GIRLS OWN ILLUSTRATED DISASTER

IN JULIA'S WORDS

We always knew the 1 000kms+ from Mwanza on Lake Victoria to Kipili on Lake Tanganyika were going to be a tough lot, which is why we decided to cover them over three days.

Day 1 was Sunday 22 December, and the road to Tabora wasn’t entirely terrible. The road to Mpanda on Day 2, though, was mainly a hideous mangled sand one whose surface is rain-riven chasms, pits and humps. Occasionally we’d join up with a road-under-construction (Chinese in attendance, naturally), and our speed would increase from 35kph to a whooshing 80. But only occasionally.

When we finally found our berth for the night in Mpanda’s Dubai New Hotel we both were hanging weakly on to the last threads of our senses-of-humour. My neck was protesting at being jiggled and jogged for near 13 hours of driving over two days, and Rehana was so tired she kept zoning out to stare into the middle distance, sometimes in mid-sentence. 
We both were holding on very tightly to the promise that, after a further 300-odd kms on awful roads, 10 whole nights camping at the haven called Lakeshore Lodge on tantalising Lake Tanganyika awaited us.

Not much to see in the three towns where we came to a quivering halt. Our neighbour in Tabora

Day 3, and we were on the road again from Mpanda (pretty wretched little settlement that it is – or maybe it was just me looking through pretty wretched little eyes) by 8.30am in the rain.
Literally hundreds of kilometres of forest and virgin bushveld ambled past us as we lurched the famished road; very nice for the passenger who got lingering looks at vast freedoms, but very shit for the driver who must of necessity be straining eyes, arms and neck to navigate.

Three days of slidey clay ... and verdant forest

Finally we put 300kms behind us, and the road steadily descends its rutted way through spellbinding terrain of hills and billowing woodland. Rehana and I had speculated about “Big Days” traffic when planning when to drive, and laugh at our miscalculation when the “traffic” amounts to a taxi, a truck and a bus every hour, and a car every two.

Six hours on the road and less than 20km to go, I am idly planning as Rehana drives what to do when we arrive at our promised lodge. First a beer, then wash the worst of the mud off the car before we make camp. 
Then a shower, and dinner – god I’m starving, after eating so skimpily for the last three days, us not appreciating the local fare in the small towns we’d rested in and being too tired beyond making a cheese sandwich when the road had finished with us. Something with the chickpeas ready-boiled in the fridge – perhaps with the last of the parmesan and one of the delicious apples we’d scored in Mwanza…

We follow the wet sand road over a slight rise and then down a gentle descent, forest everywhere. 

Lake Tanganyika 20km ahead on slip-slidey roads

A car rounds the corner in front of us; there is plenty of time before we will meet, but Rehana needs to slow down to make it safely. Which is what she tries to do. Which is when everything goes very, very, extremely extreme.

We skid on the wet sand when she touches the brakes; and then, spinning slowly to Rehana’s cries of “Oh no oh no oh no oh no” (I think I was just going “Aaaaaaargh”), the BRC swerves into a vast ditch on the road’s side; pauses for a creak and a groan; and then falls, quite slowly, “kersmash” onto its passenger side.

I have been in several car accidents before, but none that involve the car landing on its side. I am the passenger; objects fly past my nose and pile up around me and the inside of the passenger door, now lodged against the wet earth – maps, a workshop manual for the BRC, a bottle of sunscreen, Tabard, a litter of other UFOs – while I save myself from also landing on the passenger door with the help of my seatbelt and an outstretched arm.

Above me Rehana is intact and in defiance of gravity attached to her seat (her seatbelt and her legs lodged under the dashboard are excellent assistants), moaning alternately, “Ohnoohnoohno” and “I’m so sorry Jules, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry”. Probably I was still going “Aaaaargh”.

In that dazed half-light that illuminates the chaos of accident-shattered reality, I know we can’t much longer flail in this capsized cabin; somehow we must get out of here. I start by finding my seatbelt clasp; I unlatch the belt. I swing my legs gingerly onto the passenger door, now the floor, unsure of what the weight of a person standing on a car door does to it. BRC cracks not. 

In between our seats we had an iron lockbox installed, thinking it essential for keeping valuables secure (it is); now it becomes a handy step in a ladder to freedom. I climb on its side and reach up to the driver’s door shut tight above Rehana’s head. It’s one heavy fuck to open, a Landcruiser’s door, when the car lies on its side and you’re but a feeble be-crashed dame; but now going “Aaaaargh” with the effort like Hercules wouldn’t, I manage to raise the door at first just a peep, and then enough for a good look outside.

