The one where we do our good deed for the day

Victor, and I were driving back from town with the flatbed pickup recently when something caught our eyes. We were on the main street (Avenue of the Worker) when Comrade Victor and I spotted a strange group of people in front of us. It was a group of 6 white people in the back of a tiny little Toyota pickup that was about twenty years old with the springs were bottomed out under the weight of all of them, their backpacks and suitcases. We found it strange, because whenever people come in any sort of official capacity (World Vision, Peace Corps) they get picked up in a land rover with a logo plastered on the side.

Well, aside from looking extremely out of place, we didn’t pay much attention as they beat us on the last stoplight out of town (there’s like 12 in this entire city of over ½ million people). We went about our business talking about how the president must be coming to town soon because they suddenly fixed all the roads. Then, something caught Victor’s eye and he said, “I have to stop for something.”

Once the car was stopped Victor hailed a guy from the other side of the street. Let me preface this part by saying that in a country where people cannot read English, or have a knowledge of the American culture that donated the clothes everybody is wearing, fashion can be a little strange. There’s a post coming on that much later that will be well worth the wait. Anyways, this man was wearing a baby blue shirt that read “sex, drugs, rock & roll, then more sex” overlaid on top of the Playboy bunny logo. Victor went on to tell this absolute stranger how obscene his shirt was. The man was obviously ashamed and next thing I knew Victor was taking of his shirt to trade with the guy. Not that Victor is a Hugh Heffner fan or anything (I think he burned the shirt when we got home) but he decided he was going do his good deed for the day.

While Victor went on to check out the rest of the guys clothing to see if they needed to swap underwear or something I noticed that parked in front of us was that same little white Toyota we saw back in the city. The white people were all flipping through language guidebooks and the driver was yelling at them and complaining about who knows what. I got out of the car, ran to the nearest phone booth, put on my superman cape and ran to their rescue. I asked them if they spoke English and they got a big look of relief on the faces and said they had no idea what was going on. I started talking to the driver to figure out what had him so angry. About that time Victor showed up wearing a completely different set of clothes then when I left him and started talking to the driver and his navigator. I introduced myself and explained that situation is extremely confusing but not out of the ordinary. It turns out that these people had contracted with some random truck to drive them about a day’s trip south. Except the amount they were paying worth enough diesel make it two hours out of the city in the middle on nowhere before their driver abandons them and extorts them for more money.

It turns out the reason the car stopped is probably because the driver and his partner were arguing about how way to split the money they were conning these guys out of. I started translating this argument for them and Victor was trying to negotiate a realistic price that would get them to where they would go. At this point Victor and I decided the best thing to do would be to get these guys out of the car and figure out exactly where they were trying to go. Then Victor just start loading their luggage in our truck they begin freaking out thinking that he was in on the con. Had I not been the only other white person they’ve seen in the last week they honestly and probably would not have come with us. Victor drove us the ten minutes back to the orphanage while I sat in the back of the truck telling them why exactly they were going to be dropped in the dessert in the middle of nowhere and that its just better to not ask questions and come with us (we’re nice people, we promise).

The whole ride I spent explaining who I was, what I do, how long I’ve been here, where we were going, and who this Victor guy with me was. I didn’t exactly ask a lot of questions about who they were because it was pretty obvious to me.

Gimme a ‘T’. Gimme an ‘O’. Gimme a ‘URISTAS’. What’s that spell?

These guys.

When we got back to the Orphanage they were still on high alert and tired and confused and extremely freaked out, and Victor kept stopping every three blocks to swap clothes with strangers. Lets just say that didn’t help things. We got to know them a little bit and found out where they were from, where they were trying to go, their names. Just the essentials. Victor took two of them back into town for a couple of hours so they could find some legitimate transportation to their next town while I kept the other four entertained. There’s was lots of standup comedy, Dorca did a monologue from Hamlet, they got a tour of the orphanage, and we gave them some clean water and fed them lunch.

Check back in a couple of days for the other half of our good deed for the day.