Confession: I’m afraid of water.
No, not like swimming pools or beaches. My dad is a swimming coach, I pretty much swam out of the womb. I’m just afraid of water when it comes in combination with cars.
I used to be a really terrible driver. Like, really terrible. By the age of 17, I had totaled three cars. Ok, please don’t judge me. I’ve since had a personal driving instructor and have been wreck-free since 2003!
All of my wrecks occurred because of rain. There was the “making-a-left-turn-without-yielding” debacle, the “following-too-closely-and-slamming-into-the-car-in-front-of-me” catastrophe, and the mother of all car disasters, “The Great Flood of 2003.”
Yes. I flooded a car.
You read correctly. I literally drove my car into floodwaters. How does that happen, you ask? Well, I won’t go into the gory details, but, it involved my being tragically unaware that the Tennessee River had risen 12 meters or so overnight and my high school’s parking lot’s being completely underwater. In a moment of terror and, um, utter shutting down of my brain function, I drove my sister’s ’93 Camry into water so deep that the engine shut off and water began to rush in through the doors. 911 may or may not have been called, my mom may or may not have thought I’d driven off a bridge, and I may or may not have missed my AP Spanish exam… Since then, needless to say, driving in the rain, even through the smallest of puddles, makes me have a small panic attack.
Enough about that. You want to know how this ties in with my life on the Race, right? Well, this month, we had the opportunity to visit some new friends we made from the Massai tribe. Yes, these are the warriors of Africa, the ones who dance and jump extremely high! So we jumped at the opportunity to see their ways of life up close and personal. Little did we know what we were getting ourselves into.
We hopped onto a mutattu (like a 10 passenger taxi van), and then proceeded to squeeze about 14 people in. We had our packs on our laps for the entire 2-hour bumpy ride. We finally got to the town and were greeted by our friends. They had a tiny hatchback sedan which we then stuffed 10 people inside. Four people in the front, four in the back, and 2 in the trunk, plus all our daypacks, tents and sleeping bags. The driver was literally reaching over another man to shift gears. We then proceeded to reenact my worst nightmare about 15 times over.
These mountain roads, if you can even call them that, were straight up mud. It is rainy season, so it rains every day here. Therefore, the roads never dry. Puddles form in the low dips of the hills. The “puddles” range from baby pool size to straight up, foot-and-a-half deep, 20 feet long ponds that take up the entire width of the road. Every 2 minutes or so, we’d come upon a stretch of the road that no man in his right mind in America would attempt to cross. I would examine the terrain and judge the least treacherous path in my mind, and then the driver would usually go for the deepest, bumpiest, most life-threatening divots and pools.
It. Was. Terrifying.
I spent the majority of the ride with my head in my hands, eyes squeezed shut, praying like I’ve never prayed before, and trying not to envision the water rushing in the doors like in high school.
We finally “made” it, meaning, the car driver refused to go any further, so we strapped on our backpacks and hiked about 3 hours in the rain, through the mud, up and down hills, in about 50 degree weather. We finally made it to our destination, a church made of mud walls and branches. We were soaked, freezing, and exhausted, with mud-caked feet, legs and Chacos. Our Chacos had about an inch and a half of mud caked on all sides and the bottoms.
Somehow the Lord granted me a positive attitude through it all, for which I’m really thankful. It could have been really easy to have a bad attitude, but we just looked at it as an adventure. Hey, this is Africa after all!
We were able to warm up next to a charcoal fire pit, drink some African Chai tea, and snuggle up inside our tents. The next day, we took a hike through the beautiful hills of Massai land. We saw some crazy monkeys that resemble fluffy skunks. We spent time with some of the kindest, most beautiful people in Africa. We made a return trip that was slightly less petrifying… ok, that’s a lie. I was equally as scared the second time.
But, the Lord blessed our travels. We miraculously made it through every pond, puddle, and lake. And I know He’ll continue to bless us every step of the way. Only three more months to I’m America bound!
