The Sunday evening of November 5th, it was our time to head out of Lesotho and make a journey towards our next destination, India. We had a total of 19 of us in two taxis (khombis). As we are heading down the mountain, the people in the first taxi felt like God was telling them to stop at a view spot near a waterfall. We spent around 10 minutes taking pictures, admiring Gods creations, and throwing random objects as far as we could off the mountain.
We piled back in the vehicles and resumed our drive.
Not 2km later, all of a sudden, we stopped.
A girl got out of the first taxi and ran out towards the second taxi (which I was in).
She told our driver that there had been a car accident and asked if we should go pray for them. Without hesitation, he
nodded yes and immediately turned off the engine.
We all piled out to see what was going on.
My first initial thought was maybe it was just a minor car accident, that I normally see. Then I got out and walked towards the wreckage.
While walking towards it, my eyes were fixated on the girls crying because I hadn’t seen the wreckage. I finally got close enough to see what was going on. A khombie was coming up on the wrong side of the road while one was coming down. The khombie coming down swerved and ran into the mountain wall, landed on top of the railing, and stopped in the middle of the one lane road. The other khombie fled. There was 14 people in the khombie, not one person was in it when it reached a halt. This happened less than 5 minutes before we got there. We were the first responders.
All 14 people were spread out along the asphalt road.
After a minute or two of being in shock, everyone rushed back to the taxis to grab our handy first aid kits and anything that might help.
Some people went right in and helped the ones that were alive. Some people stayed back still in shock and started to pray.
I knew I couldn’t stay back and do nothing.
So I got up close. I became very hesitant. I wanted to help but at the same time I was afraid to. I was afraid that if I move them, it would cause more damage. I had no idea how to help so I stood by to see if anyone asked for my help.
In the meantime, I started to pray. I first prayed over the people who were getting aid. I then began to pray for the people who passed away. I prayed for their souls and their families.
We were able to find 2 guys with trucks to take the people who were still alive to the hospital. We were able to put 3 people in each truck. The rest were gone. 8 people were killed. 6 had severe injuries.
The hospital was about a 40 minute drive. Some of them did not look like they would survive that long.
To see this with my own eyes, it was unbelievably hard. Unbearable.
It’s hard putting what I saw into words.
This event shook me up.
It rattled my faith.
I started asking myself a lot of questions. Questions that were beyond me.
Questions that I knew the answers for but thought that those answers weren’t good enough.
After waiting for more than an hour for the police, they arrived and cleared the scene with a lot of helpful citizens.
We hopped back into the taxis and everyone became silent, tears started to fall, and our thoughts began to wonder.
I couldn’t even plug my earphones into my phone and listen to music because most of the music I have is worship music.
All 19 of us are still recovering.
We are currently staying in a hostel in Johannesburg, South Africa. We leave for India on Thursday.
Please pray for all the people who were involved in the crash and for us as we overcome this.
