On The Road

My sisters, our friends and I are driving to Swakopmund on a Saturday morning and I’m trying to think of a headline.

It’s a game I sometimes play when I’m considering the tragicomedy of life after recently avoiding assorted bachelorette death when I’m alone in my apartment and I slip in a spot of water, lean too far off the balcony or choke slightly on a glob of hastily swallowed peanut butter.

‘Local Writer Killed by Puddle’

‘Sarcastic Journalist Ends It All From Third Floor’

‘Late Columnist Exposes Perils of Peanut Butter’

It’s a macabre meandering but I chalk it up to morbid occupational quirk as I watch a Swakopmund-bound minibus driver play with 14 lives like everyone ticked ‘immortal’ on a pre-boarding form.

It takes a while for us to overtake him safely.

Though they’re painted bright white, the man has no interest in lanes and he straddles them like he would an average lover and he leaves them just as recklessly.

We all watch in mute horror.

No one says anything but since we’re driving in the world’s number one road death destination, we know it’s not beyond probability that things may go horribly wrong as the minibus careens down the road dragging a trailer swinging madly in its wake.

We get by.

But not before I see a mother looking miserably out the window with the top of a baby’s head just visible in her lap.

I say a desperate prayer for them as we pass by. And not 15 minutes later, my stomach drops abruptly into my shoes as my friend Rob puts some pressure on the breaks, our seatbelts strain to hold us back and we all come up about a hair’s breadth shy of a silver Toyota.

It’s at the back of a long line of cars which have been forced to do the same as a white Audi pulls off the road and, from the look of a middle finger raised furiously in the air in front of us, must have neglected to indicate its intention in time.

The whole thing makes me think back to my friend Dan’s dad.

We picked Dan up in Khomasdal a few hours ago and his father came out to the car to ask us to pray that God stays with us on our trip and that He will spare our lives as we make our way to a whisky festival. The rogue dogs skulking around the car were a little distracting but I got the gist which was that God doesn’t mind if we kuier a little as long as we keep our eyes on the Lord.

For good measure, we all make nice with the big benevolent being we believe in while Rob keeps his eyes on the road. The cautious combo works and we turn towards our place in Swakopmund with a sigh of relief that thanks karma, Jehovah and the travel fairies with equal gusto and inner applause.

We haven’t seen them in a while but before we disappear down a residential street, I turn around to see whether the minibus is still behind us.

It isn’t.

Maybe it slowed down and that mother and baby won’t be just another one of our shameful statistics.

Maybe they won’t have their names and faces erased in a headline that reads ‘14 Die in Swakopmund Minibus Crash’.

Perhaps everyone lives and gets to die another day.

Like the German teacher whose mother and sister came to collect her remains after she died in a car accident at Okombahe.

The three Namibians and three German tourists who were killed by a reckless driver whose negligence left a 16-year-old without a father, a mother and a sister.

The two members of the Ndilimani Cultural Troupe who were said to be in a car race that ended in their vehicle rolling off the road and extinguishing their lives.

The list goes on.

It’s a not a lot to ask when you consider the alternative.

When you see a mother and her baby in a mad minibus and you realise they could be living the last moments of their lives.

Baby oblivious.