Road rash

I’ve just avoided a pretty major incident and I am fairly shaken up.  I am in the mountains, somewhere between Adet and Mota in the Amhara region of Northern Ethiopia.  One passes very few other cars out here, the main traffic on this route are shepherds, mostly young children, and their herds of oxen, goats and donkeys.  The route is strewn with large rocks and potholes as it wends its way through valleys and hilltops, affording absolutely spectacular views.

This was the location in which my notoriously unreliable 4x4 decided to pull one of its signature moves and break down.  I haven’t been driving in Ethiopia, partly because the nature of the laws here mean that if I as a foreigner hit someone while driving, or even got into an accident, there would be serious ramifications both for me and for my organization.  As a result, they have opted to lease two cars and drivers, place them on 24 hour retainer basically for the numerous trips staff like me need to take to visit field sites, staff meetings and trainings in far flung areas.  I spent 3 days last week in the field, and I’m expecting to spend 4 days this week supervising and supporting my staff as they use marking sticks to set up harvest boxes in farmers’ fields in anticipation of the coming harvest in 4-5 weeks.

Our driver/amateur mechanic hard at work under the hood, examining a battery short-circuit that sent smoke billowing under the hood and into the car as we were driving.

I love going to the field. The car that takes me there though, is another story all it’s own.  I am bumping down the road in what was once a regal and majestic Toyota 4x4, designed to traverse the even the bumpiest back roads this fair country has to offer, and believe me, this is a hotly contested title.  Nowadays though, it spends most of its time struggling to live up to the title of “functional brown car”.   Over the years these roads have ravaged this car in ways I’m only just beginning to understand, and as a result, it breaks down. Constantly.  The roads ain’t getting any smoother, and the car ain’t getting any younger.

The pace of life in rural Ethiopia is slow, a breakdown often draws onlookers.  The driver is fixing a broken axle with a piece of twine.  Following this roadside repair, we managed to make it about another 4km before losing steering because the twine gave way.  I ended up flagging down a public a bus back to Bahir Dar that day.

It also doesn’t help that we seem to have managed to track down the Ethiopian equivalent of a young Michael Schumcher and hired him on as the driver.  Want to get where you`re going in half the time? He’s your man.  Want to drink from a water bottle or coffee mug on the way? Hire someone else because if you do that in this car you’re going to get most of whatever you’re drinking down your shirt.

Anyway, the car broke down. Again, with smoke billowing from below the hood.  We had overheated in the middle of nowhere and had no water with which to cool the engine and continue on our way so we had to wait for it to cool on it’s own.  This was no mean feat considering it was a hot sunny day.  The driver tracked down a kid (they seem to be everywhere, even in the most rural areas here) and sent him to find a water body and fill a container to help us out.  While the kid was gone, he spent about 15 minutes peering under the hood with comical intensity while furrowing his brow and scratching his head periodically.

 

"While the kid was gone, he spent about 15 minutes peering under the hood with comical intensity while furrowing his brow and scratching his head periodically."

The child returned, the engine was doused, and we were set to continue on our way, but the car wouldn’t start.  This is another common occurrence.  The driver went to get out of the car again to see if the engine was still the problem, and that’s when it happened.  In his haste to pop the hood, he had forgotten to engage the parking brake so as soon as he took his foot off the brake and stepped out of the car, we began to roll backwards down the hill.

Now, I don’t know how many of you have had the experience of sitting in a car, on the side of a mountain steep enough to have switch-backs in the road that was beginning to coast uncontrollably backwards downhill but I wouldn’t recommend it.  I shouted the driver’s name in a panic and he immediately realized his mistake and went to get back into the moving car, fortunately he hadn’t closed the door and was able to jog beside the car for a ways and then jump in.  He slammed on the brakes and we skidded to a halt, terrifyingly close to the edge of the road. There were about 2 metres between the edge of the road and a steep drop-off.  I remember thinking that if you could design some sort of amusement park ride that gave people this same experience, it would beat the fear instilled by the hightest, fastest roller coaster.  As I said, I was pretty shaken up but overall none the worse for wear and we continued on our way to the beautiful town of Mota without incident.

UPDATE: This post was begun September 23, when the incident took place but the road was too bumpy to write and I haven’t really had a chance to get back to this post since. I really don’t have time now, but I wanted to finish it up.   On the way home from Mota that same trip, we had no car troubles, although the car stalled twice once we got back to Bahir Dar and had to be push-started again by yours truly.  The organization has since switched to another driver and car.

I'm up early this morning to drive out to visit a farmer in Bahir Dar to test out some methods for taking 10x10cm sample counts of teff stems and seed heads.  We are hoping  this data will correlate to harvest weights (actual teff produced at the end of the season).  The idea is to roll this out in a small scale way next week to iron out any kinks and then scale up the following week, but it has been raining a lot lately which makes the teff quite delicate and with the teff at a very mature stage at this point, farmers may be understandably resistant to letting some schmuck tromp around in their field taking stand and head counts.  We'll see!