Once again, Gavin, Les and I found ourselves at the side of the road waiting for a ride but the many passing Chapas (minibuses) stopping to offer us a lift for a price wouldn’t take no for an answer. We had caught a Chapa before, so we knew the drill. They couldn’t seem to grasp the concept that we wanted to go all the way to our destination without stopping every kilometre to pack even more people into a clearly already overstuffed vehicle. And when we said that we wanted to get all the way to our destination without paying, they would just laugh, say something like “you can’t get places for free!” and drive away. We decided not to tell them of the thousands of comfortable African kilometres that we had already covered at zero cost. As we tried to shoo away our 19th annoying minibus driver in 30 minutes an empty, cushy looking 4WD passed by without seeing us. Yet another missed opportunity! Locals surrounded us, offering advice on where to catch buses, minibuses blocked our view of the cars we wanted to catch and Les and I were becoming irritable. Gavin, always the last to lose his cool reassured us with his favourite line: “if missing a few potential hitchhikes is the worst thing that happens to us today, we should consider ourselves lucky”.
BAM!... silence. We hit another pothole at 120kph and the CD player took stress leave for a few seconds before resuming the Portuguese pop. The terrible roads must be the reason cassette players still reign supreme in African cars. CD players aren’t made with the third world in mind. We had successfully hitchhiked once again and our hosts were friendly and seemed more interested in us than our money. Not only that, but we had happened upon a ride going nearly all the way to our eventual destination, Ilha De Mozambique. Fourteen or so hours of driving covered in a single hitchhike! Unheard of! Gavin had been allocated to a different vehicle with our driver’s friends also going to the same destination, so presumably while Gavin did the same in his car, Les and I chatted with our hosts about the usual stuff. After a while the conversation died away like an unattended fire and we all fell into silence.
BAM! The front axle took another battering as we smashed into yet another pothole. This time the music didn’t return. The car’s electrics were not working – I couldn’t wind down my electric window. When I asked, one of the guys in front explained to me that “It is my friend’s car. This always happens” and at the first opportunity, we pulled over so they could fix the problem. They also noticed that one of the tyres was getting low, so decided to replace it. Wanting to be helpful, I fetched the spare from the back (one of those temporary-use wheels) and brought it around to where the other two were busily jacking up the car. We bolted the tiny, flimsy-looking wheel in place and were back on the road soon enough.
As the second hour of driving passed Les scribbled away in her book and I blogged on Tinks but it was difficult to concentrate. Considering the road quality and the fact that we were running on a temporary-use tyre, the car was going a little too fast for my liking and the look on Les’s face indicated that she felt the same way. The two in front had swapped and the new man behind the wheel clearly fancied himself as a rally driver. We careened through a small village on the heavily potholed Mozambican artery road at 120kph without slowing. As per usual, the road was lined with men on bikes, women carrying huge loads on their heads, children and various animals. We approached a small child clothed in rags shepherding five goats. He stood at the side of the road with three of them, beckoning the two still idling on the bitumen (pavement, in American) to join him. Our driver slowed from 120kph to 100kph (in the clearly marked 60kph zone) and pressed his fist to the horn. But one of the goats was too slow. It leapt sideways a second too late and our car smashed into its rear legs. Les let out an uncontrolled “ugh” and covered her eyes. I gawked backwards to assess the damage. The goat spun on the tarmac for a few seconds, blood spurting from its crumpled rear legs. The animal’s life was clearly over and the poor shepherd had just lost 20% of his flock. Les and I, shocked by the carnage were forced to express our trauma using only facial expressions for fear of hurting our driver’s feelings. The two in front acted as if nothing had happened, and without saying a word, sped back up to 120kph.
If it wasn’t for the fact that Gavin was in another car I would have suggested getting out at this point but, instead, for the very first time in Africa I buckled my seatbelt. Les reached for hers, but there was no connecting buckle, so as subtly as possible she shifted left across the back seat towards me and clipped the centre belt around her waist. Not two minutes later, the car was completely written off.
