vehicular guardian angels

over the past year some good friends and colleagues have given me "guardian angel" pins and momentos, reminding me that i am being watched over. us dutch reformed people don't talk about guardian angels much, so i used to think of them more as a nice symbolic gesture.

i have become quite convinced as of late, that there really are guardian angels, and that i personally employ an entire fleet of them. i like to think of them as my vehicular guardian angels. in the past i have engaged myself in some activities that i thought were "risky" such as paragliding lessons, zip-lining in costa rica, and bombing down the sides of mountains on mountain bikes. i now think these activities are fairly tame compared to stepping foot on a road here in kenya.

i look back in astonishment and a bit of laughter at the "rides" i have experienced...

*hitched a ride in the back of a pickup, had to sit on bags of cement and wedge my legs between metal gates. i got a free ride for about 500 metres and several bloody scratches on my legs.
*hitched a ride in the back of a pickup into town. this time i got to sit all the way on the floor. good thing too, because the driver sped with a lead foot all the way to town.
*hitched a ride in the cab of a dump truck driving past my village. i sat between three men who all just sat and grinned at me. when i looked over at the steering wheel i noticed that in the place where the turn signal should be, uncoated wires were sticking out of the steering column. i grinned back and prayed the driver would not electrocute himself.
*rode on the trailer of my kenyan brothers tractor to the highway. i was a new colour on arrival as i was completely covered in red dust.
*caught a ride on the back of a pickup, but as it was a school bus with 30 children standing in the back, myself and the school bus attendant had to stand on the bumper and hang onto an overhead bar while flying through the countryside. i prayed to be knocked unconcious right away so i wouldn't feel the pain when i fell!
*hired a cab from town to the village although the car looked a little worse for wear. the driver assured me it ran well. while driving on the dirt road home, the keys actually fell out of the ignition while the car was moving! that was a new one. the car stalled twice, the driver had to get out and fiddle around with unknown car parts to get it started again.
*the vehicle for the community program is an 1986 isuzu trooper. it still runs... kind of. to get it out of the garage, i usually have to pop the hood and jiggle the battery connections. we used to have to turn it off to switch into first gear and reverse. while it was running we only had second and fourth gears. that part is now fixed, but i still have to jiggle the battery wires.
*the matatu ride i described when i first arrived was tame and safe by comparison to taking matatus up-country. due to lax (no) enforcement of laws, i am usually happy if the doors close. one conductor put so many people on that people's bums blocked the sliding door from shutting. last weekend, the conductor stuffed 25 people into a matatu. for reference, a matatu is roughly the size of large mini-van. i sternly asked him if he was wanting to be in the next days newspaper under the headline "25 people die in matatu crash." he laughed but i was not amused.

overall, i am so fortunate and grateful that i am still in one piece and have not suffered any major harm. i did recently enroll in the "flying doctors" service however! i am entitled to one flight evacuation per year!

january will bring motorcycle lessons so that i can get my kenyan license. i look forward to the ability to control my own mode of transportation! i am also getting a decent mountain bike that i hope will serve me well in this back country terrain. but i will try not to test the fleet of angels any further than necessary:-) they are already working overtime!