A day I will never forget.

The single most terrifying day of my life.
Ok, I realize that's not saying much. I live one of the easiest, safest lives possible, sprinkled with adventure in the developing world every now and again. But I'm pretty sure that the events last Wednesday would scare anyone, anyone who values their own life and watches the news or reads the travel warnings for Haiti, that is! (thanks Mom!)
So, we started the day like any other....clinic in the morning, rice and beans for lunch, waiting for the bus that was 2 hours late...a standard day in Haiti. Actually, the morning had been a sad but successful one at the hospital. That tiny malnourished infant that we saw last week came back in to the clinic weighing 7 pounds 10 ounces. That's 2 ounces less than last week! This child was literally starving to death in front of our eyes. I asked the mother the last time the child had eaten and she said 2 days ago. After rushing off to get food for the infant, her 9 year old brother, and the mother, I sat down to talk to them with the baby in my arms, all three wolfing down the food I had brought. The mother communicated to me that, although she wad trying, she could only get food for herself and her children about every 3 days.. Luckily, we spoke with the psychologist who works out of the clinic and he knew how to get the family into a food program for starving children at another hospital! I was so relieved and happy. Finally this infant and her family would be getting the nutrients they needed! But I still felt incredibly sad. Could this infant ever grow up to be completely mentally normal after being deprived of essential nutrients for the first 6 months of her life? How many other children were there out there in the same situation? And this child had a mother! What about the orphans? There are 350 thousand orphans in the city of Port au Prince alone! What do they do when they're hungry? Who do they have to bring them into the clinic?? I try to take solace in the fact that we reached out to one family...possibly saved one life...but is that enough?
But I digress....back to the bus ride. So the bus ride started out as any other bus ride in a developing nation. Flying down a dirt road entirely too fast, rocks flying up around us, a few near misses at head on collisions, and horns blaring away, each bus trying to claim the rights to the road by being the loudest and the pushiest. Our bus was not full....we had 4 Americans, a Swedish nurse, a Canadian, the pastor and his son and friend, 2 strange guys who no one appeared to know sitting in the front, the bus driver and his sidekick, an evil looking man with a Hitler mustache and beady eyes. I took no notice of the men in the front and focused all my energy to clinging on for dear life every time we hit a bump or a curve. That is, until we got to Point Sante, a village about an hour south of Gonaives. The road was crowded and the bus slowed to a crawl...the market was going on all around the bus. People selling vegetables, water, fish, and other bits and bobs, trying to make a living. One man climbed on the bus trying to sell his bags of water to the blancos. The beady eyed mustache man began yelling at him and in a flash an argument had begun. They were yelling at each other in Creole, so of course we didn't understand a word of it. Next thing we knew, the water vendor had been pushed off the bus and began throwing his precious merchandise at the bus in a burst of anger. The water bags hit the bus and burst open, causing no damage besides wet streaks down the side of the bus. But this was enough to set Hitler mustache off. He jumped up, produced a metal rod from somewhere and ran off the bus. We watched from above as he clobbered the man twice over the shoulder with his weapon. He then jumped back on the bus and we began to pull away from the angry crowd that had gathered around the bus. But they knew the road and the town, and the angry water merchant continued to run after the bus. The pastors son quickly shuffled Jenna up to the middle of the bus where they felt we were safest. Just 100 yards up the road there was a road block. We slowed to a stop as the water boy caught up to the bus. 'Bang!' I heard a rock hit the bus and my body began trembling. 'They have a gun!' I heard Jenna yell and I dove to the floor of the bus. ' Bang! Bang!' I heard 2 more times, louder, echoing in my ears. I looked up to see the 2 strangers from the front of the bus standing by the window 5 feet from me, guns in both of their hand with a cloud of smoke rising from the pistols. I couldn't breath, couldn't think, couldn't move. I lay on the floor of the bus paralyzed, wondering if I was going to die. In a blur of what seemed like eternity we made it through the road block and drove a little way up the road before they pulled over and Hitler ran out into the desert brush. I had no idea why they were stopping when I was sure there was and angry mob in hot pursuit of the bus who would arrive at any second and take revenge on the entire bus. It wasn't until hours later that it came to our realization of what they were doing....disposing of the guns. Only minutes later a motorcycle drove up next to us and in shock an horror we realized it was the water merchant in the middle, shirt soaked in blood, unconscious and being held between the driver and another friend on the back of the bike. We were terrified. Should we help them? Is there anything we could do for the boy? Where was the closest hospital? And could jenna and I help him if we brought him on board? Would they kill us if we stopped? In the end, Claire refused to let us bring him on board and we knew there was not much we could do for him without getting him to a hospital asap. I laid my head down, closed my eyes and as my body shook with fear I recited in my head ' please let him be ok, please let him be ok, please let me live...' Soon the motorcycle arrived in the next city and they turned off the main road, headed for the hospital. About 20minutes later we arrived at another road block at the police station. The police made us stop and made the driver and his associates get out of the bus. There was a lot of yelling...I guess the water boy's friends had beat us to the roadblock. We pulled the bus over and waited for 3 hours while they were in the police station. Finally the bus driver got back on the bus. Everyone got back on except one of the shooters. A shiver went down my spine as beady eyes climbed back on a took a seat in the front. The last 30 minutes of the ride were in complete silence. When we arrived at the hotel Jenna and I booked and paid for our own room, away from everyone else. We needed to be as far away as we could. Regardless of the distance, I did not stop trembling the rest of the day or night.