Rocks and Ditches

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.