Road Trip

Yesterday was a bad day for dogs and 16 wheelers in Ethiopia.

The guesthouse manager arranged a driver to take me to a site about 2 hours outside of Addis. He specifically prided himself on telling me that he found an old man to drive me. My first thought, how is his vision? But now I get it. He got me a seasoned man instead of a hotshot driver and for that I was thankful. There was still the occasional game of chicken when passing giant caravans but I felt confident that my driver was actually considering whether or not he would win. It was also the first time in Ethiopia that I had been in a car capable of breaking 30 mph.

Anyway, on the way there we passed two different overturned 16 wheelers. We stopped to ask if anyone had been killed because apparently that’s what you do. No deaths, and in fact the guys who owned the trucks were sleeping on a blanket next to them, ostensibly waiting for a giant tow truck (note: passed them 8 hours later on the way home, still waiting). As for the dogs, I saw one splattered on the way to the site and then on the way back, saw it again and mentioned “I’m surprised no one has cleaned that off the road yet” to which the driver replied “nope, that’s a different dead dog on this road”. Yikes.

Accident and Accident Prime.

On our way back from another site visit, we hit a wall of traffic. Now instead of waiting in line with the traffic, we started to try to figure out how to beat the crowd. And we weren’t the only ones. We actually got beeped at for not going full speed on the shoulder and then we were passed ON THE RIGHT by a car that was totally off-roading. I wonder how many accidents occur because people are trying to get around other accidents?