Easter Sunday 2010

Two years ago on April 4, 2008 I wrote a blog called, “Easter Day.” It was about an Easter Sunday morning experience driving to church in the rain after it had been raining for more than two weeks straight. That driving experience to church ranked in my top three wild driving experiences in Tanzania. Well, two years later, on Easter Sunday I had another crazy driving experience that I think will rank in the top three of my wild driving experiences in Tanzania.
Awadhi, one of our little boys goes to a boarding school for the deaf, but for the past week and for the next upcoming week he is on a school break. Awadhi has medication that he must take everyday. Because we did not know about him being on school break until after he was already home from school, we did not pick up his medication for him on his last day of school.
As most weeks go here, we had a very busy one and the medication that we had for him at TOA ran out. After making desperate calls to find out where we could get more of his medication, but not being able to find anyplace to get more, we knew our only choice was to drive back to his school and get the medicine we left there for him.
It all sounds so simple except for the fact that it has been raining a lot for the past two weeks and the majority of the road that must be traveled to Awadhi’s school is a dirt road.
So at 6:45am Easter morning Jodie and I headed out to Awadhi’s school. The first five minutes of the drive on the dirt road wasn’t so bad and I started thinking to myself, “Alright, decent road; we can do this.” Ok, so that thought didn’t last long because seconds later the road became very muddy…oh the mud…it was large puddles of mud all across the road, but especially on the side of the road where it was very thick.
We had to stop to pick up the principal of the school so she could get the medication for us. The moment she stepped into the truck she told us that the road was bad, really bad. She mentioned that to us a few more times as we continued to drive on, but we really didn’t need her to inform us of the road conditions because we were already rolling around all over the place like we were driving on an ice skating rink. A very uncomfortable feeling came over me when we zigzagged up and down a small hill that had a ravine on the left side and as I gazed over at the gap as we slid way too close to it I knew we couldn’t continue on this road for long without something happening that I did not want to think about happening.
So I verbalized my concern and Jodie immediately stopped the truck in agreement. She asked the principal if we were close enough to the school to walk. The principal said yes and jumped out of the truck and took off running in the mud. Jodie looked at me and asked, “Shouldn’t we go with her?” I assumed we’d be going with her so I told Jodie she was just going to ask the neighbors if we could park the truck in their yard, but she did not ask the neighbors anything. She took off for the school and Jodie and I sat in the truck watching as she trudged through the mud at an impressive pace.
Once we realized we were not going to the school with the principal we refocused our attention to getting the truck turned around so that we would be heading in the direction we’d need to go once she returned. Turning the truck around…sounds so simple and yet, yikes! That was a life-changing experience. By the time Jodie got the truck turned around we had a captive audience of many ranging in age from 4 to 50. Once the truck was fully turned around we turned the engine off to wait. While waiting Jodie thought it would be a good idea to get out and find a stick and scrape off the caked-on mud from the tires. She is brave in the mud. All I kept thinking about is that my flip flops are not going to have any traction in the mud and I am going to go skating into the side of the road where the mud is so thick that it is going to swallow me up. So I sat inside the truck while Jodie scrapped the tires with a stick with an audience of many watching her. The under 10 years of age audience came over and stood within two feet from the truck. A man with half a leg missing was the only adult brave enough to approach the truck to see if we needed help. I explained to him that we were not stuck in the mud and that we were waiting for someone to come back…he didn’t believe me. So there we sat in the truck waiting with our audience getting larger and the rain clouds getting bigger. Something in me knew that we would not make it back driving on that road. The small hill we drove down was now an uphill drive on the way back and that whole area was thick with mud.
I decided to call Eli. He has a calming affect on me and I needed to say hi to him at that moment. I knew Eli wouldn’t be able to come and help us if we got stuck because for one it was Easter Sunday morning and he would be leaving in a few hours to take all the children to church. Plus the only way to get to us would be to drive the van on that muddy road and I knew for sure the van would skid all over into the mud madness of despair. Nope…wonderful Eli would not be able to come to my rescue this time. But I called him anyway just to talk to him so he could remind me of the greatness of our God…and that he did!!!
When the principal returned with the medication we started on our way. It didn’t start off so good and we knew immediately trouble was on the way. I called Eli and asked him what gear would be best for the 4-wheel drive and he told me. We stopped and put the truck in the right 4x4 gear (we have four choice for 4-wheel drive). Wow…what a difference that made! Then as we began to drive I focused on praying. We saw the “hill” ahead and Jodie went for it with determination and with God’s angels all around us we made it up and continued forward. Both of us were so happy and relieved as we kept moving forward, passing other vehicles stuck in the mud. We stopped to drop off the principal and thanked her 1,000 times for her help. Jodie put the truck in gear and our prayer meeting continued as we moved on.
The moment we hit the part of the dirt road that wasn’t too bad Jodie and I both began to thank the Lord over and over and over again. It was such relief to drive on and see the paved road. I think we were giddy with laughter. It was such a good feeling to drive on cement.
I know I haven’t described this adventure to the level of intensity that we experienced it, but it was quite the Easter morning we had. Just another Easter Sunday driving the roads in Tanzania.