The Story You've All Been Waiting For: The Arrival of the Container of Food

I apologize for leaving the story of the arrival of the container of food, donated by Kids Against Hunger, hanging unconcluded. Here, finally, is the rest of the tale.

On Tuesday morning, we received word that all of the paperwork for the release of the container had been completed, and the truck with the food was on the road to us! We waited and waited, but no truck arrived. Allen and several of the kids worked on the construction site that day, keeping the cellphone close at hand, so that they could come home and help with the unloading when the container arrived.

Finally, in the late afternoon, they got the call. It was not, however, the good news that the container was at our house.

The truck had left Puerto Cortes, on the north coast that morning, and headed toward Gracias, on the main north-south road on the west side of Honduras. (Here in Honduras, we call these major roads 'highways,' but I am not going to use that term here, as it will give my US readers a completely incorrect picture of the type of roadway we are discussing. These are paved roads, one lane in each direction.) After traveling several hours, the truck had to turn around, because a large accident (involving a different overturned tractor trailer) had completely blocked the road, and wasn't expected to be cleared for many hours. This map shows the first part of his trip, with a bright red line on the top left corner of the map.
The driver of our truck backtracked, and then turned south again, on the one other major road which runs north and south in Honduras. This road heads toward the capital of Honduras, but there is a road which connects this road to the western road, and that secondary road runs through Gracias. However, that road is not completed. A lot of it is still unpaved, and at this time of year it can be quite muddy, and occasionally impassable. This second map shows the middle part of the trip, with another bright red line, starting at the place where he had to turn around.

The call our family received, late Tuesday afternoon, relayed the above information of the truck's trip so far - and some more bad news. At that point in the trip shown on the second map, the truck slid on a particularly muddy turn in the road, came dangerously close to overturning, and got quite stuck. A second tractor trailer, traveling the same direction, and thinking the road was wider than it was, tried to get past the truck with the container of food, and got stuck right next to it.

Although Allen and most of the kids had just finished a ten hour day pouring concrete (I have construction pictures, too, but I'll save them for another post), they piled back into the Land Cruiser to go rescue the tractor trailer and the food! They borrowed two large trucks from the alcalde (mayor) of Gracias, and picked up a heavy chain, with a plan to unload the original truck (to get rid of some of the weight) into the borrowed trucks, then pull the tractor trailer back onto the road using the chain and the other trucks.

The site of the incident was just over an hour's drive from our house (the distance isn't great, but the travel is very slow on the unpaved, muddy roads). Here are a few pictures of the situation they found there. It was, of course, already dark when they arrived.

The food is in the white truck, on the right.

The road was completely blocked by the two trucks, and there was a small hill close to the road on one side, and a muddy ditch on the other side. In order to unload the boxes of food from the container, our intrepid crew had to carry each box under the trailer of the truck, and then up a hill to load the boxes onto the alcalde's truck!

The workers unloading the food from the container

carrying the boxes and pallets under the tractor trailer

Of course, working in this mucky spot where the truck was stuck was a sloppy mess. The next day, everyone had sore, strained muscles, from this bending and lifting and carrying work in the mud.

After around 700 boxes had been unloaded, carried through the mud, under the truck, up a muddy hill, and then loaded onto the alcalde's truck, it was decided that the load was lightened enough to attempt to pull the tractor trailer out of the road.

The two borrowed trucks were then connected to one another by chains and cables, and the stuck truck became the caboose on this train. Straining together, they were able to get the original truck out of the mud!

The convoy of three trucks and our Land Cruiser returned to Gracias at just after 11pm. Most of the drivers and workers hadn't eaten, so we had a midnight meal for about a dozen or so people at our house, before everyone collapsed into bed for the night.

The next morning, we still had the job of unloading the truckload of boxes into our carport/storage area. This had to be done quite early, as the poor truck driver was already waaaaay behind on his schedule!

I have pictures of that, too, but this post is entirely long enough now. Watch for that part of the story later!