Heading North ...

Saturday, January 10^th

At the conclusion of that week, Mandy and I joined six others in a heavily laden van for the return trip up-country.  With every spare space in the van taken up with accompanying luggage and with a heavily laden trailer in tow, we made our happy way back across the Limpopo River and northwards into Zimbabwe.  It seems so simple and straightforward in the telling … but it wasn’t.  Arrival and inch-by-inch progress from the southern to northern banks of the Limpopo River is for the traveler like a sticky, clinging swamp to a cross-country runner.  

Police road-blocks were a further impediment to progress, with an order from a uniformed officer at one resulting in our having to detour to the local Police base to undertake repair of the lights on the trailer we were towing.  With a bulb taken from its intended place at the tail of the trailer, and with a length of wire scrounged from the police camp, we fashioned a crude test light and set about trying to make sense of the tangle of wires intended to carry current from plug to bulbs.

Once clearance was eventually given for us to proceed, we had to undertake the last 175 kilometers (109 miles) of our trip in the dark. 

Driving after dark on Zimbabwean roads is very dangerous for relatively small vehicles.  Large transport lorries tend to travel at this time, paying little attention to potholes that do significant damage to smaller vehicles, sometimes with fatal results.  The metal carnage strewn every few kilometers along the sides of the road had been a persistently graphic reminder of this.  When driving slowly, it is possible even after dark to swerve around the more menacing potholes. That is, unless the blazing lights and considerable bulk of a speeding on-coming lorry, blind the driver’s vision and force one’s vehicles to the edge of the opposing lane.

Shortly after having embarked on this last leg of the trip, the atmosphere inside the van was shattered by a load bang, and accompanying sudden jolt, followed by violent swerving as the driver fought courageously to keep the vehicle and trailer under control.  Once our ensemble had come to a standstill, both vehicle and trailer were as far off the road as the narrow verge would allow.  With the wheels on one side sitting on the surface of the road and the wheels of the other on the considerably eroded soil of the road verge, we disembarked to assess the damage.  Miraculously, our driver had managed to evade the pothole with the front wheel.  Had he not managed to do this we would not be present to tell the tale.  As it was, the rear tyre and rim of the van and tyre and rim of the trailer were destroyed. 

The minimal availability of equipment was made more menacing by the dangerous angle of the vehicle looming over us as we worked to correct the situation.  

As the women prayed, the men worked.  At one point, a jack slipped just after one of our number had removed a vital part of his anatomy from underneath the loaded vehicle.  Eventually, though, we pulled back onto the dangerously pockmarked road to continue on our way.  What should have taken an hour and a half took us over four hours as our intrepid driver nursed the vehicle and trailer homeward, finally arriving at our destination at 11:00 that night.  With a 7:00AM departure that morning, it had turned out to be a very long day. 

Mandy recalls, “As we prayed in the van, it was incredibly comforting to know that many loved ones around the world were covering us and our trip in prayer.  There’s no doubt that God had His hand on our vehicle and fellow travelers that day.”