Don’t Drive Dusk till Dawn………

March 29, 2007

The future very nearly didn’t take place driving back from the lake on Sunday - we got caught up in the day, so while sitting having late lunch we decided that we didn’t really want to leave - it’s hard to leave the lake - and it’s not hard to think of an excuse - so we informed the girls but it turned out they really needed to get back - school teaching commitments etc - basi - ok then - lets get going.

Unfortunately leaving around 3pm means that after you’ve got petrol and dropped folk off, the tail end of the journey back takes you into the night - and driving at night in Malawi is a very, very bad idea - especially on the last leg Zomba-Blantyre road.

The whole journey had been a bit of a nightmare - the gargantuan storm that crashed upon us on the Saturday (loudest thunder I’ve ever heard in my life) had seriously damaged the road back and it also seemed that Sunday had brought out a particular brand of stupidity in the majority of Malawian road users. Once the dark had set in around 6pm things jumped up a notch in terms of difficulty and pressure.

The Variety of obstacles in our way included:

• Cyclists who don’t know how to cycle.
• Pedestrians who don’t realise that walking in the middle of the road is a bad idea.
• Cars and trucks with either one light or no lights at all.
• People driving with full beam headlights continuously, indicating for no reason.
• No ability to see pot-holes or the lay of the land for upcoming corners.
• Also the human element in most of these situations is usually under the influence of Chibuku (a rank local alcoholic concoction made from Maize that comes in cartons and looks and tastes like vomit).

Basically driving at night is a fucking nightmare and you have to concentrate as if you were dismantling a Nuclear weapon at all times.

So Paul was in one car (initially with all the girls) and in the other there was myself, Manyana (fantastic name), Nicole and an eeway Anton wanted us to drop somewhere - after dropping the Gecko girls we intended to drive convoy style from Zomba but meeting points got missed and as I thought Paul was ahead of me I tried to speed up to catch him - in fact he’d dropped the last of the two girls somewhere outside of Zomba and was behind me some way - then the phone reception cut out too.

I had a battle with a car full of Indians driving around with their lights on full beam behind me for 10 minutes - I used the Malawian adage of indicating left to say “pass” and indicating right to say there is “something coming” and nearly sent them head first into a maize lorry - just missed. I let them pass and then full beamed them all the way back to Blantyre. Generally there wasn’t a moment when I could relax - every step of the journey was bringing a new brand of mechanised chaos and the relief upon seeing the lights of Limbe was immense.

Arriving Blantyre with only Manyana and myself left at this point, we headed to stock up on Jungle Pepper Pizza and then go round to Paul’s for the ritual of end of the weekend drinks - that’s when the phone rang and Paul informed he’d been in accident.

Coming up on a corner, a huge truck came hurtling towards him on the wrong side of the road - no choice but to dive down the gully to the left and into the maize field - the truck continued on it’s storming run and didn’t stop for a second - meanwhile Paul ploughs the field a while until coming to a halt - miraculously avoiding anything larger than a fence or two and a batch full of maize.

As ever in such situations, folk appear from nowhere - where ever there is an incident in Africa people will appear in seconds surrounding the scene to either see what is available for salvage or generally stand around staring doing nothing in particular - so with a bit of direction and info as to whether the wheels were shot, Paul was able to chunk it into 4x4 and get back up onto the road and back to Blantyre where several strong whiskeys were the order of the day.

Close one indeed.

Lord knows I’m never driving any such distances at night again - around Blantyre it’s Ok due to the street lamps and general knowledge of the lay of the roads - but next time round, if the day has gotten away at the lake and we’re still debating as to whether to do the journey, methinks we’ll definitely stay for another beer or two rather than go through all that again.

Spo | March 29, 2007