We passed the second checkpoint at St. Marc then headed up into the mountain chain that separated the Northern plain from the rest of Haiti. It was already getting dark enough to use the headlights. We began to notice that as I shifted gears the lights dimmed. I was not a mechanic and couldn’t see anything without lights even if I knew what to look for. We were well into the mountains with no town until Plaisance on the downward side of the mountain so we kept going.
I was nervous. Driving in the mountains on the bad roads was dangerous enough without the lights. To save the drain on the electrical system I turned off the interior lights which presented another problem. Ami, straddling the gear shift, had on a skirt that didn’t quite cover her knees. Half the time when I reached for the knob I got her left knee. We laughed about it for a while but she finally said that she was familiar with manual transmissions and would shift when I told her. Once we crossed the mountain path we drove downhill and the head lights stayed bright. Sometime after midnight we reached the Baptist seminary just beyond Limbe’ without further complications.