it came off in my hand

It’s been a great week.  I have just had a week in Antigua with No2 son.  It was a bit of a journey, as I had to go via Florida, and overnight there (both ways).  But that at least allowed me to get my second covid-19 vaccination.

Antigua was a really beautiful place, but it could have been Rochdale in winter for all I cared; after 9 months it was so good to see him in person.  I know we have all got used to facetime and zoom in the last 18 months or so, but I’m sure we would all agree; it’s not the same.

We did lots of good stuff together, ate a lot of good food, including the incredibly spicy jerk pork at the Countryside Jerk Centre, in the middle of the island.  So spicy we couldn’t drink enough beer to stop the burning and had to give up!  We also visited the incredibly beautiful and equally historic Nelson’s Dockyard in the English Harbour National Park, went snorkelling and discovered turtles and rays just going about their business.  We had quite a bizarre sea crossing to Barbuda, which was a bit lumpy, and had a mixture of locals dozing through the 90-minute crossing whilst others (clearly tourists) spent the time heaving over the side, or into an orange plastic bag that the deck hand was handing out.  An indication of the salt-water running through the blood, we were both fine! 

In Barbuda we visited two of the most beautiful beaches imaginable, seeing the devastation caused by Hurricane Irma back in 2016 whilst in transit from one to the other.  If you look at a pre-Irma map of Barbuda you will see a large lagoon in the north of the island, enclosed to the west by a long thin beach.  If you look on google maps now, that beach has a half mile break, known as ‘Irma’s Mouth.

We did a beach buggy trip too, which started quite well, though the brakes seemed a bit soft.  As we headed out down the main road I had to stop behind a broken down lorry to let oncoming traffic pass. I pulled out into the other side of the road and as I turned the wheel to straighten up, the steering became very light.  Very light indeed, and I kept going straight.  I hit the brakes hard (for what it was worth) but even at that low speed they were ineffective and I mounted the kerb and crashed through someone’s garden fence, only stopping when the front wheels sunk into the soft ground!  Luckily, extremely luckily, there was no oncoming traffic, no pedestrians and no-one home.  I was still clutching the steering wheel trying to work out what had happened, when it became clear it was no longer connected to the steering mechanism and so the wheels were just doing their own thing. It very literally came off in my hands!

It was a great week though and really energised me for the next phase and my final 3 months in Haiti, which will no doubt include dealing with some of the fallout from the recent earthquake. More powerful than the 2010 earthquake, but centred in a more remote area so there will be a lesser impact on the country, but of course same devastation to the affected communities cannot be underestimated. As my uber driver said this morning, ‘they just can’t catch a break’.  It’s almost flippant, but it is so, so true.