On Wednesday, I made a mistake and started to work on the old van to see if it needed a new alternator. At first, I just wanted to throw a match on it, because working on it brought back bad memories, but I restrained myself. I called an American mechanic, Curt, here in Haiti to see if he might have one lying around, and he said he might, so Simon and I went down to his shop to see. He had three of them, but none of them was the right one. By this time it was noon, and I realized I had just wasted the morning on the van, as I have many days in the past year. I told Simon we were taking it back to where we park it, and I didn’t even want to talk about the van for the rest of the day. Well, that lasted about an hour, and then I asked Simon if he would call his mechanic friend to see if he would take it off and go downtown to try to find one for us. I told Simon that if he would come and take it off, find another one and put it on, I would fix the van, but I wasn’t going to waste any more time with it. The mechanic came later on and took the part, telling us he might have it fixed by morning. Then we headed back to Dottie’s to get my luggage.
Last week, I got an email from a couple in South Carolina asking how much it would cost to buy a propane refrigerator. I called and told them about $1500. Without hesitation, they said, “the check is in the mail.” Praise the Lord!!!! So Simon and I went to an appliance store, picked out a refrigerator, and loaded it up. We then drove up to Z’Orange. On the way, there was a traffic jam about 2 miles long near where we turn off the main road. Yesterday was the final say on who won the presidential election, and some people were protesting. They had pulled an 18-wheeler across the road and put huge rocks in the road. The UN and the police were trying to direct traffic and restore order. It took about 45 minutes to go half a mile, but we made it.
When we arrived, I hooked up the refrigerator, and within an hour or so we had cold cokes in the fridge. I had Simon and Blanco with me and, as usual, we had not eaten, so I put some canned spaghetti on the new propane stove, and opened up some fruit cocktail. Simon said he didn’t know I knew how to cook, and I said it was nothing. I think he agreed with me, but he didn’t say anything.
