A Trip To the Capital...

...or I could have titled the post: Traffic, Sandals, and a Very Bad Huelga. Let me explain the latter title by telling you about a trip Jim and I made last week to Santo Domingo.

So, we got up around 4AM. Slightly early. Early enough to drive the streets of Nagua without swerving around motorcycles and motor scooters. Grabbing some much-needed Dominican coffee, we hit the road. To Santo Domingo we shall go. Why? Mainly because we are taking out residency here in the country, and had to go to the capital to get some documents stamped and to get letters from the National Police saying that we are not bad people. And this can only be done in the capital. So our thinking was: get there early, avoid some of the traffic (which is akin to that of Miami, but with worse drivers... much, much worse - perhaps worse than Cairo Egypt... not sure). The "leaving-early" principle would normally work. Sounds good, at least. Things were going great. We stopped for a Cuban sandwich (onions and beef) at the side of the road of the Autopista Duarte, the main north-south highway in the country, and remarked at how cool it was. Almost cool enough for a jacket. Probably about 22 degrees Celcius. After the sandwich, we hopped back into the car, and back on the road. Thirty minutes later, our day started to get rather interesting.

The adventure started about 30 minutes north of Santo Domingo near a town called Villa Altagracia. We were driving on the large, 4-lane, relatively smooth, divided highway, when all of a sudden traffic in front of us drew to a complete stop. Something was blocking the highway. There were quite a number of vehicle in front of us, semis, buses, vans, cars, motorcycles - all stopped. Many people were out of their cars. And there was no traffic coming back the other way on the highway either. Very strange, or so I thought. After being stopped for a few minutes, I decided to hop out of the car and ask/see what was happening. The first person I asked said that he thought there was an accident involving some trucks. I investigated further, walking up to the front of the stopped vehicles, and was rather surprised with the sight. There was a large group of Dominicans (many of the stopped drivers) leaaning against the roadside barrier/fence watching what appeared to be a large protest going on in the middle of the largest highway in the country. When I say large protest, I mean almost 1000 people in the middle of the road, blocking both ways. Probably half the town was there. This was about 6:30AM, by the way. The villagers had thrown debris, garbage, rocks, palm branches, and other obstacles in the middle of the highway, and they themselves were crowded together, banging drums and chanting "¡Queremos puente, no mas muertes!" That means: "We want a bridge - no more deaths". They were protesting the fact that there had been many people from the village killed by passing vehicles. The village was on both sides of the road, and there was no tunnel or pedestrian bridge. This is the way they decided to lobby the government - by shutting down the most important road in the country. Unfortunately, this is probably the only way they will get the attention of the government. Even little school children were there chanting. It was quite the sight. Noone dared to go through the crowd. It was too big, and nobody wanted problems. The villagers were upset. So were the stopped drivers. All us commuters kind of hung out, chatted a bit, and watched from a safe distance (about 200-300 yards or so) as a few police tried to start thowing garbage off the road. Didn't work. The not-so-happy villagers threw it back on. 5 police versus an angry mob of 1000. Not good odds. Then a couple more vehicles full of police with guns arrived. We were thinking that there would be a quick resolution. After about 15 minutes of the police walking ever so slowly to the commotion, they fired off a few warning shots and shot off one or two smoke grenades. The people scattered, and we were thinking - ah, we should get going soon - but no, it wasn't that easy. The people all returned, as fired up as ever. So much for being early to Santo Domingo. At this point we had been stopped for about an hour and a half. That's when the military arrived in a Hummer, looking like they meant business. They hopped out and starting moving towards the crowd. The police and the military start moving the junk off the road - only to watch as the villagers dragged a huge tree onto the highway, branches and all. Good grief, I was thinking to myself. It was almost comical, until it got really ugly... I think the military probably gave them a time limit to clear off the road or else they would use force. The villagers didn't cooperate, and so it got bad. The military started shooting smoke grenades, and firing off their automatics (I think they were M16s or AK47s, not sure) into the air. The people really scattered this time. You could barely see the people running, the smoke was so thick. An officer ran through the crowd of us curious commuters with his gun drawn, who were at this point well in front of the stopped vehicles, but still a ways away from the protest - suddenly he turned around and yelled for us to get back to the vehicles. Why? Because the military guys (still shooting their automatic weapons, now aiming for the hills) were walked back towards us. So we didn't argue. We ran. People were throwing sizeable rocks down from behind the houses up in the hills. The military guys responded by firing back towards the houses (or maybe into the air above, it was hard to tell) with their automatic weapons. I was praying, "Lord, please protect these people from getting hurt." To make an already long story not drag out too much longer, a police vehicle drove up with a loudspeaker, and I think it was an equivalent of the "Gentlemen, start your engines." Only in the Dominican Republic on highway 1, not on the Daytona 500 track. So everyone ran back to their vehicles, while the police cleared away all the junk. A few minutes later, all the vehicles (several kilometers worth of stopped, agitated commuters) started to roll down the highway. As we drove forward, we passed right next to some military folks, still firing their automatics into the hills. With little rocks rolling across the road, we start to move towards the capital once again. Praise the Lord, we will probably still get to the Capital today!

