Accident on the road
Our journey north has become somewhat interrupted, as today (Friday), we have gotten in a car accident. I was sitting silently, head covered by my sweater, headphones on, when I heard our horn blaring and felt the car swerving. I opened my enclosure, only to see an old man dashing in front of our car, and our vehicle swerving to the right. We then hit the side of the road, which encountered a ditch and turned. The car rolled itself into the ditch. Fortunately none of us were physically damaged, but Denny, Phillips father was quite emotionally shocked. I acted with cold blood, exiting the car, and securing our items.
We were fortunate, in that quickly behind us arrived medicin sans frontiers. The woman in the car was actually a water specialist (a fact only learned later), but at the time, it was just comforting to know we were with people missioned to help.
I feel a little sore on my side, but this is a great excuse to see if there are any good masseuse. It might be beyond their skill, however, for I think I have bruised my ribs.
It was the strangest of events, hearing the recounting of the whole incident by the rest of the car. This man was on the side of the road. Emmanuel blared the horn, but this old man began to walk out. Emmanuel blared again and started to swerve. The old man ran back to where he came from, and then back across. What does one do? We did our best, and avoided him, but found ourselves in a ditch. It seems that there have been many accidents within 200 meters of this accident site.
Remembering back, all I can recall from the beginning, was this fleeting image of an old man with a walking stick, blanket flailing, flying like a madman away from our vehicle. He was not there when we finally exited the car through the broken windows. We were lucky. I am now relaxing in front of beautiful copper tone lake tarna, infamous source of the blue nile.
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Hi Mike, I'm so glad to hear that you're okay after that accident. I was thinking about you yesterday because I visited Professor Bowers, whose daughter died tragically during her time in the Peace Corp in Zambia, to see the photos and videos from Linda and Gerry's recent trip there to retrace their daughter's footsteps. One of the people who joined us last night was a girl named Kai who worked with their daughter in Zambia, and she was telling us all about the various traditions, social issues, etc., there. She also taught us how to properly tie the cloth skirts that the women wear (though I don't remember the name of them, they are basically like sari). I really liked Kai--we were able to talk about little things in our experiences abroad that normally wouldn't have come up in a conversation. It was good for me as I get used to being back in America, too.
I also ought to add that I'm loving reading about all the churches. I just read about the relatively unknown church of Northern China (not the Catholic church, but rather the church as it came from Persia), and one of the ways they discovered a church site was by the layout. As you mentioned, the churches were set on an East-West axis to connect Christ with the rising son. Buddhist sites are oriented on a North-South axis instead. A researcher was looking down from the mountainside, wondering if he had found the right site after all, and realized suddenly that the "Buddhist monastery" was actually on an East-West axis, and when they went into an otherwise traditional-looking pagoda on the site, they found Christian statues instead of Buddhist statues, even though they were using Taoist and Buddhist backdrops like the 5 holy mountains, symbols of Yin and Yang, and scenes that echoed the life of the Buddha! The only way that they even knew to visit the area in the first place was by meeting a 115-year-old woman who lived there and was very proud that Christianity came to being in that area. It's amazing to follow the footsteps of the ancient Church sometimes.
Anyway, I hope that there are NO repeats of your car accident again. Take care of yourself, and have an amazing time.
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