Passports, Machetes and Small Cacti

     I got my passport this weekend, this Monday I am going to some government building to get some shots that will supposedly stop me from getting some kind of awful disease in Haiti and then causing a pandemic when I get back to the states. I just kind of got to thinking about how I should probably record this so that I could have this step in the books.

     On a completely unrelated note, I am in the middle of reading Jon Acuff's Stuff Christians Like and the other day I got to a point where he talks about the mandatory Mission Trip Machete.  The jist is that any other time in your life, especially if you are under the age of 13, you weren't allowed within 5 feet of a sharp piece of metal that size.  However, as soon as you get to wherever you are going, you are just handed one THAT YOU GET TO KEEP like its no big deal. After reading this I got to thinking, I probably won't get to keep my machete if I get one at all down there because we are flying. And if we are flying, considering that TSA won't allow fingernail clippers or nail files, they probably won't allow a 3 foot blade on the plane. I guess I will have to buy one when I get back to the states and pretend it was the one I used in Haiti, assuming I even get one to use in Haiti, but I hope I do.

     Now that the 10 year old boy inside of me has gotten out,  I have found out a little more about the trip, and the way that the group that we are going through describes where we are staying makes it sound like we are staying in a nice hotel. Now I know that there are actually no "nice" hotels on that side of the island but I really hope that its not Haiti's best hotel or something like that.  I don't really think I need to explain why I feel this way, so I won't insult your intelligence.

     I also heard talk of some of the work that we will be doing down there.  I heard that we are going to be taking out cacti that grow in the roads.  But supposedly we can't just chop them down, but instead we have to uproot them and plant them somewhere else like they are some kind of endangered plant.  And they may be, but this is the country that essentially allowed the entire population to hack down all the trees for heat and cooking! And yet we can't just knock them over off to the side of the road, or let the trucks run them over, but we have to replant them.

     Actually upon writing this I think that this could possibly be an attempt at environment recovery as well as clearing the roads, and I really hope that this is the case so now I really don't have too big of a problem with it, but that all depends on what their motives are.  As to who "They" are, I'm not really sure...