The bits of Africa that I've seen, have mostly been framed exactly like this: behind a windscreen, on the passenger side of a big white SUV, with a codan radio antennea smack dab in my line of sight.
I took that photo last week while I was travelling from one field site to the other. It was a lovely day but the roads aren't great so I was glad to be in the front seat (as usual, trying to keep from barfing).
We were travelling along well, making pretty good time, and then saw this up ahead:
and kinda laughed momentarily at their misfortune, which was a mistake because...
karma is a bitch.
However, it seems that contingency planning neutralizes karma on occasion and we already had a tractor on the way, following behind us ever since we left the compound an hour earlier. It wasn't long before it caught up with us and we were free.
Then it happened twice more. But on the third time there was no cheer from our vehicle as the tractor came into sight in the rearview... because it got stuck too.
We sat in the car for over 2 hours, totally buggered, with communications equipment that at first failed and then connected us to base where we were informed that the second tractor wasn't available to come to our rescue, so we waited longer.
Then good luck poured down upon us when a random tractor approached in the opposite direction and were able to free our tractor. Hip hip horray!
We only got stuck 2 more times on the remainder of the journey, but our tractor didn't, so we were fine.
Here are some other photos from on the "road" for my village visits:
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| Oops! |
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| Let's try to pull it this way... |
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| Almost free |
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| weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!! |
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