Flap Your Arms
Flap your arms, Yolantha, flap your arms! Run real fast Yolantha, flap your arms!!!
The flight from Port-au-Prince to the airport in Pignon
Is 40 minutes in a small
Run-real-fast-Fred-Flintstone-prehistoric
Skyking-bubble-gum-cracker-jack-prize
Airplane.
My body begins to think on its own
I scrunch up
My shoulders beginning to involuntarily reach for my ears
My elbows start moving as if they were wings
Come ooooooooon airplane, you can do it, you can do it.
I look at all of us well fed missionaries, hoping
They are flapping too
The other missionaries seemed to be
Just nonchalantly looking out of the windows
Not in the least bit paying attention,
Not one ounce of concern.
Like a child I lift my feet, an old superstition I once heard my country cousins say.
“If you lift your feet as the plane starts moving down the run way
It makes the airplane lighter for take off.”
Shooooot in this tiny thang? I'm gonna try any tactic to help
Get us fat missionaries off the ground.
Since none of the other missionaries are on point
I'm gonna have to do a whole lotta flappin'
And the pilot, look at the pilot.
I'm not suppose to be able to see the pilot from my seat.
And he's got his window rolled down with his elbow stuck out.
Oh no, oh no he didn't. The pilot puts on some mirror sunshades, then cops a lean like a teenager
Doing drivebys in the inner-city. He starts the plane. The roar is so loud my body becomes one with the engine like it does at a rock concert. A huge puff of air enters my mouth. I gag, the taste of diesel fuel. With out any fanfare he takes off like he was Johnny Travolta riding a Harley.

Where's the Runway?
Where's the runway, where's the runway, where's the runwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay??? I almost lost it. I lifted my feet again. I hope it works for landing too. All I could recite was the 23rd Psalms. The Lord is my Shepherd I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures…I didn't realize that God meant that literally. Over 2000 years after the death of Christ, mega years after the Psalm was written by King David, God made our plane to “lie down” in the green mountain pastures of Haiti.

“Breathe, Yolantha Breathe.” My eyes peered through the window. Children were everywhere. I'm really here. I'm really in Haiti.

The pilot dumped us, looked at his watch and then donned his mirror sunglasses. I swear he gunned the airplane engine then he did a u-turn, he gunned the engine again and took off straight up in the air without even taxi-ing. My heart skipped a beat.

“America?” my heart said, like a child calling after his mama.


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