with the locals walking by with buckets of powdered rock on their heads that we’ll pay a ‘Kado’ (rewards/gift). By the time I get there it’s just the moto drivers and Ronel, the English guy and Daniel the police man are gone looking for the phone. Crap. We sit and wait. We’re close to 1.5hrs in and figure we’re close and I ask Ronel if he thought it would be this far. HELL NO is his reply.
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| Beautiful valley |
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| About 45 degree hill |
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| The clearest part of the path is right at the end of the drop |
Ronel discovers that the quad driver speaks French so they chat up about our plan to search for his parents while the others search for my phone. Ronel thinks the guy is talking about my phone, I know a tiny bit of French and am sure he’s not. The guy asks ‘so what will you do if you don’t find your parents?’ and Ronel says ‘Buy new when we get back to Canada’. The guy looks super confused and aghast and I burst out laughing. We clear up that little kerfuffle.
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| Passable by atv but not moto |
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| Up in the mountains |
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| Waiting… the far valley with the river is where we started |
We’re soon on our way and at the top of this big hill we rested on they suggest I get on the ATV. Don’t have to ask me twice!! I get on there and we’re now travelling faster and it’s not nearly so jarring. Awesome. So we go for a long while, the ATV with French speaker and myself in the lead. We stop regularly and explain our quest and people remember the incident/family and keep pointing us to the next leg of the route. So 2 hours in, of up and down mountains (80% up) we come to a hill that is beyond passable by machine. We start walking. Finally we hit the crest… oh, nope, not stopping, the next mountain is waiting. I gape, Ronel looks at me like ‘what the heck’ and we keep going, and going and going. Finally after close to an hour of trudging up mountain trails we get to a spot and see THE mountain on the other side of a deep valley. We call out to see if anyone is there, no reply. One of the drivers picks his way over while we wait. It’s now past the time we were expected to be back and we haven’t even reached the area yet….
Continued tomorrow!!
~Dana
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