Thursday, February 02, 2006
The Mistaken Impression that Alfred is Evil (Last week of January 2006)
The heat wakes us up in the afternoon; we seek food in the village and play poker to kill time, expecting to hear word from Alfred at any moment. 11pm rolls around; we are tired again; there is no word from the truck, so we sleep. Very early in the morning, before our brains are functional, Alfred shows up asking to borrow our battery. He needs a quick jump that will help him to bring the truck back to our location so that we can carry on. This all sounds reasonable so we let him charge his machine and disappear, realizing only later that the truck is still stuck far behind us and that we have just lost the only possible leverage with which we could have bargained. This sours the afternoon and forces us to say many terrible things about Alfred and what should be done to him. We start making plans with the road construction company to have Alfred's cable clipped from our car and to seek the assistance of anyone else.
But Alfred reappears during the afternoon downpour to relieve our exasperation. He is ready to continue; but from here on out, the petrol leaking, two wheel drive, vegetable driven truck will not have the assistance of the Caterpillar; Alfred will be managing us both. We travel twenty kilometers and the truck gets stuck. The cabbage headed driver keeps making the most obvious errors and compounding their effects with the most impatient and ill advised efforts at self-extrication. We hate the truck. I like that small village boys run off with sardine cans full of the petrol that is leaking from the wounded rear of this huge inconvenience. It is 8pm; everyone in the truck wants to sleep, so we camp in front of the police check point and wait for morning-a handful of trucks pile up on either side of the blockage our convoy has made; their drivers descend and curse, setting camps of their own. We have drinks with Alfred and get to know his background; our viewpoint begins to soften. For the first seven hours of the following day the truck is pulled and pushed up a hill with an incline of less than six degrees. Villagers chop down young trees and long grasses to throw beneath the wheels of the tractor and the lump it drags behind. Our car is forgotten in this struggle, though it should have been towed ahead so that it would not later be necessary to pull us through the log strewn carnage that they are making of this simple hill.
Eventually, this, too, passes and we are dragged onward. A convoy of large trucks offers to tow us the rest of the way; but at this point, Alfred and Sean have worked out their umbilical chemistry and the car is suffering as little as possible. Achieving this careful balance was punishing; the car cannot afford someone else's learning curve, which commits us to Alfred's patient advancing. In the end, five days later, we arrive in Oyo where the paved road begins.
The heat wakes us up in the afternoon; we seek food in the village and play poker to kill time, expecting to hear word from Alfred at any moment. 11pm rolls around; we are tired again; there is no word from the truck, so we sleep. Very early in the morning, before our brains are functional, Alfred shows up asking to borrow our battery. He needs a quick jump that will help him to bring the truck back to our location so that we can carry on. This all sounds reasonable so we let him charge his machine and disappear, realizing only later that the truck is still stuck far behind us and that we have just lost the only possible leverage with which we could have bargained. This sours the afternoon and forces us to say many terrible things about Alfred and what should be done to him. We start making plans with the road construction company to have Alfred's cable clipped from our car and to seek the assistance of anyone else.
But Alfred reappears during the afternoon downpour to relieve our exasperation. He is ready to continue; but from here on out, the petrol leaking, two wheel drive, vegetable driven truck will not have the assistance of the Caterpillar; Alfred will be managing us both. We travel twenty kilometers and the truck gets stuck. The cabbage headed driver keeps making the most obvious errors and compounding their effects with the most impatient and ill advised efforts at self-extrication. We hate the truck. I like that small village boys run off with sardine cans full of the petrol that is leaking from the wounded rear of this huge inconvenience. It is 8pm; everyone in the truck wants to sleep, so we camp in front of the police check point and wait for morning-a handful of trucks pile up on either side of the blockage our convoy has made; their drivers descend and curse, setting camps of their own. We have drinks with Alfred and get to know his background; our viewpoint begins to soften. For the first seven hours of the following day the truck is pulled and pushed up a hill with an incline of less than six degrees. Villagers chop down young trees and long grasses to throw beneath the wheels of the tractor and the lump it drags behind. Our car is forgotten in this struggle, though it should have been towed ahead so that it would not later be necessary to pull us through the log strewn carnage that they are making of this simple hill.
Eventually, this, too, passes and we are dragged onward. A convoy of large trucks offers to tow us the rest of the way; but at this point, Alfred and Sean have worked out their umbilical chemistry and the car is suffering as little as possible. Achieving this careful balance was punishing; the car cannot afford someone else's learning curve, which commits us to Alfred's patient advancing. In the end, five days later, we arrive in Oyo where the paved road begins.
2 Comments:
Oh my goodness! Your adventures would make the discovery channel blanch. Glad you have made it. Parson Dad
This is way too exciting not to know that this is just a movie. THIS IS REAL LIFE! - and God have mercy for all mothers and dads.
tuuli's mom
ps. as I did my daily prayers and energy sending "to charge your batteries", I felt a lot of energy flowing through, which then decreased shortly before I read tuuli's email, I guess that was when you were safely back on the paved road.:)
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tuuli's mom
ps. as I did my daily prayers and energy sending "to charge your batteries", I felt a lot of energy flowing through, which then decreased shortly before I read tuuli's email, I guess that was when you were safely back on the paved road.:)
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