... to give us a good reason to get compensation from the car hire company.
But to begin from the beginning. After nearly missing our flight to Namibia, A and I were finally situated safely in our seats looking out over the Namibian landscape.
To give you an idea, it looked a little something like this literally less than a minute before we touched down.
After renting a car and driving on a nice, normal, paved road for 30 minutes we hit dirt road. After 2 years of not touching a steering wheel, driving along a cliff on a road full of loose gravel was not my ideal way to get back into the swing of things, but I suppose we can't all choose our roads. Particularly not in Namibia (where you have like only 5 choices).
When mother came to Cape Town I paid nearly 200 USD to go on a safari where the animals were essentially like animals on a farm demarcated to particular watering holes that you could 'observe' in their natural habitat. Driving down the C28 in Namibia I saw all those animals and more crossing my path.
When there were no animals in sight the world was a desolate place full of sand, rocks, and a tree or two.
Finally, as A took the wheel, there were only 15 km between us and Swakopmund: a real city, with people, buildings, and a paved road. But things were not to go so smoothly for us, the first day in Namibia.
Perhaps due to fatigue, perhaps due to her nearsightedness, we came up to a T intersection racing down a gravel road at 120 km/hr, nearly twice the speed limit on gravel.
Soon the sign "<- Walvis Bay/Swakopmund ->" was right in front of our faces and a collision seemed unavoidable. "TURN!!" I remember yelling and the steering wheel was jerked to the right. From there all I remember was the skidding sensation, we were slipping, slipping and there was nothing either of us could do to stop it. Did I have my eyes open or shut? I can't remember, but the next moment our car was tilting, and we were rolling. Everything was happening slowly yet completely, and in an instant we were upside down as I watched the windshield crunch, creating the weblike pattern it does so well.
A breath. "Are you ok?"
"Yeah"
"I think we should get out"
"Yeah"
Carefully, I undid my seatbelt and landed on the roof of the car, disorienting. Slowly pushed the door open and stumbled out into the sand and rock, surveying the damage.
My camera lens didn't open all the way for a while after the tumble - but of course I didn't realize this at the time.
Luckily Namibians are a nice bunch of people and helped us out with turning our car right side up and letting us sit in their car while we waited (for nearly an hour an a half) for the 'emergency fleet' of the car hire company to send someone over to tow our car. Doubly as luckily, our accident happened to close to Swakopmund and not somewhere in the 6 hour ride between Swakopmund and Windhoek where we passed perhaps one car every 2 hours. Yet infinitely as luckily (I know, I'm pushing it), neither A nor I were hurt in the accident except for a rather persistent cut on my pinky toe.
At the time of the accident somewhere in between being right side up and landing up side down all I remember thinking to myself was "aw shit, now we won't have a car to get around in."
It wasn't until a day or two after that I thought to myself "I'm truly lucky to be alive".
And so, ladies and gentlemen, set against such a background, the battle across Africa began. Though there were many hardships still to be endured, after the car accident they were all things I could look back on and laugh at or at least shake my head at with a wry grin. With the car accident though I laughed at the time (the body copes in wondrous ways), now I can only cringe and think to myself "lucky, damn lucky".
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