It seems as
though I have hit a stream of bad luck as of late.
A few weeks
ago on Monday morning while on the way to the office, my colleague and I accidentally drove into a riot. A group of students were protesting the lack of electricity on their campus, which is conveniently located directly across from
our main office in town. Despite people’s attempts to tell us to turn around,
me being the driver, drove closer to burning brush piles and angry people.
Random
gestures from pedestrians is very common thus why the initial alert wasn’t out
of the ordinary. In the process of turning around, we were close enough that
our vehicle was pelted with rocks and the mob began running towards our vehicle.
Thankfully there wasn’t any significant damage to the land cruiser or my head,
as they flew past that general direction. The mental dilemma in that second was to either close
the window and potentially have broken glass in my face or a large rock instead.
Needless to
say my three point turn skills were whipped out in speedy fashion but not
speedy enough according to my colleague acting like a frighten little girl in
the passenger seat.
This past
week my bad luck with driving vehicles in Congo was yet again confirmed. I was
sent on a mission to retrieve dinner from a local restaurant in town. The night was very rainy thus making the
dirt roads quite slick. I managed to successfully reverse out of the parking
lot and narrow gate, obstacle number one down. The next challenge was to cross the small wooden
bridge connecting the shoulder and the main road with about a 4 foot deep drainage ditch
in-between.
While
driving a right handed vehicle and the ditch on the left side with pouring rain
and slick road, I managed to find my front left tire in the crater. It made a
very loud crunch. Land cruisers are very expensive thus igniting my adrenaline
on top of the fact that I was alone, in the rain, with my phone accidentally
forgotten at home, and the realization there are no tow trucks or AAA in Congo.
I raced
back into the restaurant searching for the manager to help me make a call after
which I realized I have no one’s numbers memorized. A few minutes later word
had gotten out that my very large land cruiser was one nostril down in the
ditch. I joined the crowd remembering I had left the doors unlocked with my
wallet inside, the only thing still existing that could potentially save me
from this situation.
Upon
arriving back on the scene, the vehicle was surrounded by quite the crowd. They unanimously decided to pick my car out of the ditch. Me of little faith
internally questioned how eight men were going to lift my land cruiser out of
this crater back onto the road. And even if they did, how would it even start
for me to drive back home ? I was certain something was broken.
To my
surprise it only took about 3 minutes for these men to heave my car and place it
back of all four tires again. Of course I was then surrounded by the mob
asking for $100 for their services. Thankfully I had been at the restaurant for
over an hour waiting for my take-out order and by that point was bff’s with
several people who came to my rescue with crowd control.
Congo always proves itself to never be boring. Now I can add to my resume experience in escaping riots and getting expensive equipment out of a small canyon. I will never underestimate the power of the human body ever again. Hopefully
my bad luck is over as it has almost been a week since my last incident.
