One of those days

So we had our biggest transport truck get stuck overnight for the first time with an entire crew over the weekend. I was actually traveling down the same road the day before while the truck was headed to pick up the crew and their materials to take to a different site. I met the truck between two spots where there were other big transport trucks stuck in the road. Thankfully the Land Cruiser I was in is a really nice 4-wheel drive truck that got me through the mess with only a bit of tricky maneuvering that included pulling one van-taxi out of a place where it was stuck blocking me from passing. Our truck eventually made it through the mess with a lot of patience and a little help from the D-8 Caterpillar bulldozer that is being used to help fix the road. It's just too bad they hadn't finished things before the rains came, and they're still leaving it a dirt road that would be and is being ruined by the rains. And when they spread the soil for compacting and it rains before running it over with their roller it just makes a big slick muddy mess.

Well, the road did improve through no more rain overnight and a day of sun, but the 25-30 trucks that were backed up in either direction didn't really allow the road to heal up all the way before our truck got loaded up and hit the road. The biggest problem with the fact that a 3 to 4 hour journey gets turned into a 9 hour journey is that around 15 people were in the truck. You see, here in Sudan, there are no McDonald's or Wendy's to stop at for lunch. Which leaves Taco Bell as the only choice. While this would be no problem for me, the Sudanese don't like Mexican for some reason. Anyways, it takes hours to prepare beans, and since rice or posho/ugali and beans are what we provide to our crews for meals, stopping to eat is quite a process. And we don't encourage open fires in the back of the truck, so cooking while traveling doesn't work nearly as well as it did for me and the crew from Bear Lake when we were cooking sloppy joes in the crockpot plugged into the cigarette adapter of the van on our way to Teen Missions. (Quite a fun and memorable trip.) On top of that, there aren't really lodges on the side of the road at the places where trucks get stuck, so you just keep digging out instead of stopping and waiting for things to dry out which results in some worn-out and tired crews and drivers.

Considering the roads won't really be getting better until late September (hopefully), this probably won't be the last time something like this happens when you consider that we are running 4 crews presently with the fifth about to start up again, and they finish building each church in three to four weeks. That means about 6 times of transporting crews between churches each month. With trucks that keep breaking down, given the road conditions they travel on and the difficulty of predicting when the rains are heavy enough to cause the severe problems, the next few months will be a logistical nightmare. And we had just really been getting the logistical issues ironed out (I thought). Oh well, that's what keeps it fun.

Hope all is well wherever you are. Life's a garden. Dig it.

p.s. It's not nearly as big a deal for people here to go through the above scenario as it would be for most of you or I. It's actually pretty normal for people who travel the roads often during rainy season here.