A huge pothole materialised from nothing and our driver veered sharply off the left of the road into the dirt and then to compensate, steered sharply right. The car skidded on the right side of the road, and grass on the verge bowed away from the speeding vehicle in a cloud of dust. Les and I, gripping the chairs in front of us knew the driver was no longer in control and, no longer able to contain her natural urge to scream for the sake of politeness, Les released a repressed screech. The car veered to the left a second time, back wheels accelerating to overtake the front ones like an overexcited dog. All of a sudden the screeching stopped. The tyres had left the ground. A blur of golden-green whizzed past the top of my window in silence before.... bang... crunch... scccrrrrape. Les’s head smacked into my shoulder and Tinks leapt off my lap. The car was upside down, then right way up, then upside down again and sliding through the long grass. It came to a stop, rocking back and forth on its roof, wheels spinning.
There was silence for a moment before broken by Les’s screams: “we’re trapped!” She unbuckled her seatbelt and crashed into the ceiling. She took a moment to right herself and bashed on the window with her fists before trying the door handle. To her (and my) surprise the door sprung open enthusiastically, shoving the ample greenery aside. Les was out of sight in 2 seconds flat (her movie-trained self-preservation instinct was to get out before the vehicle exploded). I, still suspended by my seatbelt, clearly remember my next thought: “Well this sucks. Now what?” Outside, Les had presumably made it away from the Hollywood blast radius because now all I could hear was my name being screamed over and over. Les’s shrill cries were unsettling, making me feel less confident in my composure. Was there something she knew that I didn’t? Was something wrong? Well, other than the fact that we had just nearly died.
More and more blood succumbed to gravity, congregating in my scull so I unbuckled and accelerated upwards abruptly, colliding with force into the ceiling. Somehow, even though it was covered in broken glass, I came out of the interaction unscathed. I took a moment to gather my thoughts. The healthy volume of Les’s panicked screams indicated that she was probably ok so my mind turned to my other precious: Tinks. I looked around, spotting her on the ceiling above/below the driver’s seat and semi-submerged in a mound of broken glass. I retrieved and dusted her off, slipped her under my arm and swiftly exited the vehicle through Les’s open door. Following the wails I found Les sitting in the middle of the road with her head between her knees. I assured her that we would be ok and she thanked me for my concern, lifting her head to look me in the eyes. I had to conceal my shock: looking like a batman villain, the left side of her face dripped with blood while the right remained unscathed. It appeared serious, but on closer inspection I could see it was just a cut on her eyebrow. This and some glass cuts on her arm (from landing on the ceiling) were the only injuries sustained from the accident! I, and the two drivers, had come out of the incident without a scratch! I helped Les move to the side of the road and we sat in silence for a moment to catch our breath. She exhaled deeply, lowering her head on to my shoulder and whispered: “I don’t think we should give them any money for petrol.”
Les was still breathing heavily and rocking slightly when a car approached along the straight road. Immediately, she leapt up to wave the driver down and dismissed my suggestion that she remain sitting, pointing out with wild eyes that she looked “more pathetic”. I couldn’t disagree. The chapa stopped and the twenty people within flooded out to help flip the destroyed car and push it back onto the road. After attempting to tow the car to town using the now even fuller chapa (Les wouldn’t get into the car again – and I can’t blame her) for a while, one of the tyres on the buckled front axle exploded and we were finally forced to leave the wreck behind. The four of us squashed in the chapa, sitting on top of other people where necessary and were finally on our way to the nearest town (80km away). Sardine-packed amongst locals I had a chance to ponder our good fortune at having survived the ordeal. I turned to Les and in my most reassuring tone said: “If rolling a car at 120kph is the worst thing that happens to us today...” My joke (and with it, my stupid grin) withered under Les’s scowl.
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