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2-1-10 Michaels Account..... |
| Shannon got most of the story right. The only details I would add was that
when we picked up the truck, there wasn't enough room in the cabin, so I had to put Matthew in my lap like a little kid. I couldn't help but to bounce him up and down and ask him "who is your daddy?" :) Once we got outside the city Matthew and I jumped into our tap tap and followed behind the truck. We had our main driver ride as a passenger because he knew the location to the Canadian Army Base. Breaking off from the convoy was a little risky but we figured if no security was with us, nothing would be suspected. The SA logistics officer agreed that it would probably work. So everyone, including the 82nd, knew this was the plan. Just outside the city we got two flat tires. Fixing them was a nightmare. We had to put both flat tires into the tap tap truck back to PAP to find a flat repair man. We also needed two new valves, but only had US dollars. So Baby (my body guard) and I had to find a place to exchange the money (Matthew and our driver stayed with the big truck). Eventually we got the tires fixed, but when our driver tried to put them on, he realized the jack wasn't tall enough to lift the wheel base from the ground. It was around this time we realized our driver didn't have a clue what he was doing. I'm understanding more and more what my main role here is, and that is to be the "problem solver" in these types of situations. No one in my group knew what to do, and they respect my opinion enough to listen. They wanted to set the wheel on some rocks, and put the jack on another rock, and I'm like "This is getting dangerous. Matthew and I will find another Jack." We headed back to PAP and found someone to help, and brought him back to the truck. He had a bigger Jack, yet it was still just a little too small. So we dug the ground out by hand to finally replace both tires. A mile from the Canadian Base, the truck broke down completely. Again, no one was sure what to do. It was getting dark and we had all this food with us and no security. I had our tap tap take me and Matthew to the base to see if we could get a tow. Every base has security guards on their perimeter, so we had to approach this guy and tell him what the deal was. The problem was our Navy contact had gone to his ship for the night, and I had to work with the Army now. The security guard said I could enter the base because I was an "American" but Matthew could not because he was Haitian (even though he is a US Citizen). Oh how I wish I could have filmed the base as we walked through it! They took me to their central head quarters, hooked me up with a stud of an engineer named Dave, who drove a massive Mack Truck and off we went. Dave spoke broken English and I could tell he was a nice guy and enjoyed practicing his English. We had to wait about an hour to find a spot to unload, and when we did, we realized our driver had left his key with his partner who was outside the camp with Matthew. I had made a few friends with the Canadian Logistics guys and asked for some bolt cutters, and we just cut it off and started unloading by myself and the one other guy who was with me. After about 3 minutes a group of about 30 solider showed up to help unload. Which only took about 10 minutes. At this point, I had to try to figure out what to do with the driver. The Canadians were reluctant to let him park his truck there for the night and he didn't want to leave it. I was able to persuade them to make an exception for him to stay and gave him $100 to help out with repair costs, scrounged up some food and water from the Canadian Army, and we left him and his partner there. If we didn't hurry we would have been locked out of our base like Matthew was a few nights ago. When we got to PAP we were pulled over by the Haitian Police who were really angry and threatening to shoot us. Matthew later told me they were not regular police, they were Swat (I think he called them "SEMO" and apparently shooting and killing criminals on a regular basis is part of their job description. I learned just now that the driver was able to fix his truck this morning and he made it back ok. I think we all can agree it is much better when Michael tells the story :)!! -Shannon |
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© 2010 Michael Andrew Photography, All rights reserved. Blog by infinet design |