What I see is most welcome. A small crowd of people – 5 or so – gather around the car on the road below. One is a middle-aged Indian gent (Mr Zaidi, we later learn), who is shouting “Don’t worry, you are safe! You are safe! You are safe! You are safe! Wait!”. A younger (name-unknown) man climbs up the side-wise back of the BRC and makes his way along its muddy, slippery side to help me with the door.

All the while Rehana had been unable to move much more than her lips, being crazily suspended thanks to her seatbelt and stuck legs. But – and now begins the long list of why, if you must have an accident, this is a fucking excellent accident to have – her legs aren’t stuck in the crushed, mutilated, must-be-amputated way that you hear of accident victim’s legs being stuck; they simply need to find the right spaces to be released from beneath the dashboard, entirely unharmed, and, with the young man above assisting her, she’s released onto the slippery side – now the rooftop – of our beautiful and defeated (or so it seems) BRC.

Our new hero hauls me out next, and legs trembling dangerously, Rehana and I wobble and slide our way off the tragic collapse of our bold BRC. Oil runs from the engine into the puddles that fill the ditch.

Girls Own Illustrated Disaster 1

Mrs Zaidi has painted-on eyebrows and wears a lovely yellow-patterned scarf, and is full of concern and prayers for us. I tearily thank her and would have embraced her except I am as muddy as a happy elephant and don’t want to spread the kak to her stylish self.

Rehana is in a shocked and manic frenzy of doing. The car that had been approaching us as we lost control and toppled is a Toyota Rav 4, and its three young male occupants want to help us right the BRC. What we need is a tow rope. The tow rope that we need is now lodged firmly ground-side beneath the boxes and bits heaped on to where we’d find it.

The young men remove the spare wheel from the back so that we can open the back of the car. Rehana carries jumble out and rummages (I feel like an automaton with batteries drained to half-life and just chip in) and eventually emerges with a rope that I know will never be strong enough for the job. Plus the 4x4 that’s to help us may be a 4x4, but it’s too junior to handle BRC’s incredible hulk. 
What we need to do is to phone Louise and Chris who are expecting us at the lodge and ask for their help; except the phone with the number on it is in Rehana’s bag which is somewhere in the sideways chaos of BRC’s cabin. 

I feel too blanched to insist on my point, and let everyone try and fail to right the BRC with the crap rope and puny 4x4. Of course it doesn't work, the rope snaps in an instant.

Girls Own Illustrated Disaster 2

Then Rehana and I climb onto the treacherously muddy and slippery side of the car; Rehana helps me keep the door up as I climb back into the cabin and retrieve our bags. I retrieve a jersey too – the clouds are heavy but not raining – but can only find one shoe. Oh well: what’s a stone or two under bare foot in the light of all of this?

Rehana calls Louise; she’s heard about the accident already because Mrs Zaidi had contacted her daughter who had the lodge’s number and let them know. Chris, in a Landcruiser with tow ropes, is on his way.

Our Rav 4 friends drive away; Mr Zaidi gives us his number and tells us he’ll be back this way in two hours, should we still be stuck. “But you’re safe! You’re safe! Safe!” he constantly assures us. “This is Tanzania, not a dangerous other place. Don’t worry!”

Alone now with the BRC, I sit miserably and muddily on the spare tyre and wonder what’s next. We’re mercifully free of bloody damage, but I know all about whiplash and I also know my neck’s one weak thread. 
When the pain kicks in, after the adrenalin has gone, where will I be? What are Rehana’s hidden injuries? Will BRC work ever again – and if not, what on earth are we to do with it just about midway between nowhere and nowhere?

Girls Own Illustrated Disaster 3

Rehana paces muddily, now furious, now distraught, berating herself. “AAAAARGH! NOOOOO! NOOOOO! I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry FUUUUUUUCK!”

Yes she was driving but really it was a sequence of incredibly unlucky ingredients, rather than her fault, that led to our lucky accident. Speed was a slight ingredient – but by the time we crashed, it was so reduced it was a gentle kerbash-kersmash, not a slaughter, that we endured. Mainly to blame is the approximate road of saturated slide-sand and the definite ditch that awaited us.

Anyway, how can you be angry with someone who looks like she’s just been warmly welcomed by the shocking end of the world? Especially when that someone is my marvellous Rehana.