Wow. I am getting tired of typing. :) Praise the Lord, we were ok. And I didn't hear of anyone getting killed during that strike (they call it a huelga here). We made it to Santo Domingo and proceeded to hunt down the National Police headquarters. We found ourselves in a room with four police officers, all arguing with each other about the directions of the building that we really should be looking for. 0 for 1. We walked back the five or so blocks back to our car, did find the building we were looking for - the Justice building - and entered it. Only to find that that wasn't the building we were looking for either. It was the one across the street. 0 for 2. So we go to the other building. Sure enough, there was a huge line for people who need to get letters of good conduct. But we found the place! Yay! We picked the VIP line. You pay a few dollars more per letter and get guaranteed same day service. Wahoo! :) We had 7 letters to do between Jim and I, and were told by a guy out front that we could only do three letters each. We thanked him kindly and stepped in line anyways. After a good half-hour, we made it in, got our letters payed for, and then had to wait another hour to pick up the letters. Once we got them, we discovered that two off them had printing errors, so we had to wait another half-hour to get them redone. Finally, praise the Lord, we got all the letters. Oh, except for Jim and Renee's two boys' letters. Because they were minors, we were told that we had to go to another building for this. Okay. No problem.

Driving next to a building called the Procuraduria, we had the mission of getting some documents stamped. And yes, they can only be stamped in this building, which is only in the Capital of the country. Upon entering the building, the security guards motioned to our feet, which were handsomely clad with sandals, saying that people with sandaled feet are not allowed in the building. We looked at each other in disbelief, and began to plead in Spanish how we were missionaries travelling from Nagua, which is very far away, and we really needed to do this. They shook their heads and say ok, go on, get in there. We didn't argue, and just went - thank you Jesus.

After getting the stamps, we walked a couple blocks to abother building to try and get the good conduct letters for Jordan and Logan, Jim and Renee's sons. Upon arriving, we were again turned down entry into the building because of our footwear. Hmm. They called their manager, and he was nice enough to escort us caucasian folks to the right office in the building, only to discover that we were missing photos of the boys (news to us). They had to be color. We thought quick and prayed, and decided to go get a color copy of their photos from their passports, hoping that would suffice. After finding a copy place, and getting the copies, we headed back to the building, were helped by our manager friend to the office, and, thank the Lord, received the letters within fifteen minutes of arriving. Gloria a Dios!

There were some more stops that we made after that one, but I won't bore you with those details. The two tired, sandal-shod gringos headed for some hotdogs, groceries, a little frozen yogurt, and then we left town (after sitting in traffic almost a good hour). Passing by Villa Altagracia again (much quicker this time), we could see that there was still a police presence at the area where the protest took place. After a few hours of driving (about 3.5), we arrived home: ready for bed, but thankful that all the residency stuff we had to do was done. Hallelujah!!!!

Twas a long, eventful day. But in it all, God protected us, granted us favour, and gave us success in obtaining all the residency papers/stamps that we needed. Please continue to pray for our team here. We do need God's divine protection on a daily basis. And His favour. Through obtaining residency, we can better serve the Lord here in the country, and can enter/leave smoothly when we go on furlough.

God bless you all!