The driver climbed down from the cab and calmly informed us that, about a kilometer up the road, there had been an accident. His English was a little hard to understand but I gathered that the accident involved a pickup truck that had turned over. He said there were three injured people who required medical attention and asked whether we could please take them to the hospital in Rumphi because he was heading in the opposite direction.
Now, after all the help we received over the last couple of days, we weren't about to say no. Not that we really had all that much choice in the matter, but we were committed to doing whatever we could. The problem seemed to be however that we were five people in a five-seater vehicle with all of our stuff plus a tire in the trunk.
We continue down the road without saying a word, but I think we all felt trepidation about what we were about to encounter.
Around the next bend in the road, a group of five guys or so flagged us down again. They also told us about the accident and that we needed to take the injured to the hospital.
We continued on and reached the scene of the accident. We saw a pickup truck off the side of the road -- but it wasn't turned over -- and a number of bicycles strewn across the road, though it wasn't clear whether the bikes were involved in the accident or just belonged to the villagers who had gathered to survey the scene. About twenty to thirty people had gathered in all. When we pulled up, they approached us to ask our help taking people to the hospital.
Dan and Mellissa were in the front seat. Jon, Katy, and I were in the back. We got out to see what was going on and, just like that, two men carried an injured woman to the car and laid her across the back seats. She was writhing in pain and covered in a towel. My stomach dropped as I began to fear that the accident had been quite bad. And how were we going to transport anyone else to the hospital with her laying across all three seats?
Within a few more seconds, someone coaxed the injured woman into sitting up straight in the middle seat. A man with a bandage over his head climbed into the back seat on one side, and another man, whom I didn't see, climbed in on the other side.
That left Jon, Katy, and me outside the car with no seat. Katy said she could sit on Mellissa's lap in the front seat. Jon and I both figured that we'd have to hang tight and wait for Dan to come back after making a run to the hospital.
But Dan wasn't about to leave us behind, so we walked to the back of the car to see if we could squeeze in there. We moved the spare tire over to the side and gave our box of leftover food to one of the bystanders to clear some room. After rearranging the suitcases a bit, Jon and I managed to fit in the trunk with the window down and our feet hanging out the back.
Unfortunately, we don't have any photos -- it wasn't exactly the best time for that -- but we do have this artistic rendering, courtesy of Vincent Pan Gogh:
JP:
Incredibly, the Hilux is now an ambulance. Still on the dirt road and now with the back window down, all the dirt the Hilux is kicking up is now coming right back into the car, some sort of dirt vortex that's throwing dirt at the two of us so hard where we couldn't open our eyes nor talk as we could feel the dirt hit our teeth even with our mouths shut. We could feel the dirt accumulate on us and all around us.
After about an hour on the bumpy dirt road, we finally reach Rumphi and the hospital. At first we pulled up to a building that looked like the hospital but turned out to be a women's health clinic. We all got out of the car.
Ryan and I thought that we bore the brunt of the dirt shower, but to our surprise, we hop out of the car and discover that we weren't the only ones dirty. We definitely were the dirtiest (no pictures unfortunately but we were told it looked like we had a thick layer of make-up on) but with the windows down, dirt covered the entirety of the car, inside and out.
RS: The hospital we needed to go to was at the end of the road we were on. We decided that Dan would drive the injured to the hospital and Katy, Mellissa, Jon, and I would follow behind by foot.
I can only imagine how ridiculous we must have looked walking down that street. Not only must it have looked funny for a group of four muzungus to be walking down a road that had nothing for tourists to see, we were completely bathed in dirt.
JP: But hey, what's a little dirt, plus, we did a good deed, karma should be back on our side. Right? RIGHT? RIGHT!!!??? ...
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