On customs forms, my destination is spelled – Christianville, Haiti.
Christianville is not a town, city or village but a walled, fenced, compound in the Haitian countryside that is a trade school, a co-ordinating point for churches from abroad doing missions in Haiti, a research lab on TB and infectious diseases, an operator of three private schools, K-12, and the location of Ms. Sue’s children’s home.
The ride to Christianville from Port Au Prince is a juggernaut with the nightmare being highway repair that forces four lanes into one single file lane with police spot checking paperwork of vehicles and driver’s passing through the gauntlet.
Along the main road leading out of town, darting in and out of cars, are walking vendors peddling bottled water, food, treats, toys, and anything else they might make a dime from. Along the rutted road are shacks,smoldering fires, garbage and gaunt faces of urban people surviving a country with eighty percent unemployment.
Through this juggernaut, Ms. Sue, Hannah and myself leave Port Au Prince, enter rolling countryside, green with fields, and, in the distance, mountains. The countryside, anywhere, is better than cities. Cities are squeezed, packed, crammed, noisy, crowded and stacked. The countryside is open, wide, green, quiet, expansive, shady.
My purpose is to make repairs at Ms. Sue’s kid’s home, but most repairs needed here go beyond my pay grade.
I can’t put broken families together. I can’t undo untimely deaths. I can’t make things equal.
Broken rain gutters, sagging gates, leaky plumbing, walls needing paint, moving dirt will be on my plate this week and earning my eighth travel ring will take some effort.
Mogpog has typhoons. Colorado has snow.
This morning Colorado vehicles have a snow blanket of white and a rising sun is beginning to melt the blanket.
The United States has launched cruise missiles into a Syrian military base claiming chemical warfare was used against other combatants in an ongoing proxy war. Russia is moving a carrier to the gulf and adding missile defense systems to Syrian military installations. North Korea will start a nuclear war if attacked by the U.S.. American troops are moved to Poland. The stock market continues to go up as earnings and U.S. GDP goes down. Fifty million Americans are on food stamps. Homeless vets hold signs on corners asking for loose change.
This snow is a message that the Philippines are very very small in my rear view mirror.
In Mogpog, I didn’t worry about tomorrow, think about World War 3, or dream about fire cutting through big cities where apocalyptic wandering lone wolfs fight each other for survival.
In Mogpog, we sat next to a little fan on the front porch and watched lazy clouds hopscotch across the sky.
I should, I suppose, be seeing the Eiffel Tower, or Mount Everest, or kangaroos in Australia,but tomorrow I drive back to Albuquerque.
New Mexico, for those who don’t know much about it, isn’t even a flyover state.
I would book a trip to the moon if it was affordable and available, but, for now, I’m stuck on this planet driving a vehicle that uses fossil fuels and requires me to drive it.
On the back of the airplane seat, directly in front of me, is an entertainment console with music, movies, and diversions.. If I hit a flight tracker button on the console, I can see the path of our current flight in midair, the wind speed, plane speed, miles traveled, miles to go. A little symbolic airplane, on the screen in front of me, is following a perfect white line that connects where I started this trip and where I am ending this trip. Right now, my plane is half way across the Pacific Ocean.
The worst thing about this flight is that I will have to wave at Denver as we fly over it and then board a plane in Minneapolis to fly back to Denver which adds hours to my journey. My car is parked in one of the Denver International Airport parking lots. If I was a parachuting guy, I could pull a D.B. Cooper and bail out, without any money, just to save hours off my trip.
One of these days, Scotttreks will fly around the world without having to backtrack, take all direct flights, and eat caviar in First Class.There will be plenty of leg room and all stewardesses will be knockouts, hired entirely for their hourglass anatomy.
Scotttreks has become my own personal flight tracker.
Keeping track of where I am, in space and time, is a project I can’t, in good conscience, leave to anyone else.
Keeping track of my travels is not a chore or a responsibility, but I do call it a healthy obsession.
Sitting at a computer and juggling words doesn’t cost me a penny and traveling to see the world isn’t a bad way to gin up things to write about.
This tunnel is well lit.
Some tunnels are rabbit holes, some filled with pack rat vaults. Some tunnels are underground, dark and womb like, leading to gold and silver leprechaun caches. Some tunnels are constructed with giant boring machines, go under seas and through mountains to large impressive cities. Through some tunnels we enter this world, and through others, leave.
This horizontal escalator is a metaphor for our times. Pampered, we need to walk, but aren’t forced to.
Two girls pass me, in a hurry. One lifts her phone and takes a selfie.
This gleaming tunnel moves us all steadily forwards. We go where we are told,are put where we are wanted, are entered on flight lists, and ring up charges on our credit cards in a debt-centric world.
I think I’m in a rabbit hole and, like Alice, trying to find real and valuable isn’t always easy.
This flat escalator, if I stayed on it, could roll me right off the edge of our Earth.
When I come to the escalator’s end, I pick up my little suitcase and get back to walking like i was designed to do.
“Watch out for the stone, ” the short order cook says, as he slides my meal across the counter to me. ” It is very hot.”
I look at a dark stone shaped like a huge pill on my plate, then look at my under cooked meat next to it. The hot stone, it appears, is used to finish cooking the little slices of steak, as us customers desire them. By placing each slice on my own hot stone, I can cook my steak rare, medium, done, or well done, just like I like it. I am not just a consumer of a product, but a participant in it’s preparation.
I’m sure this cooking technique has been around for thousands of years in Japan, but it is new to a trail tired New Mexico cowpoke.
The whole process makes it twice as long to finish my dinner,as it usually takes ,but I enjoy my food more.
Hearing meat sizzle on the stone reminds me of summer backyard barbecues and cooking over a campfire.
At the end of this meal, I am happy with my steak, and, if I have to blame anyone for it’s cooking, it has to be me.
That, I figure, is the final exclamation point of this entire culinary and writing exercise.
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