Potential Update
I’m sitting in the middle of the mountains right now about a 2 hour hike from the closest accessible road. Its pretty crazy and I’m not sure when I’ll have internet again but heres an update I typed a day ago:
Well things just don’t work out the way they are supposed to sometimes. I was supposed to have internet, just slow dial up like stuff, this whole time, should have been just enough to check my email and update this blog, but it turns out I won’t, at least not until Friday the 25th I think, even then I’m not sure if I will.
(Quick side story) Friday night, as I was chatting with my mom and sister, they can vouch for me in this, I looked up at the wall and saw this dark blog that was never really there before, or if it was I never noticed it. Upon closer inspection I realized it was a spider. Not an ordinary spider though, a spider literally the size of my hand. It was absolutely freakin huge. And fast. It scurried very quickly. I tried to hit it with my shoe but it got away multiple times. There were some boxes on the floor below it so I swiped it off the ceiling with a pillow and it ran into the boxes. I ended up pinning it up against the wall with a box and killing it that way. I was very proud of myself because this thing was literally a monster. It was legitimately a little scared when I was trying to kill it. Don’t worry, I took pictures, they just aren’t on my computer at the moment. I’ll put them up eventually.
I made it safely to Tinoc after a brutal but beautiful bus ride on Saturday. For those not keeping up, I am no longer with Darwin, I am now with Art. I will meet back up with Darwin this Friday for a medical mission here in the mountains. I had literally the most uncomfortable seat I have ever had in my entire life for a 7 hour bus ride. There was something digging into my shoulder and I couldn’t extend my knees because there was some metal thing sticking out of the bus in front of me. Because it was the very front seat in the bus it was a little smaller than the other and Art insisted on sitting with me. It was cramped, but the ride was absolutely gorgeous. We were driving on these incredible mountains roads with break taking views. It is were a normal drive I would have been a little upset, but that made it all better. Hopefully I’ll have pictures to come soon. You would not believe the “roads” we drove on. They were actually just piles of rocks I think that were driven over enough that they are only kind of flat enough to drive on with a massive bus. It was crazy, some of the bumps literally made the bus jump like a roller coaster. Art told me that about 10 years ago they couldn’t even access their village by vehicle and had to hike everything, I believed every word. It was insane.
We got here and I tried to work the internet card thing that Darwin gave me and it turns out it won’t work at all here. Go figure. I was upset. I was really counting on that contact with people this whole time and all of the sudden it was ripped out from under me. Eventually I got over it and realized it wasn’t the end of the world. I just needed to adapt again. It was just tough expecting it and then not having it, it would have been easier to just not expect it at all. Oh well.
Sunday was a good day though. We woke up around 8 and had breakfast then lounged around and did nothing until around 9:30 when we went to church for Bible study. It is a Lutheran church. The Bible study was all in Tugalo, so I didn’t understand a word. Instead I focused on the measurements in the back of the Bible and trying to see how they equate to our measurements. Did you know that 1 “hin” is the rough equivalent of a gallon? An omer is a half a gallon and around 8 and a half stadions equals a mile. Interesting stuff. It turns out the entire church service was in that language, so I decided to brush up on my history. I read Genesis 1-22, all the chapters. It was good and probably something I need to do more often with random portions of the Bible, just read it through to refresh my memory about things.
After church we were invited to a birthday party for a little boy. They sing happy birthday different over here. Instead of “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear “so and so”, happy birthday to you”; they sing: “Happy birthday to Shirton (the boy’s name), happy birthday to Shirton, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to Shirton”. Its sung in the same rhythm and cadence, its just interesting to see the little changes in wording.
I was served rice wine at the birthday party too. Oh and communion was real wine as well, I’m just going crazy over here. The rice wine is pretty much exactly what it sounds like, fermented rice water. It was incredibly strong. I took one sip and knew there was no way I could drink anymore of this stuff. Art also took a sip and said that it was even too strong for him, he who was born and raised and lived his entire life in this very town. That made me feel good, he said I didn’t have to finish it if I didn’t want to. It was only half a cup but it was so strong I don’t think I could have done it. Hope this doesn’t get me in trouble at school ha.
I’ve been in the village for a full day now and one thing that you notice almost immediately is the flies. There are no mosquitos at all up here, just tons and tons of flies. Its pretty crazy and I can’t really describe it to give it justice, you’ll just have to take my word for it. They were everywhere at the birthday party and really everywhere all the time. Art even talked about getting me a mosquito net to fend them off at night but they aren’t bad up in my room, I just keep the blinds closed.
After lunch we walked around TInoc and explored a bit. Art kept saying he wanted to “warm up my feet for the hike tomorrow”. I don’t really know what that says about the hike, but hopefully its not too incredibly grueling…although a challenge would be fun. We’ll see. It is an interesting town, or village I guess. Its smack dab in the middle of the mountains so its incredibly hilly no matter where you walk. It also rains every day multiple times a day. It is also, apparently, just full of churches. As we were walking Art pointed out a Baptist, Wesleyan, 7th Day Adventist, Catholic, and Jehovah’s Witness church. Not to mention the Lutheran one we attended earlier in the day and Pentecostal one that we did not walk by. Thats insane. This is a tiny podunk little village mountain town and they have tons of churches, it blew my mind. We stopped into a store to pick up some snacks for the trip tomorrow and ended up getting caught in a rainstorm. We took shelter in the store for about an hour and a half and just kinda sat around and chatted. Before the store we stopped and watched an amateur basketball game going on. It reminded me of a YMCA old guys recreational league…but worse. Dang were they bad, I don’t mean to make fun, but it was actually pretty funny. They didn’t make one jump shot literally the entire two quarters I watched and turned the ball over almost every other play. One team, I kid you not, just had one guy stay on the offensive side of the court and literally cherry pick the entire time. It was ridiculous. Now, I’m not trying to say I’m better, but I do know good basketball when I see it and that was ugly.
Well now it is Monday and I have internet for a very short bit here before we hike to our first destination and film showing. I’m excited; this is the first film showing ever in this village. We’ll see how it goes. I should have internet again tomorrow, Tuesday, morning/afternoon, but I’ve learned really never to count on anything like that. Hopefully I’ll have a quick update then though. If not thank you for your continued prayers and support. Pray for stamina on these hikes, I really have no idea what to expect as far as difficulty. I’m taking lots of pictures I just have no idea when I’ll be at fast enough internet to put those up. If I don’t update this again I’ll be traveling to Ambaguio where the medical mission is Thursday and Friday, it is another long one, Art said around 7-9 hours so pray for safety on that. Also, continue to pray for the malaria medicine situation and my health. Thank you and I hope everyone reading this is having an amazing summer, I can’t wait to swap stories with you all.
Sam