A little over half-an-hour later we hear a car approaching from the direction of our fondest wishes.  And yes, it was Chris and friend Daniel in a Landcruiser. I did tearily embrace Chris – the mud had dried by then – and he turns out to be the kindest, most car-knowledgeable version of a host. 

As with all our rescuers, I fall immediately in love. Plus he’s got gorgeous blue eyes. How niftily – and with a few hilarious comments he successfully dumps the BRC again on to its carshoes, how smartly he assesses likely damage, compliments the amazingness of the car in enduring such a mishap, prepares the BRC for attempted take-off so we can drive her, as per plan, to Lakeshore Lodge.

And take-off again the BRC did. She may have belched some black smoke, but she starts first time. The bullbar is newly bent, the passenger-side front and bum a bit swiped, and the roofrack (upon which rests our “flat”, as someone sweetly once described our tent) is all askew. We put in a litre of engine oil to replace that which had poured out while BRC lay on her side. 
But the car works, our tent works, and the only damage to the contents inside our car was six eggs broken! I kid you not! All our containers, whether plastic, glass or cardboard, merely fell about with a gentle sigh around our fallen car! WHAAAAT?!?!

Girls Own Illustrated Disaster 4

So Christmas morn Rehana and I spend reorganising and cleaning our car – which I am now succumbing to personifying.
I’ve spent months refusing to call it “she”, or give her a name, or to attribute to her properties properly belonging to human, or at least living, thing. Because it’s a habit of humans to invest their machines with attributes of the alive in a way that’s both false and deeply suspicious.

But BRC is a most able, loyal, hardworking, longsuffering, impressive friend. Even when she’s been forced to roll over like a sick cockroach in a ditch, she’s backed us up.

If the BRC was a woman, she’d be just like Rehana. Just not as sexy.

Under a giant mango tree now we’re camped. If a word were to capture what this campsite is about, it would be “organic”. It’s mango season and the mangoes overfloweth; with them come bees and flys and miggies. Also the laden smell of rotting mangoes (Rehana’s worst), and the sheer missiles that are mangoes falling from their head-beating heights.

Organic campsite haven

I’m sore of back and neck and shoulder today, and I still don’t know for sure entirely what this means. And that’s just the body part of it. Will Rehana and I regain enough of our confidence to drive the 5 000-odd kms we’d planned to return home – via Zambia, Namibia and Botswana? Will the BRC realise that, in fact, things now seeming fine are cracked and are broken?

I’m not sure I like the “instalment” approach of Charles Dickens’ telling of a tale, but what can a girl in the grip of the unfolding unknown do? Plus it sure keeps our readers reading. Right, Lesley darling?

Christmas lunch, back in a neck brace again

IN REHANA'S WORDS

I’ve realised, a bit late in the day, that my plan to take a year off from my life and radically change direction for a while hasn’t materialised.

My life: A workaholic always available on public holidays, weekends and late at night; slipping away from the office guiltily for a hasty Eid lunch with the family and taking on additional tasks which were never in my job description and for which no-one paid me.

The reward: Enough money from Business Day to take a year off from work, to do anything that I want.

The result: Driving down hellish roads in poorly resourced Africa with Tuberculosis until I overturn our car and have to find the strength to do this for another 5 000km.
This holiday, I realise belatedly, is a workaholic’s dream come true. I could have stayed at home, in bed with a couple of books and miniseries or 20 for a year. We could have gone somewhere with electricity, water and washing machines. But no, Rehana has to make a year-long holiday hard work.

Just before we crashed I had been working out in my head how many more kilometres of bad gravel roads we faced. I figured it was less than 500km. I was fantasising about smooth tar down the length of Zambia, into Namibia, across Botswana and down to Johannesburg.

And now?

Although I was driving, I don’t think I was entirely to blame for capsizing us. It was a congruence of factors. I may have been driving too fast; perhaps 50km/hour was better suited for that wet road than 60km/hour. Maybe I’d have slowed down if Mr Zaidi wasn’t right up my bum in his Honda.

Perhaps I braked too hard when I came around the corner and saw the Rav 4 heading towards us. When I went to examine my skid marks and the Rav’s afterwards I realised there was still plenty of space between us. Maybe I should have pumped the brakes instead of tramping on them.

There was very little tyre traction when I hit the brakes. The front right tyre was coated in wet mud as it hung in the air after the crash; it could hardly have gripped the surface. Maybe that was why the car spun to the right when I braked. That tyre took us off the road.

