Wednesday, March 24, 2004
I woke at 2:00 am to a not so routine day, showered and staggered around trying to act normal while getting dressed. It wasn’t long before I heard vehicles pulling into my yard and my pulse quickened. Drill Instructor Bob was tromping around in my yard and I better look alert. My van wasn’t warmed up yet, but the early arrivals appeared to be. Eric, Dale, and Bob teased me about the cold van and helped load all the suitcases in the back, which filled the entire back 1/3 of my van. We had prayer and started out on to the highway. Traffic was very light at that hour of the morning and the road was clear and dry. We all tried to be friendly and talkative, but it wasn’t long before we all trailed of into kind of a dopey stupor, as I drove toward Hartford.
Airport parking glowed in the early morning darkness as we approached Bradley Field. When we stopped at American departures, Eric, Dale, and Bob grabbed the luggage and ferried it in to the check-in counter. Jim and I took my van to an economy long-term parking lot and were picked up almost immediately by Airport Shuttle for the trip back to American. At check-in I decided to take the 1/2 size human skeleton out of Dale’s bag for fear it would get damaged in transit. The ticket agent made an arm strap for it so I could easily carry it on. The skeleton became a real curiosity with security personnel. Each time it went through they would smile and point at it. This was one of the wish list items for Guanaja’s science teacher. Our flight left on time and went smoothly, landing in Miami at 9:00 am under cloudy skies. Our layover of an hour and 40 minutes wasn’t bad. I called my daughter, Ginger, to tell her I was enroute.
We settled down on our next 727 for a 3 hour flight to San Pedro Sula. It was a comfortable trip with refreshments served twice and custom forms once. Customs was a breeze and again they got a kick out of the skeleton. Many of the Custom Agents looked like high school students. I think that is a sign that I am getting older.
We were outside of our home country now, and I was even more aware of that fact as I headed to the men’s room. I checked the signs carefully and was sure I has headed to the right door, but was a little unnerved by the fact that a woman followed me in. I quickly ducked into a stall. She was talking to a man using the facilities and I discovered she was a janitor. I still didn’t think that gave her license, but we were following local customs now and I would have to adjust.
Once through Customs Jim and I fell victim to hunger and went to a lunch counter to drool over the menu. Eggs and fries sounded really good to us, but Senor Bob warned against the eggs. We settled for an ice cream on a stick and relaxed in airport chairs to await our next flight to La Ceiba on the coast. As we left San Pedro Sula, the terrain below us appeared like a beautiful, deep green patchwork quilt. The pineapple fields and banana groves stretched for miles in every direction. We lost sight of them as we climbed into the clouds and flew along the coast.
Our touchdown in La Ceiba was as smooth as a Wendy’s Frosty. It was raining and we had to exit the plane to the runway before entering the terminal. This airport was something like an airport should look. It had a small waiting area about 40’x60’ with multiple seating units, a security check point, and, as we were ushered in, the doors were locked behind us. A tall, slender teenage boy with eager salesmanship tried to sell everyone who came in a soda for one US dollar.
We were able to go out of the street side entrance of the airport and look around. There was a satellite phone building about a block away, past military guards armed with M-16s. This building was actually an internet café with 3 computers and a phone. I was able to get Ginger again and talked for five minutes, for a dollar. Bob, Dale, and Eric also made calls and they headed back to the terminal. We were somewhat of a curiosity to these local people. You could see them snatching glances to check us over and they smiled among themselves. Dale and I wandered back to the terminal and settled down to wait for the next leg of the journey, the flight to Guanaja. We lounged around, visited with a girl from Anchorage, Alaska, there on vacation, and drank in the culture of this new and different world. Bob clowned around, while Eric played with his camera. Jim and the girl from Anchorage chatted about familiar places in Alaska and I napped.
As each plane readied for departure we would listen carefully, ready to exit the building only to be told it wasn’t ours. Finally, we did get the word—flight for Guanaja. We crossed the runway and climbed the stairs into our last aircraft. It would be a short 30 minute hop to the island. Luggage was stacked in a back corner of the plane behind the passenger compartment. It was uncomfortably warm. Air conditioning wasn’t one of the advertised features, so the pilots opened their windows. We took off and were soon enveloped by clouds and haze which totally obscured our vision. So I sat back and relaxed. A mother and young child sat next to me, but they were in their own little world, jabbering away. We began to descend and made another smooth landing at the sir strip of Guanaja. The airport consisted of the landing strip of blacktop, a windsock, a waiting area that resembled a rest area on the Mass. Pike, and a baggage wagon with three boys pushing and pulling it.
Rigoberto Dawkins, the principal, and Marcella Webster, the boatman, were there to greet us. The baggage boys muscled our wagon down to the dock where we loaded the luggage into the dory that would take us to Mangrove Bight. A bight is a small bay or cove. Our trip from the airport took us through a canal that divides the island north and south. We traveled north on the west side of the island, past Susan Hendrickson’s little palace of the jungle, past the Hilti dock, past the tumbled down dock, past the Nyers home to the Mangrove Bight dock. A little black Nissan parked near the dock waited to load and transport us over the worst road I have ever experienced to the Berkshire Hills School. The driver was a young guy, named Craig Nyers, who was quite active and talked rapidly. He looked everywhere, but at you when he talked. Craig was a master of maneuvering over this deep rutted, muddy mess they called a road. We arrived at the school which God had built with the help of Island Challenge 2002 and surveyed the needs to start our project on Thursday.
“Tengo hambre.” “I’m hungry” was an understatement, since we had had only snack foods most of the day. All we had to do was hop back in the truck and hang on for the ride back to Mangrove Bight where Marcella and Lorna Webster had a delicious meal of fried rice, red beans, mashed potatoes, banana soda and fruit punch ready for us. Following supper we were hauled back over that mud bath highway to our quarters for the week near the school. Sweet Annie Martinez and her family moved out of their home so that we would have a place to stay, a relatively new masonry 2 bedrooms 1 bath house with a big front porch. It had been the medical clinic when our group was there last time. Bob, Eric and Dale shared one bedroom while Jim and I settled into the other.