We took an overnight bus because the temperatures during the day were too much for me. The trip started out well but only two hours into it the bus broke down. We ended up sitting on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere at night for 3 hours before the bus was fixed.
When we took off again we stopped every ½ hour to make sure the motor was ok. It was turning out to be a very long trip. Little did we know it was about to get a whole lot longer...
... Out of the blue the driver starts swerving all over the road and then we stopped, again in the middle of nowhere. But this time we stopped because the bus had hit a man. It was an old man walking along the road, they picked him up and put him in the isle, literally right next to me and Daniel and he wasn’t in good shape. When we came to the next police check point they put him in an ‘ambulance’ and took him off to hospital.
What amazed me about the whole experience was the lack of first aide knowledge the people had. I wanted to get up and help but there was a police man on the bus (acting as a guard) and a bunch of other people trying to help and I knew it wouldn’t go down well if I offered my opinion. So I just prayed for him. I was also surprised at how the people didn’t seem to be very affected by this incident.
When we came to the next big town we stopped and the driver was talking to the police there... unfortunately the man we hit had died. So now the driver was in big trouble and we couldn’t leave the town. Again we sat in the dirt and waited, and waited, and waited. It was 3 ½ hours before another bus and driver came to take us the rest of the way. By this time it was almost midday and stinking hot but we managed to go the last 3 hours without any more situations.
Finally we arrived here after 23 hours travelling (it was supposed to be a 12 hour trip). Lorna the lady I am living with, had arranged for someone to pick us up in a car and we were VERY grateful for that! But my troubles were not over, as it turned out my bags had not been loaded from our first bus onto the replacement one and I had to wait till the evening to get them. But that was African timing... I didn’t actually get them until the next afternoon.
So as you can imagine I was incredibly grateful that I had someone accompanying me on this difficult journey, even by African standards it was bad. But I know God was watching over me and if there hadn’t been so many people praying for that trip I hate to think how it would have turned out!!!!
Ok well this has been one very long blog so I will end with saying how great it is to be back and to see the Garibout boys again and I want to thank God for His protection and presence during my trip here.
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