I only had one thought in my mind when we left the road. We’re spinning and I can’t fight this. You’re supposed to go with the spin and then try to regain control. But we only spun 90 degrees before we left the road, crossed a ditch and hit a sand bank – no time to get control. And then there was a pause for a second or two before we went slowly onto our side and I found myself strapped into a car seat that was tilted at a very wrong angle.

And that brings me to the last of the congruent factors. Hitting the sandbank probably absorbed most of the impact of the crash. The left side of the car was probably a bit lower than the right. The weight of the roofrack bearing petrol canisters, gas canisters and a king-sized bedroom, combined with the weight of 50l of water sloshing about in our water tank, probably pulled us onto our side.

The three men in the Rav 4 weren’t much interested in introductions or commiserations. They wanted to get us going and be off. But, of course, Murphy ensured that our two-ton and a bit car landed on the side where the tow rope was stored. 
After we phoned Lake Shore Lodge and were promised that Chris would be with us as soon as possible, Mr Zaidi and his family drove off, leaving us much closer to the forest than I had planned.
Although the roads were terrible for most of the three days’ drive from Mwanza to Lake Shore Lodge, the views were among the best we’ve had. We were mostly in lush, thick forest and I consoled myself while navigating through soft sand and deep dongas that you couldn’t have wide tarred roads in such a beautiful place.
This was the biggest forest we’d been in since we left home. We had just had our first glimpse of Lake Tanganyika before we crashed. As I had hoped, the trees went all the way to the water.

About 30 minutes after I called Lakeshore Lodge to ask for help, I heard one of the best sounds – better than the birds trilling above our tent, than the waves lapping on the beach, than my grandson describing his Cape Town beach holiday. I heard a diesel engine approaching.

Chris was the most laconic hero I have ever met. I have to agree with him, if you are going to overturn your car, best to do it the way I did. There wasn’t much for him to do, he complained. He attached his tow rope to our undercarriage and to his car; he got us right sided within a minute of getting behind the wheel of his car; there didn’t seem to be any engine damage after he popped the hood; he topped up the engine oil that had leaked out while the car was on its side; he got the locked steering wheel unlocked in two ticks and within 30 minutes of his arrival we set off behind him.
Despite our dire situation, Chris didn’t have to deal with two hysterical women who needed comforting and were incapable of helping him help them. 

He said we’d take it slow back to Lakeshore Lodge. He drove at 60km/hour most of the way, making me feel much less culpable for our accident. I think Chris is right, if I had been speeding the outcome would have been much worse.

And so here we are. At a fantastic place where we had planned to rest for 10 days before the last push home. I don’t know if 10 days are going to be enough. The car doesn’t seem to require much repairs, but our psyches and our hearts may need some TLC and an injection of courage before we hit the road again.

Finally, Lake Shore Lodge on Lake Tanganyika

The damage to the car amounts to: two out of six rooftop rack bolts are loose; the bullbar has a new dent; the left front indicator glass is smashed, the light still works; there’s a dent on the left front fender; there’s a dent on the left back fender.
There’s so little damage because when it overturned, most of the car was above the ditch. The dent in front was caused by a rock in the sand bank above the ditch and the dent at the back caused by landing on the road when we overturned.

When we arrived at the lodge everyone had heard our news. There are about 20 other adults and children staying here – just enough to provide good company. Jules was very funny. There are South Africans here who drove up for their holiday. They were teasing us because we were covered in mud. Jules put on her best Afrikaner working class accent and said: “This is the real deal China. We been driving across Africa for almost nine months now. This is what you looks like when you do it properly.”
The staff at the lodge washed our car while Jules had a beer and I had a couple of stiff coffees. We were also coated in mud but our washes had to wait while our brave strong car went first. This time, we didn't have the strength to care for it ourselves.

We crashed at about 2.30pm. By 5pm our tent was up and I was reveling in the best shower I’ve had since we left home – hot, high pressured and plentiful. That I had no stiffness the next day is due to that shower and the fact that my only thought while we crashed was “don’t fight this”.

All set up two-and-a-half hours after our crash

Lake Tanganyika is the best one we’ve met on our journey. Despite being one of the deepest freshwater lakes in the world its water is warm and inviting. Yesterday I was tempted to keep swimming till I reach Congo, which we can see on the other side, but I reminded myself that I have TB.

There are swing seats on the beach, deep couches in the lodge’s common area and suede chairs with footrests in front of the television at the start of another test match.

For the next nine days or so, I am going to take a break from being a workaholic. I’m sure that if I dig deep I’ll be able to do so. Happy holidays everybody.