We had a workshop in a community today, the last day of a
two day participatory exercise with various project stakeholders. It is a bit
of a drive from where we are staying in San, off the tar roads and out into the
bush. The workshop went well and it was a really interesting experience
although we had to end early because it was threatening to rain. So we all piled into the vehicles and left the
project office to head back to San.
Our driver, Charles, likes to drive fast
and is a little competitive, preferring to be the first to arrive places (in my
head I hear Rowan Atkinson saying “Is a Race!”). So this afternoon on our way
back to San he decided to take a short cut. Instead of following the other
vehicles that had left before us he turned off the road onto a little track. It
was not a main road, but it looked fairly well used and was clearly visible in
the red soil. After a little while the track became a trail and at one point we
lost it entirely. We were driving through the middle of open bush with no sense
of where the road was. I had the sense that we were in a scene from a Discovery
Channel documentary, on safari or maybe trying to find some mysterious and
elusive creature in some unexplored territory. At one point we pulled up to a house in the
middle of nowhere, much to the surprise of the family who lives there, and had
to ask for directions. We found the track again and it meandered here and there
past farmer’s fields and baobab trees, our Land Rover barreling along sending
goats, piglets and chickens scrambling in all directions. At one point it took
us right through the center of a little settlement and we had to drive around a
well. Some women who were pounding millet into flour had to move their huge
mortars to make way as we drove past. We kept following this track, but it soon
narrowed back into a trail and then as it wound its way through thicker bushes
and trees it became a bit of a river so that the Land Rover was fish tailing
and hydroplaning through the bush, splashing water up over the hood. We were
laughing and joking that we were taking the ‘scenic route,’ but all the while I
was so sure that we were going to get stuck in the mud. The Land Rover had
turned into a kind of boat and we had so much mud stuck to our tires that even
when we were not driving through the water it felt like we were slipping and
sliding in all directions. We did get a little stuck at one point but Charles
was able to get us out without resorting to us pushing the vehicle with us up
to our knees in red mud. Finally, just as it started raining we found our way
back to the road and made our way back to San. Oddly enough, even after our off-roading
scenic detour we were among the first vehicles back.
I guess Charles won the
race afterall.
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