Guardian angel in Guadeloupe...

Apologies in advance for the length.

I just got back a few hours ago. All in all, I took ten planes and visited eight different airports in the space of a week.

I won't go into the particulars of the trip here -- it was to boring old America, after all -- but suffice it to say, the interview went okay, the fall colors in Virginia are pretty, Miami is a less picturesque, more urban version of Hawaii, I might have cholera because I passed through Haiti twice, and I haven't been this tired in a long, long time.

I spent last night in Guadeloupe, hoping to catch the ferry to Martinique in the morning. I'd tried calling the boat company but couldn't get through, and I didn't see a space on the website for reserving a spot. But the taxi driver in Guadeloupe told me I wouldn't have a problem getting a ticket at the gare maritime the next day.

This morning, the gare maritime was flooded with people. The woman at the register told me she was sorry, there was no more space on the boat to Fort-de-France because of the music festival in Dominica this weekend, that there was nothing she could do and that she was sorry. I went back and begged, and asked her if there was anything she could do to help me. No, nothing. The next boat's not until Sunday. You can try to fly, but I don't have the airport's telephone number.

So what did I do? Did I keep calm and weigh my options, like most sane, rational people would? Did I think about asking anyone else for help? Did I keep things in perspective and realize that this was not a life-or-death situation and would only affect two measly days of my life?

Of course not.

I cried. Hard. In public. In front of everyone. Like a baby. Usually (I'd like to think) I have more shame or inhibition than that. I don't know what it was. It might have been the stress and anticipation of the interview finally dissolving, or disappointment because my week-long nomadism still had no end in sight, or loneliness from having traveled alone for so long, or simply fatigue from having been to Haiti and Miami and Detroit and Washington, D.C. and Richmond and Atlanta in eight short days and sleeping on cheap hotel beds. Probably some combination of all of them. Suffice it to say, just when I was starting to feel like a real adult, I've gone and proven to myself that in a crisis, I'm still as helpless as a child.

As I was walking away, a young man stopped me and asked if he could help. He said he'd overheard my conversation and offered to call the airport for me. After speaking with a ticketing agent at Air Caraibes, he told me there was a flight leaving for Fort-de-France at eleven. I could make it. He said it would be worth it, because it would be cheaper than paying for two more nights in a Guadeloupe hotel, plus food and taxi. He would even give me a ride to the airport.*

So we walked back to the open-air marché nearby, where he had just finished selling for the day. He worked in agriculture, growing and selling cristophines (a Caribbean vegetable kind of like a potato, but I'm not sure what it's called in English). He just needed to close up his stand and buy his produce for the next week, and he gave me sugar cane juice and a ham-and-cheese cassave (again, not sure what the English equivalent of this is. It's kind of like a crepe, but it's made from the flesh of this potato-like root called manioc so it's very starchy) while I waited. When he was done, he and his cousin, who'd been helping him sell, took me to the airport, and then waited for me inside and held my backpack for me while I bought my ticket.

The whole time I was apologizing and thanking him and struggling to speak French and trying to tell him he didn't have to do that. He told me it was nothing. He told me that he'd traveled abroad before, and that when he'd been dans la galère (having a hard time), people had helped him out. So now he wanted to do the same for other people.

So, to wind down, I'm back and I'm safe. And that's all that matters, right? I don't know how or why I was the object of such compassion today but I'm extraordinarily grateful that someone helped me out like that. And now, I'm inspired to pay it forward, too.

*side note: You have to understand that in the Caribbean, hitchhiking and getting rides from strangers are fairly common practices, as the public transport is pitiful, and, as long as you go during daylight hours, it's generally safe.

Retour

I'm sitting now in my cheap airport hotel in Miami, getting ready to pack up and fly to Virginia. It's very, very strange to be back in this country.

Yesterday, I flew from Fort-de-France to Guadeloupe, then from Guadeloupe to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and then from Haiti to Miami.

On the plane from Guadeloupe, I sat behind a little boy named Louhan, from French Guyana. He was showing me his Sudoku puzzles and his Nintendo DS game the whole time. He told me he would be spending a week in Miami for the Toussaints vacation, and that he was excited to see what Halloween was like. He probably couldn't have been older than my CE2 students, and he was just so cute.

The view of Haiti from the airplane showed many of the buildings in run-down condition, and I could see a lot of people gathered by the side of the road on one of the freeways. I'm not sure why. In the Haiti airport, there were no LCD screens; the flight information was just written up on a whiteboard in the waiting area. There was also no PA system -- I'm not sure how people knew it was time to board, but at some point everyone just started getting up and standing in line. And there were no security machines -- airport workers opened up all bags by hand and looked through them, and everyone was patted down by hand, too.

Anyway. I'm not sure yet what this small sojourn back into the US of A will bring. I'll update again soon...