crash, boom, bang

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Though, not in that order;
it was more like bang, crash, boom

There’s just no way I woulda had the day I had yesterday without being here. And despite what you’re about to read, I’m thankful for it.

I spent the morning on my cell phone with my mechanic, my possible buyer for the motorbike, and his mechanics. I eventually got my mechanic to show up at the office, go with me to where the bike is living, start it up, drive me around to juice up the battery, get gas, and then take a ride downtown through 2 hours of traffic to show it to my ‘client’… after which I sent my mechanic home and a long afternoon ensued of introducing the bike, and myself, to my client’s mechanics.

And after tiring hours of chasing around and convincing people to do what I wanted, and negotiating all sorts of situations, I was on quite a high…for I had just pulled all of this off, as a toubab , as a woman, in French, and in Wolof …and was feeling quite empowered and amused with myself. The bike needs repairs (it was dripping gas to the point at which it could have exploded on my ride downtown, oops.) and it isn’t quite sold, mind you, but I left the mechanic’s garage feeling good.

batta-

BANG

So, I hailed me a taxi and got on my merry way back to the office.

Then I experienced one of those scenes you play out over and over in your head - convincing yourself you’d be able to do something before impact while in the hands of the crazy taxi drivers here - before wheels screech, glass shatters, blood gushes. I had actually been thinking about how ironic it would be if I got into an accident in this taxi (considering that I had just found out how lucky I was to be alive after driving on the motorcycle deathtrap) when not-so-suddenly - I found myself in that mini-second before impact.

And then,

CRASH!

Against all probability, it actually wasn’t the fault of the taxi driver who had been driving sanely evenly by NYC terms. But he also didn’t have the same paranoid peripheral vision I do - and so he hadn’t seen a red SUV sneaking behind another to accelerate out into the oncoming, right-of-way traffic (us!).

I had a millisecond to turn away from the impact that was to be directly on the door I was sitting next to, and so as my body was flung to the other side of the car, my head was luckily already tilted down and my hand outstretched to protect myself. When the car spun out, I found my face smudged against the backseat window frame, cushioned by my own palm and forearm. I reached first to check my glasses - intact!

Glass was everywhere. My head, I guess, had broken the window. I knew I wasn’t seriously injured…and I got out of the car quickly (these taxis are ancient and so I imagined it bursting into flames - especially given the earlier topic of conversation at the bike shop). I climbed out of the taxi and up onto a somewhat high pile of stones on the side of the street (to get better phone reception? not sure why I did that. to prove I was ok?)…I hesitated calling anyone, but broke down and in a whimper, called my friend Andy. As I was doing this, a Senegalese man was picking glass out of my hair and wiping blood from my face.

The business-suited driver of the SUV, who I caught sight of for the first time as he was now tending to the taxi driver, looked slightly Indian to me (and for a moment, I thought in his handsomeness he could be a Single Indian and we were star-crossed accidentees, but I digress). Because I had moved a bit away from the scene of the accident, i saw him catch sight of me and watched the realization spread across his face that i had been in the taxi! He came running over and offered - insisted - that he take me to his embassy.

And which embassy was he a diplomat with? Saudi Arabia, of course...because other than Iraq, what greater irony could there be as an American?! I had a good internal laugh and when he assured me there was a doctor at the embassy, I sort of agreed to go, knowing it was close-by and figuring I would just call Andy and tell him my location.

So, my not so star-crossed, nor French-, nor English-speaking diplomat insists and gently hoists me into his SUV and off we go around the corner to the embassy. There was a bit of excitement racing inside of me. I was going to see the Saudi Arabian compound! But excitement and calm evaporated as I feverishly rang and re-rang Andy, but with no network connection -- which meant he was going to show up at the scene of the accident with head-trauma me missing!

Meanwhile, a great, green iron gate was being opened by armed guards, we were rolling into the embassy compound and I was being led into the entry annex. As the diplomat and the rest of the Saudis and I shared no language, I was terribly ‘stuck’. Being told in broken English, gently, and repeatedly, to sit down and calm down (I was calm, damn it!)…they were all very nice (fearing bad headlines, maybe?!)… but it was still very obvious to them that I wanted out of the room and they were having none of that...they were quite concerned about my state of health, physical and mental i suppose.

The door was steps away, but I knew I would never make it there before they held me back or came chasing after me. Essentially, I was prisoner!!! ha! It was a good ten minutes (by now I was envisioning poor Andy trying to figure out where I was) until they found an employee who spoke French. After explaining to her about my friend waiting for me, she ‘let’ me go after I agreed to give my contact info and to come back after the apologetic diplomat drove me first to Andy, and then to the hospital.

So my diplomat buddy and I finally drove back around the corner to the scene of the accident, and I spotted Andy’s motorbike (easy to do since it’s our old bike!) - and I fell into Andy’s chest and quickly told him of my chattering ‘no problem, no problem’ diplomat friend who was charged by his embassy to take me to the hospital. Andy convinced the guy he could take me to the clinic on the bike (as I had ironically been sitting in the taxi with Berengere’s motorbike helmet) and off we went.

I was still picking pieces of glass out of my undergarments at the clinique as Andy and I shared a good laugh about what was i DOING …not wearing my helmet in the taxi?!?! hardy-har-har.

In the end, I understand that it could have been much, much worse and that I am very, very lucky. I walked away with a few scrapes on my face and head, some abrasions on my hands and arms, bruises on my kneecaps, and soreness in my neck and head (what else is new?!)..and as for the taxi driver, he was a-ok and i think he'll be well-compensated by the Saudis...

Andy brought me back to his house to rest…and it was then lying in Berengere’s air-conditioned bedroom trying to rest…when

BOOM!

I felt jolted back into the present. For weeks, I’ve been living a bit in the past…trying to suppress haunting thoughts about choosing Dakar over Boston, and of my recent losses in love and friendship. But after walking into Berengere’s house full of her visiting family right now, relaying the accident story, the non-stop ringing of my phone all evening with concern from the office, my friends, etc,. the willingness of my roomie to forgo her dinner party plans and come home just to support me…and then us having gone out to dinner to celebrate my life…

well, despite my exhaustion and shakiness…I can’t say I’m being affected in that clichéd near-death sort of way, but there was something about it that brought me more into the present.

This morning, I was grooving a bit and having a laugh at the absurdity of my ride-to-work friend playing Shaggy in his fancy car, I shook my head at the barefoot Talibe kids in the street but vowed inside to do something about them somehow, and I felt slightly interested in all of the statistics I’m dealing with at work…and as for the future, I’ve kicked back a bit and told myself that life patiently awaits me in NYC……

So may you, too,
have a boom, and a bang,
but not a crash.

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Photos

the invisible mechanics
while always hard to capture in the night, my mechanics are elusive in any case, and often we found ourselves either cursing them out or praising their work while out on the open road...

'amma' the yamaha
it's a 600 tenere...any takers...? :)

sorta like this...
this is one of the finest-looking taxis (and taxi drivers!) in senegal...but to give you an idea of the tin i was in...