Saturday, March 10

     WOW. Where do I begin? Yesterday appeared to be a regular day with a normal day's activities. A little before Noon I met a friend for lunch and a chance to run some errands. Traffic was heavy because it was Friday but everything else seemed normal. We left the plaza and my friend insisted he would take me all the way home (about 20 miles); I noticed a column of black smoke off in the distance and commented, "Something's on fire." I kept telling him to just drop me off at any of the bus stops and I could hop a bus home. As we neared the half-way mark, traffic began to stop completely. I again begged him to drop me off and he finally agreed (he had previous engagements that he needed to make).

     I boarded a bus within four or five minutes but we could see that basically no one was going anywhere. Suddenly the traffic started moving again and I realized we were crossing the median to run down the other side of the highway. It is a limited access highway, so once you are on it, there is no escape. Take a deep breath - it is NORMAL here when an accident happens, for the traffic to take possession of the opposite lanes (on-coming) in order to proceed. I was standing at the driver's shoulder, but was two or three steps above him, as he sits closer to the ground. I could see nothing. Finally I hunkered all the way down and could see a tractor trailer in our (original) side. Due to the fact we were on the wrong side of the highway, I could not see through the trees to see the accident. By the time we made our way to where it took place, it was gone. The fire department was still hosing down one area and were scraping the pavement with shovels.

     As soon as we passed the wreck we returned to our side and proceeded to regular speed. I arrived home and started telling Ann about it when my friend called. He had just heard on the radio that they were burning buses all over the city and one of them was what I had just passed. He was sitting stopped dead on the by-pass with no way to move.

     In all, there were twenty-five vehicles taken and then burned. The governor stated that there were two total stoppages of the traffic, meaning that both sides of the highway were blocked. We were immediately concerned about our kids but were able to make contact with them before too long. All the cell phones quit working, many of the news pages on the web went off the air and some TV stations' signal went so weak they were no longer discernible. What all happened? I doubt anyone will ever know. The general story is that they captured some of the head people in one of the groups and this was retaliation. Others said it was all political due to the upcoming elections. Others gave their own ideas as to who, what, why, when & where.

     The bad part is that at least two people died. The good part is that apart from a general scare throughout several millions of people, the loss of many thousands of dollars' worth of vehicles and cargo, everything seems to have returned to "normal." At least five of the vehicles were tractor-trailers. A few cars and one motorcycle were abandoned at the scenes. The rest were buses. Because so much of it involved city transportation, many of the routes stopped completely for over two hours. This city's life revolves around the city buses. The panic of seeing columns of smoke in different places of the city, traffic by the thousands totally stopped and no way to get anywhere else, left the city paralyzed and scared. Perhaps that was the idea!??

     Thank you for your prayers. I was not able to get much out at the moment except for the WV connection through Ann's mom. Some of you were praying anyway. Thank you for your concern and prayers. It is the hedge that God places around us through your prayers that keep us going. God bless.

Gary & Ann