Accident #1

ACCIDENT

I saw my first African accident scene today. After language class on my way to lunch, I took the main road back towards our training center. Up ahead I saw a large group of people on the left side of the road, sort of hanging out, chatting, some were leaning up against a wall and just looking around, and there were a lot of bikes and motos parked around them. On the right side where there are little boutiques and random tradecraft stalls, more people lined the road. There was also something in the road and from a distance it looked like a burlap sack that had fallen off a donkey cart or something. This was at the intersection where we usually turn off the main road to get to our training site, about 2 blocks away.

My first indication that there was an accident, and that the burlap sack was more probably a victim, was when someone started throwing branches with leaves into the road at “strategic” locations. We heard about this during Xculture class - they don’t have an abundance of street cones so in order to advise oncoming traffic that there’s something to be aware of in the road ahead they put branches along the lanes in both directions. The closer I got, the more details I could pick out from the mass of fabric, metal and human body that lay crumpled in the street. As I rode right past the old man who still on his bike, only horizontally and not vertically, I strongly considered the possibility that he was dead. He was not moving, his tongue was hanging out of his open mouth, his eyes were staring blankly ahead and he was bleeding from the scalp. He was wearing some ratty clothes and looked pretty beat up as it was. The front tire of his bike was bent in half at a ninety degree angle and the handle bars were twisted. I parked my bike just a bit further at the juice lady stand and bought some juice for lunch with another trainee. We started talking about what was going on and then noticed the other victims. There were two motorbikes and their fellow riders on the other side of the road, up against the wall, also laying quite still. One of the motor bikes was pretty mangled - its front tire equally bent as the bike and the front fork seemed compressed into the main chassis.

As the two of us observed the situation, we started picking out people who were bystanders, witnesses, “helping” and the police and gendarmes (who are two different entities). The majority of people there were bystanders and like happens elsewhere in the world, they were just there to see what happened. I can’t lie, the two of us were also there to see what happened, but we were also trying pick up on the procedure of events after an accident. It seemed like the accident took place, people started gathering, and eventually some police showed up. There were at least three policemen just standing there. They weren’t talking to anyone, or helping, or anything at all. One gendarme was talking with another man, who was flailing his arms, pointing and reenacting the accident. So at least there was a witness who was explaining to someone in a position of authority what happened… Meanwhile, one of the motorbike rider victims starts moving around in the grass and the guy standing next to him merely glances over with his arms crossed as if to see what was crawling around at his feet. The guy on the ground sits up and is looking really out of it, then quickly lays back down holding his head. I step into the road to get a look at the old guy and someone has now slipped a piece of cardboard under his head. He was actually holding the side of his head that is bleeding, which told me he wasn’t dead, but he hadn’t moved otherwise. And still, no one else has approached any of the victims or any other policemen. After like 10 minutes I hear a siren and a measly hospital wagon casually pulls up, turns around, and backs towards the old guy in the road. Two paramedics hop out, pull on some rubber gloves and start tending old man’s head wound. One of them pulls his bike out of the road, and then a third goes to check on the two motorbike victims, one of which I still haven’t seen move. The third paramedic gets one of them to sit up and they start talking.

I had to leave at this point, but I was shocked at the level of reaction by the people in the area to the accident scene right in front of them. I felt like no one was doing anything to help anyone until the ambulance got there. And it still took them over 15 minutes, even though I could have ridden my bike to the hospital in less than 5 had I gone fast. I guess there isn’t much you can do to help in a situation like that, and I know in the States you’re not supposed to touch anyone at the scene of an accident, but I got the impression that had any of these guys been dieing, they would have. They just lay there completely helpless while at least 100 people stood around watching, also helpless. It was crazy.

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