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| We built a dyke and removed some water from around the tires. |
Save the Children vehicle made an attempt to
pull us out but were unsuccessful. The driver said they would be back, but that
would be at least five hours, probably longer, so we prayed for God to make a
way – where there seems to be no way! (…remember that song?) Another song was playing through Debbie’s
mind –”Stuck in the middle with you…” It is an old secular song, and she could only
remember the refrain; changing the words she sang …stuck in the mud with
you! The truck and the other passenger
vehicle from the night before were still stuck as well, but as the day wore on
they were able to free themselves with help from everyone there.
A clause must be added here.
These bad road events have allowed us to make relationships with people
whom, we otherwise, would’ve zoomed passed without ever meeting. It is the same when you are stuck in the
airport during bad weather, suddenly you become friends with everyone; you are
joined together by the same crisis.
About mid-day a truck
from the Catholic Church arrived, they couldn’t reach us, but we encouraged our
lady passenger to go back to Leer with them.
Thankfully she did.
We didn’t have a tow rope -- that was our major problem.
Well, actually we did, but we used it yesterday at the other crevice to help
another vehicle and it broke. We tied it together and used it yesterday to get
our own car out and it broke in a different place, so now the tow rope was weak
and too short to do us any good. It was
decided that Mathew would walk back to Leer and try to procure a cable of some
kind.
He returned in the afternoon with not one but two thin
cables which had been separated from a larger coiled cable. These were strong
and would work well – now we just had to wait for a vehicle to come which could
pull us out. This happened after
another couple of hours. We had thought the Save the Children vehicle would’ve
return by now, but it had not, so when this passenger bus came up the road and
let off his passengers we jumped at the chance.
It was good that we had more than one cable because we
needed two to reach between the vehicles.
We attached ourselves to the bus and were yanked free! Praise the Lord! The driver of the bus asked for one of the cables,
which we gladly gave him and we wound up the remaining cable sticking it in the
back of our car. Later we would find
that we would use it again!
Freed from the mire we now slipped and slid our way through
the bad area on top of the road trying to hit the drier areas of mud. It is a good thing the sun had been out the
whole day.
We were now seeing Leer in the daylight. Not a very big town, Leer has a very rural
feel to it. There are very few block buildings; most are round mud huts with
grass roofs, many of which flood during heavy rain. As the week went on we saw many people using
buckets to extract water from in and around their huts.
This rainy season has been a particularly heavy one for the people living in Leer, pray that they would be able to stay healthy even as they deal with all the water. Pray that they would go to the hand pumps to get their drinking/cooking water and not revert to using the water which may be more convenient but not clean lying in holes and trenches around their housing areas.
This rainy season has been a particularly heavy one for the people living in Leer, pray that they would be able to stay healthy even as they deal with all the water. Pray that they would go to the hand pumps to get their drinking/cooking water and not revert to using the water which may be more convenient but not clean lying in holes and trenches around their housing areas.