Accident Involvement

As I've written before, driving here is tricky - to say the least. When we get in the car, we pray beforehand, even for a short trip.

On Saturday while Dusty was in Dar Es Salaam, I was driving home from a birthday party in another town with the kids and two Australian friends (Nigel and Rose) and their two daughters. He is a paramedic, and she is an ER doctor.

As we were driving through Musoma we came upon a motorcycle accident that had happened a minute or two before. I asked our friends if they wanted me to pull over, and they did.

They immediately jumped out and ran over while I found the latex gloves in our car's medical kit and briefed the 4 kids on what was happening, instructing them to stay in the car and not to look. The crowd was forming, but I pushed through with the gloves and gave them to Rose and Nigel. The site that met my eyes was really horrifying - there were three men down with a lot of blood. I really thought two of them were dead because they were lifeless and so bloody. But Rose said, "this one has a pulse," and I could faintly see Nigel's guy breathing.

Anyway, I barely did a thing other than calming the kids, asking how I could help, and doing a bit of crowd control. Nigel and his guy got into a dala dala (14 passenger public van), Rose's guy went into a passing car, and she couldn't find the 3rd guy (who later ended up in an ambulance). They smelled alcohol on the breath of the victims.

Meanwhile the crowd was getting angry at her since she wouldn't let them put one of the men in our car. Although I had offered, there were other options, and it wouldn't have worked well with so many kids in the car. So Rose suggested we get out of there before the crowd got too worked up. Someone actually told her, "if you won't let them in your car, what use are you?" Appalling. She was helping to save their lives!

We went to the hospital where Rose and Nigel turned the victims over to the hospital docs, and then we went home. I talked to a Tanzanian friend about it today who had heard of the accident. She said she heard that wazungu (white people) had helped the victims, and that everyone was thankful. I was relieved as I had been worried about driving our recognizable car if people were mad about the transportation of the victims.

It has taken me some time to process what I saw there, and it's given me all the more inspiration to keep praying for our safety and to be thankful for how the Lord has provided for us. And I'm thankful to have had doctors in our car who were able to help those men.