Expect the Unexpected

Today we met three of the sponsored widows, two of them were sponsored by our team. We were planning on meeting four, but something went a little differently than planned... We drove a pretty far ways away from our hotel and our bus got stuck* right outside of the third widow's house (just around 3:45). The two wheels on the right were stuck deep in two ditches, which I thought was amazing that they were a perfect distance away for both tires to get stuck. Nobody cared at all though! There had been like 30 kids chasing th bus yelling, "White People!!!" in their language, so we played with them after meeting the widow. It was obvious they had never had a bus full of white people get stuck in a ditch in their neighborhood! We immediately gathered groups of kids by doing the hokey pokey, taking pictures, playing catch, or taking French lessons from the kids who spoke it. None of them spoke hardly any English.

When we pulled up in the bus and felt that sinking feeling to the right, kids were waving at us and talking and laughing about us. The kids obviously never saw braces before. One boy waved at me through the window and smiled, so I waved and smiled back. He abruptly went back to a straight face and stared at me. After a while I figured out what was wrong, and I pointed at my teeth and taught them the word, "braces" with a thumbs up to let them know it wasn't any weird American disease and everything was fine (I have no clue what they were thinking)! The smile returned as they they whispered to to eachother and burst out laughing!

The teenage and adult boys were really nice and helped try to dig out the bus, but the two tires were wedged pretty far down to the point where the bus almost touched the ground.

As they worked, I went around and attempted to communicate with some kids. There was such a variety of heights and ages!! After we were waiting for 2 hours or so, I found a boy that spoke some English, about my age. He asked if I spoke French, and I said no, so he communicated in English, saying stuff like, "What's your name?" "United States President Obama?" "Football? (soccer)" and "We are a family" to which he pointed out his three other brothers. Jacob and I gave them the thumbs up as we made out names like "Obama", "Rihanna", and "Justin Beiber", and Katie even caught a boy singing a JB song on video!

After drawing in the sand* and playing catch, it had been a good while and the sun was almost down, which meant it was almost 6:00. Two cars came to pick us up since it wasn't safe to stay at dark. It was a sudden ending to our adventure, because we were rushed over to the cars right when they had got there. Spencer and I were shoved into the back trunk of the first car and waited a while, but we ended up getting a seat in the second car white a lot more space in the back.

As we left, kids spotted out water and were making gestures that they wanted it, yelling, "Kinju" as running alongside the car. There wasn't anything we could do about it.

It got dark really quickly, and the car ride was longer than the way here because of construction projects and detours. The cars were tightly packed together and horns honked way more often than in the US. We got back thanks to some great drivers, and I know everyone still thinks our bus driver is a great bus driver. I'm glad no one was blaming him for anything. We got back around 8:00, and ate chicken and rice, telling stories about the day with the power generator on in the background.

*video on Facebook