sweet potatoes

It is great having plans in Zambia, but life here often has a way of messing up even the best laid plans with a wrench or two and one phone call often completely changes the direction of your day.

A few weeks ago a friend's hardbody broke down in the middle of nowhere. Auntie Hellen, Philip, a few of the boys and I took the big bus to rescue them and tow their truck back to Grace.

Vehicles often break down here. Nearly every time you drive on the road you will see the ground littered with branches (to warn oncoming cars of a breakdown) and cars stopped on the road - sometimes pulled over, but often parked smack dab in the middle of the road for everyone to go around. It makes sense, most of the cars are old beaters that are in such states of disrepair that even the most cash strapped student would be embarrassed to drive, and the pothole roads do their best to completely disable all cars driving on the road.

Anyway, up until yesterday, in spite of a few attempts at resurrection, the truck has been living at Grace collecting dust and promising to be the new home for my chickens. So yesterday morning after a phone call requesting our help, Auntie Hellen, Philip and I towed the truck back to its home. Philip was towing and I was in the back riding the breaks, with Auntie Hellen as support. Okay, now I know that I sound like a total wiener/princess when I say this (but we're all friends, right?) but we do not do this at home; at home if you need your car towed, you call a tow truck. So this experience was new to my BCAA wielding self and about 30 seconds in (we had not even made it out of the driveway) I was a tightly wound stress case.

I thought that riding the brakes would be easy, except I was informed that I was not to touch the brakes, but only the steering wheel. Uh huh, sure. You try riding in the back when you cannot see where you are going.  To your left are bicycles wobbling precariously close to you and semi-trucks passing to your right blowing gusts of dust and dirt in your face as the power windows are open, but with no power in the vehicle they are impossible to close, and then going down a hill with the truck going faster than the car in front of it slowly gaining momentum for a hit. . .yah, you try not touching the brakes.

I have always hated bumper cars. I was always the child that managed to steer herself into the corner, or another car and get stuck. I could not wait for the bell that indicated "fun" was over and I could get out of the car and forget about those stressful minutes bumping into walls and cars. And yesterday, being towed behind another car, with the power steering not working, going over humps, and turning corners while trying to keep the truck in control was stressing me out and reminding me of the dreaded bumper cars. I may, or may not, have been yelling at Philip in the surf because he was going too fast, or not going in a straight line, or giving me some unknown hand signal that I could not understand for a good portion of the ride. My palms were sweating and I was wondering if I remembered to put on deodorant in the morning, my mouth was dry from all of the dust and my hair was whipping my face making it hard to see, although the dust collecting on the windshield was not helping the cause either and occasionally Auntie Hellen would hit my arm in panic as she thought we were going too fast and going to hit the surf in front of us.

Longest. Drive. Ever.

If you are not stressed out, I am sure it is a lovely ride. (The other time I have driven it was at night in the rainy season on another occasion when we rescued them and drove them home. . .also stressful slipping and sliding on the dirt road.)

Anyway, we made it there in one piece and on the way back stopped on the side of the dirt road to buy some sweet potatoes for 2,000 kwacha (about 42 cents).

So I suppose that in the end it turned out alright, and we got some tasty sweet potatoes out of the deal.