A Cornishman in Africa: Roads not Rhodes in Africa.

I have been driving, after a fashion for 29 years. I say after a fashion as it has been an interesting driving career, starting when I really should not have done, borrowing my father’s car when he went out when I was only 16 and driving around the area cruising for chicks, we were never very successful, mainly as I have always professed because our cruising machine was a light metallic green Ford Cortina MK 3 estate. But it probably had more to do with the fact that I was ugly, spotty and could not see over the steering wheel.

I then passed my test and got my own car and things only got worse, over the next ten years I managed to get through over 53 cars, I kid you not, and these are just the ones that I can remember, unfortunately a disproportionate number of these never made it on to a next owner, and ended up in various hedges rivers and in more than one case in the sea. I as you may have realised am still alive and I believe though my antics are not to be recommended, I learned a lot from my mad early days. The greatest of which being anticipation. It took me 53 cars to learn it but if you want to survive on African roads, it is the best thing to know. The important thing to note is that it is not anticipation of what is going to happen, but what with a strange twist of fate, might happen.

Now the roads here in the capital are busy, busy and chaotic, with vehicles passing on all sides, whilst we are supposed to drive on the left, it is more often the case that you drive wherever there is a gap. Don’t even think about leaving a safe breaking distance between you and the car in front because if you do, before you can draw a dusty, exhaust filled breath, there will be twelve taxi’s or minibuses in the gap, all cussing you hard.

One really shouldn’t laugh but just the other day whilst coming home from work There was a white Pajero driving along in front of me, when without so much as an indication or much thought for what was around it, the car stopped suddenly in the middle of the road. The passenger doors flew open and three large chaps disembarked to the curb. The doors were slammed closed and the Pajero launched forward again only to pull up equally abruptly and the rear passenger door flew open again I assume to let out another passenger who had, had a change of mind. Unfortunately the resulting incident, necessitated more a change of underpants than a change of mind.

Unfortunately for all parties there was a cyclist, a big, very fast cyclist who had seen the first batch of passengers disembark, thought his way was clear to go zooming up the inside without the need to check his speed but had not allowed for the Africa factor and a door being opened in his face at 35 miles an hour. The resulting impact could be heard over the BBC world service news bulletin, and over the sound of the fan in my car wheezing away at warp factor three.
The door on the Pajero I feel sure will never close again, this is assuming that they can in fact find it. The big guys bicycle will never ride or even fly again the way it did that day, and I am sure that there will not be a stand up row at such volume down Lumumbwa Road for a long time.
All parties seemed to get away relatively unharmed (They lived) I never did hear the end of the row or discover whose fault it was deemed to be.
But it was bloody funny to watch.


Denzil Bark.