Adventures in Driving

After a great 4 days in Burundi for work (which justifies a separate entry), I spent the weekend in Kibuye, a small town on Lake Kivu - the same lake that I went to last weekend, but several hours south. The lake takes up most of the border of Congo/Rwanda. The weekend was with about 14 people at a new hotel there to celebrate a friend's birthday. 6 of the people there were Scorpios, so there was lots of celebrating. One of the guys had a boat, and there were boat trips and waterskiing and general lake fun. Despite the coldest weather we've had yet in Rwanda (60 degrees?), and a lot of rain, the temperature of the lake was like bathwater - very nice.

The scenery is idyllic - green, mountainous, misty, practically untouched by humans - almost as you'd imagine Eden.

But I've blogged about the lake. What made a bigger impression over the last few days has been the driving. On Saturday we rode with two friends, iPod blaring, enjoying the hilly views on the road from Kigali. We had a small incident we laughed over - involving a stray goat darting across the road, and us nearly turning him into a kebab/brochette dinner accidentally.

That was just a hint of things to come. On Sunday, we were heading back to Kigali. The roads are pretty deserted in the rural areas. Let me clarify - deserted of cars. No matter where you are, there are always people walking along the side of the road - some carrying bags/baskets on their heads, some just walking to the local village or down to their huts, but regardless of time, there's always a buzz of human activity. However, most of the road traffic is the local taxi- minivans that carry about 18 people. On the hilly terrain, they have a hard time on the uphills and go quite slowly. So at one point at the beginning of a hill we were behind a taxi and a police truck. The police pulled out and tried to pass the taxi, but apparently they'd been eating too much or their motor was too weak, and they couldn't build up any speed. Luckily we were in a circa 1993 Toyota that could whip right past those two suckers!

Unfortunately the cops didn't like us showing them up, and radioed ahead. At the next checkpoint - BUSTED! We were pulled over and given the usual spiel - need to see license and registration. Unfortunately, the friend driving us had forgotten his license, and the routine stop became a bit of a nightmare. After quite a long time of fruitless negotiating, I slipped my license to the driver's wife, which she "found" in her purse. Luckily all muzungus (foreigners) look alike, so we were off! Though I did effectively get a ticket (for 50 dollars! prohibitive for the average Rwandan) for only sitting in the back seat! And my license seized until I go pay the fine.

Which brings me to today: had a meeting in Gisenyi at 8am, started out with a colleague at 4:45. Took my car but with him at the wheel since I was so recently sans license. About an hour into the drive, out in the endless hills, light just breaking, mist obscuring the valleys. Coming off a long uphill, just starting down a big incline. Go into a turn...and we just kept turning. Was it the wet roads, too much speed, brakes locking too quickly, bad tires? Who knows. We were spinning and spinning for what seemed like an hour but must have been 10-15 seconds. My clearest memory is spinning and getting a view of the left side of the road and thinking, I don't want to hit that wall of rock. Then 180 degrees later seeing the right side of the road and thinking, I REALLY don't want to plummet hundreds of feet down this mountain to certain death, then closing my eyes tight.

Since I'm writing this I guess its clear we didn't plummet. Bounced into the rock, came to a stop, limped to the side of the road, about 8 kids came running down the road to see what was going on - we hammered the wheel well a bit so the tire had room to rotate, cut off part of the bumper that was hanging to the ground, tied the brake lights that were hanging down into a stationary position with rope fashioned from a nearby tree, and crawled back to Kigali.

I think I will start walking to work!