Drama on our morning walk

Rowan hoofed me out of bed and by 7:30 we were walking along the road away from town, the same route we did on our very first walk. We turned down the side road we had been to before intending to go to the dead end and back. The houses are big and on large plots. We were nearing the end when we heard this wail from the bushes. It was a female voice struggling and obviously trying to get our attention, she must have heard us talking. It was very difficult to find her as the bush is so dense, but we saw some branches moving and found this black lady groaning and gesticulating that she needed a drink. We were horrified, she looked well dressed and long painted red nails. I was anxious Rowan shouldn’t go too close, I thought it may be a set up or secondly she might have C Virus and should keep 2 meters apart. I ran up the nearest drive which luckily wasn’t a holiday rental. No door bell so I banged and banged until eventually a groggy looking man arrived, I had clearly woken him up. I told him about the woman, and asked if he could give me some water and call the police. I returned with the water which R handed to her in the bush, we still could not understand a word she was saying. Then luckily the island refuse truck came along, we flagged it down and of course they could understand her as she was speaking creole. They established she had not had a drink in 5 days, one of the workers had a bottle of water so was topping up the glass I had brought to her. Then they told us she didn’t want the police and had a family phone number, and we should go and they would look after her. We realised by then she must be a refugee and thought it was best for us to clear out. We nearly got back to the marina when two police cars sped past us going towards where she was. Next minute the refuse truck appeared behind us and slowed down, they thanked us for our help and in the front they had her, looking rather dazed. I guess she is on her way to being an illegal immigrant. So it is happening out here too!

When we got back we told Bob the story and he said that she would have come from Haiti, and that an illegal drugs boat had been found four days ago which is why the gov drones have been out. We assume she paid her way over on that boat. We will never know if she got to her family. Apparently the refuse truck is operated by Haitians, so they must have helped her out. I just hope they don’t get into trouble, the American guy who called the police saw the refuse truck helping, so it will be easy to follow up. So sad that someone so respectable has to resort to such efforts, it must be truly awful what they are leaving behind to put themselves through such hardship. When I mentioned how smart she looked, I was told that is normal as it is only the well off who can afford to pay the huge fees of the people traffickers. Ugh such desperate times!

Back on Pole Pole we caught up with emails and messages. Finally got a response from Han who is having a ball somewhere in Botswana, she sent us some lovely pics of a leopard feeling very chuffed with itself after a kill.

I think Rowan’s burst of DIY exhausted him yesterday, he took a far more reclining stance today! I got all the laundry done in the marina washing machine and look forward to fresh sheets tonight.

We keep seeing rays of hope for moving on, but always something crazy seems to thwart us. We have had a coastguard visa approved to the US Virgin Islands, as long as we came in to the States on an Esta visa, which we did. Sadly mine runs out on 1 April, I put in an online submission and of course with Trump’s closed borders they are not issuing them at the moment. Rowan phoned immigration in the US Virgin Islands and explained we couldn’t get there by the 1st. The officer asked us when we entered, which was 5 Feb and said that’s fine, all we need is the stamp in our passport, as that gives us a 3 month entry visa from date of entry. We feel jinxed as to our horror we have discovered that the lady at immigration never stamped our passports (we have both checked over and over again, there is no sign of our entry stamp into Miami – we remember going up together to the immigration lady, she must have just forgotten to stamp our passports). How unlucky is that! There is a perfect weather window to get to the US Virgin Islands starting on Wednesday, which Rowan is very envious of, as these winds in the right direction get less and less this late in the season.

We walked again this evening in the other direction, and were amazed at the amount of people suddenly out walking. Got back and I did a lap of the marina while Rowan swam out the entrance and into the sea. He was pooped when he got back to the boat, but chuffed that his arm muscles were already showing signs of improvement!

Day 4 of lockdown finished!