Highway accident

Posted by Ali

Yesterday afternoon Davona asked me if I wanted to go to town with the Church's tomorrow when they went in to grocery shop. Since it's been just more than two weeks since I last had a chance to buy groceries, I jumped at the chance. This morning we left at 9:45 a.m. (so no sleeping in on Sunday this week for me) and headed to Arusha. Staci and Mariah, who don't usually go into town for grocery shopping, were excited about the trip and bounced around the backseat (still wearing their seat belts, of course). And then, just a few kilometres before getting to the first road into Arusha, we saw the accident. And a second later we all (well, all the grown-ups in the car, at least) started laughing. An ancient bus sat abandoned on a small dirt side road. Spider-web cracks covered both sides of the windshield. Its front half dipped into the small ditch between the dirt road and the highway. And its bumper kissed a large tree laden with brilliant green leaves which half covered the right-hand side of the highway (not the side that we were driving on because this is a drive-on-the-left country). We have no idea how a bus traveling on that small and bumpy of a dirt road ever got up enough speed to bring down such a sturdy-looking tree and not do more damage to the vehicle. Basically only the bumper was bent a bit and the windshield cracked. On our trip home, without the tree blocking most of the scene, we had more time to examine the accident, but the whole scenario still didn't make much sense. I wish I had had time to whip out my camera and snap a few pictures, but alas we were traveling too fast for that. But the picture is forever fastened in my brain as a most unlikely vehicular accident.