There aren't too many times in your life when you can look out your window at the Washington Monument and the White House, and think, 'huh, this time yesterday I bouncing through the backstreets of Port-au-Prince on the way to the airport.'
The last morning in Haiti, many of us were up a little early. Personally, I was up at 5:45 for a 7:00 breakfast, not because I was especially hungry but just...because.
Well, okay, here it is. For some summer-camp reason, a plastic, though still slightly felted, tarantula was making its way to various pillows, instigated, apparently, by Lynn. Since it had last appeared on MY pillow, I felt obliged to get Lynn's friend back to her, lest she be sad. I'm thoughtful that way. So, the truth is, I was up at 5:45 putting a plastic tarantula in Lynn's pants as they hung on the drying rack.
One could say the team had become comfortable with itself.
Breakfast was as filling as ever, but lacked (sadly) The Blessed Porridge. Nearly every breakfast up to that point had featured some kind of fresh fruit, and sometime eggs, but always The Blessed Porridge. We never got the recipe, though we maybe could have, so I can't tell you what's in it. Best guess: oats, cream, vanilla, (cane?) sugar, star anise, and possibly nutmeg. It was the consistency of warm tapioca pudding but without the chewiness of tapioca. Divine.
Despite, or possibly because of TBP's absence, we were out the door on time. 7:30. Boom. Bye. We threw all the luggage and young people in Big Blue, the flatbed truck, and piled all the old people (yes, Lynn, I'M self-identifying as 'old') in the minivan which apparently seats...16? but you wouldn't want to hit a bridge support with that size crowd inside. Though that scarcely mattered, given the pace of traffic. I'd guess Thomassin, our village, is no more than 10 miles from the PAP airport, and it took us nearly two hours. We used a bunch of backroads I'd never be able to explain to you, which also meant we got to see how folks live in the city: more crowded, fewer resources, more traffic and I see that our experience would likely have been very different in Port-au-Prince proper. The insulation that Thomassin and Willem provide makes many things possible.
Anyway, we made it through two complete security checks before sitting down at our gate, and, other than a half hour delay for (whoops, sorry, we forgot) FUELING THE PLANE, we were away on-time. I suspect that 30 minutes late qualifies as on-time departure. And, given the later events of the day, I say that with love: I intend it to convey some fondness for Haitian efficiency. I was impressed, too, that when we had taxied into position, we simply did a 180-degree turn, and hit the gas. As noted earlier, in Haiti, the taxiway IS the runway. This is somewhat like driving to the end of your street, stopping, signaling a right turn, and then turning. Onto the interstate. You just really hope everyone else is paying attention.
And in this case, everyone was. The flight seemed to go pretty well, right up until about 1/2 an hour before our 3pm arrival JFK, when we started circling. Mmm. At 3:15, the pilot came on to tell us the rain in New York was still too heavy for us to land, and that we were diverting to Dulles in DC. At about 4:30, after sitting on the tarmac for some time, we were told we were going to be taken off the plane, sent through customs and...wait for it...put on buses back to New York. Those of us with 8:30 connections felt somewhat skeptical of this plan. By 5:30, we were all in the terminal. It took another hour for our luggage off the plane. You see where this isn't going, right? Yeah, not to New York.
Finally we made it out to the baggage claim for regular people, where a single JetBlue employee tried to make any difference in our connections, or even hotels for the night. I well understand the difficulty of surprise events, but there were simply no contingencies in place. The time and apparent difficulty of these operations created a certain wistfulness for Haiti, its many foibles notwithstanding.
Many of us went on to Portland the next morning, most of the rest simply stayed in Washington until 2, when they picked up the next night flight. All of us wound up at the Hilton Tuesday night, none earlier than 10:15. Sigh.
I took a slightly tack. I already had a reservation to leave Portland Thursday night for Savannah. Since flying for hours for a 24-hour turnaround seemed silly, I asked JetBlue to advance my entire itinerary 2 days. They agreed. So, after 4 hours of sleep, a shuttle to Dulles, and a 5am, $65 taxi ride to Washington National (thank you JetBlue), I waited for my flight to Savannah via....Boston. Yes.
So it was that I found myself in an 80-passenger jet, launching into a clear blue morning sky over Washington, on the most remarkable flight I've ever had, or may ever have. There, out my window is the Jefferson, oh, and Washington, oh, and Lincoln Memorials. There's Congress, and, lurking behind it, the Supreme Court. There're all the buildings of the Smithsonian, marching along the Mall, Lincoln Center, the Watergate, and there, plain as day, the White House. Having just left what is arguably the least influential nation on Earth, I was now floating over all the symbols of the most influential nation on Earth.
And it didn't stop there. We couldn't have gotten much above 10,000 feet, so, there's the NIH, there's the entire Delmarva Peninsula. Is that Atlantic City? Why does New Jersey have that odd color: ah, snow. Then, shifting briefly to the other side of plane, New York City comes into view. Look, I can SEE the Statue of Liberty from here. Ah, that's how Brooklyn fits in. There's the George Washington Bridge, LaGuardia airport, Cold Spring Harbor...Providence, Rhode Island? Cape Cod, all at once. And lots of squared off ponds with a reddish cast to them. Lots. In the bogs of Massachusetts. Could it be...? No..... Yeah, maybe. After all the grousing and uncertainty, after all the grief and irritation, a maybe once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
And perhaps one of the longest blog posts ever created. I don't feel like I'm done talking about the Haiti trip, but dinner calls, and I've found everyone is happier when I don't ignore it. I'll have some closing thoughts in the next installment. Be well....
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