Transportation

While out on this holiday learning lesson I rode a rickshaw (malagasy puse puse) in the rain, took the local busses, was picked up in a car and WALKED a lot! Even on New Year's Eve three of us walked about 4 miles in the pouring rain! What an adventure and one that I will not soon forget!


The real story is about the transportation home to Antananarivo. We scheduled our space behind the driver in the Taxi Brusse for the evening of January 1st. We were to leave the station at 5 pm... well there is only one Taxi Brusse station known for leaving on time and we were not scheduled to leave with them. There were not enough people to fill our bus so we were combined with another bus service and did not leave until about 6 pm.

After about 3 hours of driving very slowly we stopped and had our scheduled evening dinner. While we were there our driver decided to check on the noise that we had all been hearing for the last couple of hours and that was helping us travel at a true snails pace. Well, about 5 Malagasy men were instantaly pulling things out of the engine that sat under the front seats of the van. They taped, conversed, oiled and conversed, stretched and conversed some more. They would then put the parts back in and try the engine again, each time getting the exact same sound from the engine as before and it did not sound good at all. After 3 hours of this it was now midnight and the small town we had stopped in was closing up tight for the night. Most of the Taxi's that had been passing by had already passed us by and our options were getting slimmer and slimmer as to finding one to join for the rest of the 6 - 8 hour ride...

We finally were able to squeeze onto a bus that had come from the North East (Diego) and were relieved once we were back on the road home. After about an hour we came up to an area where the road had been washed over with a large amount of very wet sand and two taxi brusses and a gasoline tanker were stuck in it, so much so that no one else could travel either way on the only road in and out of town. Everyone got out and went to assess the situation. One of the busses was getting more and more into a sand hole because as they were digging and trying to get the bus out they were shaking from left to right and only causing the bus to go deeper and deeper into the hole, at this point the exhaust was underwater and from what I know that is not a good situation to be in. After about two hours of trying to convince the people that they needed to take all the luggage and bicycles off of the top of the bus they started to do so and were making great headway when the second bus was finally able to get out of the mud making a space for others to get through. Our driver took no time to hesitate, made sure to tell people to stay out of the way and gunned it through the space and never once got stuck. Everyone cheered and we were summoned to join our bus so that we could resume the travel, leaving the other bus to continue to work on their quickly sinking and drying sand situation.

At this point we had been traveling for about 7 hours and should have been about 3 hours outside of Tana but that was not the situation by a long shot. We were not even to the half way marker and had a long trip still ahead. By 4;30 in the morning we found yet another situation to build into our character. Our bus shredded the fan belt, we saw two tiny strips on the ground and the driver asked us all to get out of the bus. We did and while we were waiting for the bus to get fixed I looked for a place to water some plants, out of sight of the other passengers. We had also thought it would be a good time to find a mile marker to see how much more we had to go, trying to find a good area to call friends and let them know where we were and the adventure we had been on.

Bex and I decided to walk ahead of the bus incase it was working again we could get on and not get left behind. As soon as we said that out loud and had found the mile marker the bus coasted past us with 4 malagasy hanging off the back, a couple inside and the two drivers. All of them were waving and laughing, smiles from ear to ear! If it was not directed at us, it sure felt like it. We did not know what to think, "had they been waiting for a time to steal all the passengers bags?" "Why were some left behind with us and yet others were taken off in the bus?"

Bex had no shoes and mine were saturated with water from the area where the taxi brusses were stuck in the mud and water. We were quite unexpectant of this becuase of all the other things that had already happend and thougth "this can't be happening, not to us and not after the night we have experienced." Now we were walking as the light of the universe came on, glad that it was not as HOT as it could have been and glad that we had a paved road to walk on, but barefooted just the same. Discussing out loud the inventory we had in the Taxi Brusse, assessing how we could get out of this mess and back to our town, friends, community and co-workers. Thinking that we would not ever see any of it again. We were also wondering if there was some big thing that GOD was trying to teach us through this experience? "Were we not to return to Tana but go on this crazy, unscripted adventure and what was the ultimate purpose of it all?" Ended up that we walked 6 kilometers uphill and bare footed. Our feet were fine, the weather was great and nothing like a walk at that time in the morning to get your heart pumping.

Praise the Lord but after walking for that long, we came to a small village in the middle of no where, under a shaded area on the side of the road what did we see, but our very bus. It had finally stripped the entire fan belt entirely off and was getting a good looking over when we arrived. We were so upset that we climbed into the van and grabbed our things and just sat there. The drivers and some of the other passengers that were outside of the brusse were laughing at us and pointing at us which was not helping the situation at all.

Bex and I talked for about 20 minutes about what we should do, each praying that a solution would come and that we would be rescued from this nightmare. We joked about friends flying helicopters to come and get us, about the military on their way for us or other ways that we could see ourselves spending the rest of the weekend trying to get home. We were both so very tired of traveling, we had not had any food since lunch the day before and our water supply was about to run out. Knowing that we could not live in the village we were sitting in we decided that I would stay with our things and she would walk until she could get a signal on her phone.

After about 2 more kilometers of walking she was able to contact some friends and start talking about this situation and an exit plan. Before long she was back at the bus and we were packing up our things to walk away from this crazy bus, the drivers and the passengers. Our friends in the capitol knew of a man (Frank) driving this very road that would be alone, had plenty of room in his car and would be there to pick us up in about 45 minutes. How is that for an answer to prayer... This guy had left the same city that we had came from originally, Mahajunga but left at 5 am not the 5 pm that we had. We had many people praying for us, GOD was watching over us, our passports and other valuables were recovered and we finally arrived home after 21 hours of travel!

GOD is so very divine! What an amazing journey! We are both so very blessed and now more than ever praying for a reliable form of transportation to come my way. I don't mind being with the Malagasy at all and rather enjoy it most of the time so I don't mind waiting on the Lord for his timing and seeing what HE will do in all of this.

One amazing adventure behind me and the whole of 2010 ahead. Exciting times, people, exciting times!