Ryan's 1st 24 hours...

Ryan wrote this about his first day experience on our way to the South after landing in Ethiopia.

Have you ever had a bad couple of days? Well let me tell you a little about my driver on this trip to Shanto. First, in his defense, the vehicle he has to drive is far from stellar. It does tend to sway around a lot and he has a lot of trouble getting it into 4th gear. That said whenever he turns to pass a car it is as though he is trying to do the slalom course.


Yesterday he had a tough time getting the vehicle to go. We stalled numerous times and several of them were because he forgot to take the parking break off when we were starting to go after lunch. This caused us to fall so far behind the lead vehicle that we lost them and took an unscheduled tour of a before unseen portion of town, nearly hitting a commercial stall when we went to turn around and also nearly getting the four wheel drive vehicle stuck at the same time. We also had the misfortune of backing into a light pole and curb when we stopped to stretch our legs.


That brings me to today. Once again we had fallen behind the lead vehicle when we got to one of the numerous round-a-bouts here in Ethiopia. We took it so fast I was thrown over into Rob, the tires squealed and Rob and I were sure we were going to tip over or at the very least lose some of the luggage strapped to the top. I guess if you are going to get in a car wreck you may as well do it with a MD by your side (more on that later).


In Ethiopia it is not against the law to have your unsupervised animals wondering around the road. It is, however; illegal to hit them with a vehicle and kill them. While I do not know for certain we did come really close to a goat at one point, I heard a loud thud, as one would expect to hear if a goat head had contacted the side of the car, people yelled at us and we quickly sped out of town. When the lead car pulled over just outside of town we simply continued at a high rate of speed until we were several Kilometers down the road.


Within a half hour of that we expertly hit a hole (it was to big to call it just a pot hole) which jarred the vehicle enough that the hood nearly popped loose. Stopping along the side of the road we took a piece of rope and tied the hood down with a piece of rope.


Off we were again, down the road to Shanto. By this time we were well off heavily traveled roads and proceeding down the dirt road. When we rounded the corner in the middle of the road only to be greeted by a bus coming in the other direction. With the simplicity that only our driver could have shown we swerved out of the way. The problem was there was a man on the road in the way of us so instead of hitting the man, we continued forward and through a ditch that is close to a foot deep and probably 3-4 feet wide.

What happened next I am not one hundred precent sure. I know I was thrown into the air twice. The first time Rob tells me he was thrown over into me so I can only assume that I was thrown into the door. When I came down I felt severe pain in my tail bone as though I had landed on a bar. I then was thrown forward because I remember thinking I was going to go over our driver. I believe that is when the rope holding all the luggage on top broke and the luggage came crashing forward, breaking the windshield and taking off the driver's side windshield wiper. When it was all said and done Rob had hurt his elbow, my tailbone was either broken or bruised, and the only damage to the car was what I mentioned. We felt lucky. The windshield was in place and who needs wipers when it doesn't rain much anyway.

The day went well. I had a surprise birthday party Shanto style. Complete with a cake and really big sign.

 Desalegn and I talked about the animal project and I helped Rob with some menial tasks while he did physicals. Then a one year old girl was brought in with severe infection around her eyes. I had to hold her down while Rob cleaned the abscess above her eye. At one point when we were bandaging her I thought she died. She went so limp and she dropped the sucker she had in her hand. We hope to see her tomorrow to start her on antibiotics we pick up in the morning but Rob isn't sure she will live through the night.

We all piled back into our vehicles to make the return trip to Soddo when it started to rain. Funny how you don't think much about a wiper until you are driving in the rain. Well, let's just say the passenger could see okay. But did we stop? no! Why?  Because we are men and we are not going to let something as little as no vision slow us down. We pressed on.  When we came to the "Y" in the road that we did not know which direction to take, did we stop? No! We pressed on. When the windows fogged over and we could not see through the fog did we stop? No! We pressed on with open windows because the defrost did not work. When it rained so hard we could not see the road at all, did we stop? No, we pressed on. Eventually we found the lead car waiting for us at an intersection telling us to head to the right, did we stop? No, we went to the left. This was fortunately corrected quickly.  To make a long story shorter, we lost the lead vehicle again and it took us so long to get to Soddo that they came back looking for us. Rob and I had a great laugh the entire time because if we didn't laugh we would have surely cried.


Arriving at the hotel we found that we did not have reservations like we were suppose to and they had no room. I am not sure why it took the Ethiopians 45 minutes to hash this out but it did. Finally it was decided to head out to eat. First he drove forward while I was trying to climb into the back seat. I had troubles getting in before I hurt myself and trust me I did not get any faster. Fortunately I avoided getting run over and was able to enter the truck when it stopped moving. He was apologetic. At dinner, I was suprised when Tamara brought out cards from the kids and candy bars for everyone. She also passed a card around and everyone signed it.


When we left dinner our driver struck again. Literally! This time it was a red Toyota truck that had the misfortune of parking behind us. Even though it was witnessed by a guard he did not get in trouble and we just drove away to our current hotel. I can't say much about this hotel other than I stayed in worse. It was in Mongolia but it was more scary than this.


I got to call the kids at school and they sang happy birthday to me and asked if I liked the cards they made and then I got the best gift of all. . . . Ingrid informed me that as of 9am tomorrow we will have a new driver and new vehicle!  While this probably will not go down as my best birthday ever, it is definitely going to be one of the most memorable.


The next day the van did show up right on time. Not only did the new van and driver have to leave at 2am to be here on time, but they brought another driver to bring the first one and the truck back. They did not even trust him enough to drive himself back to Addis. Heck of a way to, all we can assume is, end your career. Being driven back to the office to be fired. To bad. He was a really nice guy, just not a very good driver.