Africa 21 July 2018 An Interesting Drive

I am going to guess that everyone missed/read over my description of our drive to the airport on Saturday  21 July,  I described it as “interesting”, well there was a little more to it than that.

I should say now that we are both in one piece, shall we say, shaken but not stirred.

We left camp at approx 8:10am with our driver/guide Bosco, headed for the airport, our flight out was due at 9:15am.

About halfway to the airport we were driving on the right hand side of the road due to significant corregations in the road. We both noticed there were grass fires burning ahead of us, and they appeared close to the righthand side of the road.

Smoke was coming across the road and we slowed as we approached it. As we came to the fire and smoke area,  the smoke was fairly light, but as we entered it it became very dense and visibility reduced to zero.

In a matter of seconds we emerged from the smoke to encounter two 4wd’s ahead of us. They were either stopped by each other or moving very slowly past each other right on the edge of the smoke line, with one 4wd on the right hand side of the road heading in the same direction as us, and the other 4wd in the middle of the road facing us (heading in the opposite direction to us).

Our car collided with the car headed in the opposite direction to us. The cars impacted on the front left hand corner of each car.

On impact, Deborah was propelled from the first row right hand rear seat of our vehicle to the front (lefthand) passenger seat. I immediately helped her back to her seat and checked to make sure she was ok, which she was thankfully. I then checked on Bosco. He appeared dazed wiping his brow and holding his left ribcage.

At this point our vehicle was engulfed in chocking smoke and the fire was approaching very quickly.  After some discussion all the vehicles were moved away from the fire and smoke.

Deb and I helped Bosco from the vehicle and he sat for some time on the lefthand side of the road. We checked  he was OK, his ribcage was hurt but it appeared to be only bruising. He did appear to have hit his head and was shaken, but alert after a short while. He assured us he had not hit his head.

There were many heated words were exchanged in Swahili, the driver of the other vehicle involved in the smash was very aggressive.

Things calmed a little as more cars arrived. A steel cable was used to pull the bent steel bullbars away from the wheels on both vehicles so the vehicles could be driven.

More very heated discussions errupted after the tyres were freed from the bent steel.

Eventually (approx 30mins after the collision), Bosco was given another vehicle to complete our journey to the airstrip.

At the airstrip I was asked by Veronica Otter, the General Manager of Lemala, to give a written statement of the incident, which I did.

We have since had further communications with Lemala and are glad to say that Bosco is ok, and still working, and that we are both unhurt.  For a few days we  were just a bit shaken by it all.  It was a busy morning that day, one flight, border crossing, then another flight.  It wasn’t until 4 days later when we were at Alfijiria that we had a chance to debrief with each other.  That helped us move past the accident.

So there you have it. We decided not to share this with every one until we were on our way home as we didn’t want people worrying unnecessarily, we hope you understand and assure you that we are both good.