Drew's African Odyssey - Mwange Refugee Camp, Zambia

What do you get when you combine terrible roads, inaccessibility to proper car repair equipment and an Isuzu truck that shouldn’t be on the road??? – A scary road accident that we were lucky to escape unhurt… We were cruising along in between Kasama and Lusaka when I looked out my passenger window and saw the tire that was supposed to be attached to our car, rolling down the road beside me. Two seconds later the tie rod slams into my door, coming through the side paneling and slamming into the dash board, missing my leg by a foot… The car starts to swerve and Peter throws on the brakes - unfortunately they are disintegrating on the pavement and only one side is working. Peter manages to keep the vehicle under control and pull it over to the side of the road where we are immediately accosted by dozens of Zambian villagers trying to look into our car and find out what was wrong. In assessing the damage we saw a hole in the side of our car, a shot rear brake, a cracked bearing and a drive shaft completely separated from the rear differential…

It was a scary moment, especially thinking about what could have happened if another vehicle had been coming our way or if the rolling tire had hit somebody. If it hadn’t been for the expert driving of Peter, we really woulda been in trouble. We managed to temporarily repair everything and return to Kasama unscathed. We immediately proceeded to the police though we made the mistake of not calling them to the scene of the accident, so we are having trouble getting an accident report (which we need for insurance)… We’re thinking the end result will be us getting a new vehicle or having to rent one for the next few months…

Posted by: Drew Gardiner / 2:54 PM