Along the Merry Way....

Will has been speaking to Willie in Latin ever since he was born. When Willie was about four years old, his dad happened to look over in the middle of a conversation with Mary. Willie was sitting on the counter with wide eyes, staring at his dad with a look of shock. He said in a quiet, stunned little voice, "Pappa, you speak English!"

After crossing the Pacific Ocean, docking off in Hawaii, and spending years in the Cook islands, the Mehitabel has finally come to rest in New Zealand. The pilot house house is warm and sunny with Auntie Marie's bright, home-made cushions. The charts, maps and mugs, boxes of tea and jars of supplies all have their spots--neatly stowed. Even the stove has hinges so that you can cook in unruly seas without spilling. On Saturday, we held a fabulous music party in the ship with a group of local friends. Fiddles, guitars, and singing for hours. We sat chatting in the dimly-lit hold, a big pot of Auntie Marie's stew bubbling on the stove. We ate the stew and mopped it up with bread then munched our crisp and pie. What fun!

The bus broke down in the rainy countryside 1/2 hour from Whangarei. The other bus that was supposed to pick us up was blocked by an accident. The people got angry and hungry on the bus. It was pitch black because the bus driver wanted to conserve gas. We were all trapped there. Then a man called his daughter on the bus's speaker phone, so we (and his daughter) could hear everything. "Are you hungry dad? Do you want me to leave you some food?" "YES!" yelled everyone on the bus. Another girl and I ran outside and up a neighboring hill, and we had to race back as vehicles finally got going again. We leapt onto the bus in the nick of time. It was a horrendous collision that had blocked traffic on the treacherously steep roads. The cars looked like little crumpled up balls of paper.

Theresa and I and some other New Zealanders danced that night in the racecourse to the wild Irish music of Scythian. The police watched (helpless but chuckling somewhat) as hundreds of excited young people jumped the race-course barriers to get closer to the music. Whirling shadows in the chaos of lights. Everyone slept in a field of jumbled bodies, wrapped in silver heat sheets to protect against the freezing cold. The massive fields of sleeping lumps were merely marked by each country's flags.

It was my last night in Comayagua, and I was chatting with two Missionary friars. Says one, "We have to go pick up some goods from our friend Sam the Slinger. He's just back from Nicaragua. Want to come, Liz?" I jumped into the friar-jeep with them, completely forgetting to ask for leave, and we headed off, driving deep into the heart of the eerie darkness of an enormous, poverty-stricken city: the black of night splashed with city lights, strange faces in the corners of streets, the oozing yellow of dying lights glinting off coils and coils of razor wires, streets filled with the flitting ghosts and shadows of the days' people, vehicles, and animals, all melting back to the safety of home for the night. "Yep," says Friar 1, "The USA is too small for Sam the Slinger." We pull up to a tall building surrounded by walls and wire. Out saunters Sam the Slinger. He looks like some type of special forces soldier. We climb up narrow stone stairways and in...

We ate breakfast and drank coffee in the back of the truck as the sun was rising--Daniel from Siquatepeque and Andrew from the US. Then we had to push the truck downhill to get it going again. Rather, they pushed while I steered. In the wild narrow streets, a crowd of street workers hitch a ride in the back of the truck, then deceive us about directions so we go where they really want to go, banging on the back till we let them off. Asking directions again, we get sent totally the wrong way (deceived again because Andrew and I are gringos). Then a while later, we run into our first crowd of "friends" who laugh and tell us we are totally in the wrong part of town. Then the man hops on board (one of the ones who had first deceived us), giving directions till we get there. Then Andrew pays him so he can catch a bus back to work.

A bunch of the Honduran and American missionaries and I drove in the mist up El Volcan mountain. It's not really a volcano. We saw armed guys in camo walking down the hill. I wouldn't want to mess with them. We went off onto a tiny, slippery mountain path that led us out of the pines and into misty banana tress with big bunches of fruit and enormous umbrella leaves. We found ourselves cutting across the steep slopes of a coffee fenca that was dripping with rain and mist. We brushed through the dripping red berries and brilliant green leaves...Lo and behold, we found ourselves at a small mountain hut--the owner of the coffee fenca, who was busily frying his lunch. He had a very friendly face and served us delicious nectar, called coffee, but I wanted to ask if it as from Heaven, actually it came from his own grove. A dear, sweet happy man in a hovel with five sons out cutting coffee and a wife dead 11 years. His name was Tranquillino. We ran back down through the misty mountains...