(This is a fascinating article by Pete Rogers, our coffee buyer, about a harrowing experience on the roads in Rwanda.)
The car seemed to be gliding toward the cliff, drifting between a world of control and chaos. I looked at the driver and his hands were spinning
the wheel to the right like a kid on a play truck. When the wheel stopped
turning he started bending it more in prayer than in control. He leaned his
whole body to the right, pressing his skinny frame against the door leaning in
hope the car would respond…. but it did not.
Even the longest journey starts with a single step, and this
had been a long journey. Mario Serracin, Anna Russo and I left arrived in
Kigali after 2 full days travel from Sacramento California on September 11th,
2008. It’s a brutal flight path with 21 hours of
plane time and 14 hours of airport time. I was here in Rwanda to make sure the Mario
and Anna’s journey would start off on the correct foot.
Dr. Mario (far right-side of photo) has been working with us in Panama for the last 5
years helping farmers produce organic
coffee, reduce chemicals, increase yields, gain more income and produce
organic fertilizer. 
We hired him fresh off his PHD from the University of
Hawaii in coffee agronomy and have been having fun traveling around the world
together, changing farmers’ lives. He is like the little brother I never
had, and my kids now refer to him as Tio Mario.
Anna (second from left) carries a Masters Degree in
Business Development, lived in Cameroon for 2 years with the Peace Corp, and
was brought into this project to help along the progress of the social projects
in Rwanda, (or the lack of progress I should say). The idea came about from my
brother Jim. I was complaining about the lack of progress in Rwanda. Schools that normally take 4 months are 2
years in construction and still not finished. I couldn’t
understand their complete lack of desire to help out their communities, but
after spending over week with Anna I am sure she will be able to fix
this. Our price has also continued to
climb, however farmers’ incomes have not followed. Farmers are producing less coffee, getting
paid slightly more, but earning slightly less. Farms are in a continual decline
and farmers in a continual state of frustration. Yet the millers and exporters
are asking for more money to cover their increased costs due to this very low
production and not taking care of the most important person in the chain, the
farmer.
With the help of Alicia Robb from FSD, who interview 93
applicants we choose the highly qualified Anna to run the social projects and
nicely asked Mario if he would be willing to spend 1 year of his life helping
the Rwandan farmers. My goal from this
visit was to take them around the entire country and introduce them to the
small farmers, washing station owners and contacts I have in the country. After 1 week of running around the country, I
was hoping to leave, well hoping and now praying…
My eyes floated back from the driver to the windshield. Rodney Atkins’, “Cleaning this Gun” was pouring in through my iPod. I reached forward and grabbed the
handle just below the windshield, the windshield I would become very intimate
with very soon. You see our
problem wasn’t the car, with all its’ faults and age, it
was our driver Andrew. I watched Andrew drive earlier in the trip. He was an
older man, in his late 50s; grey hair and wrinkles were begging to win the
battle. His teeth were missing and those left stained from tobacco. His
hands calloused, worn and wrinkled from years of hard work; I noticed his hands
because they were gripping the steering wheel, at 10 and 2, very firmly and
were shaking very badly.
The steering wheel was on the right side of this very
old Range Rover and I sat on the left. Unlike most right-hand drive car nations,
Rwanda drove on the right as well. It’s a hard thing to do sitting on the left side while the car is pounding
down the right hand lane. You wanted to control, and years of instinct
are screaming at you to control the car but all you have is a small handle I
front of you. So there I sat - me and my handle watching Andrew drive and drive
very poorly. He lacked the basic feel of a car and of the pedals on the floor.
We would be cruising along at a moderate to slow speed and then suddenly as if
he realized he was very late he’d slam on the gas,
normally before a curve or huge pot hole, and surge the car forward, then
realizing his mistake he would jump on the brake stalling the cars
momentum. He drove the car like a man breaking in a horse, and we rode it like
a bucking bronco.
Along the straight roads and in the cities his style was
annoying but not terribly dangerous, but on the curvy wet roads of the Nyungwe
National Park it is a ticket to Heaven. We slid once, and I asked him to slow
down, perhaps too nicely. So now here we were gliding down a wet slippery road
heading straight for the forest and a small cliff. I remember thinking, “That’s
not so bad we can survive this” as our car
floated to 100 feet from the edge. I heard the strain of the steering column
but the tires remained silent. We slid past the hard 90 degree right hand curve
and I glanced to my right again. I saw Andrew still completely out of control
and the road we were supposed to be on beyond him with traffic lumbering up the
hill. I looked forward again 50 feet, 40, 30, and then 20. I could clearly see
what lay ahead for us. In front were several small cinder blocks. “We’d blow through those,”
I thought, and a gradual drop of 30 feet with a small clearing and some
very small trees beyond the clearing. “If we can survive the drop and those
trees hold us we can survive this,” I thought. At 10 feet I noticed my hands tense on the
handle, at 5 feet I pushed my feet out pressing the brake that was on the other
side of the car.
At 2 feet the car suddenly responded. I have heard of the
hand of God -never seen it - but if I could I would have seen a very large hand
smack the left side of our car, hard. The car literally jumped to the right and
our back-end brushed the cinder blocks. Andrew
pulled the emergency brake and we spun harder to the right, he had broken the
horse. Horribly over corrected we now lay in between euphoria and fear. As our back-end
glided past the front of the car, Andrew spun the wheel to the left hard, and
we were now perfectly sideways in the left lane with a huge truck lumbering up
the hill. The horse responded again shooting us to the right towards the cliff
wall, a much better place to crash I thought. Andrew turned the wheel hard to
the right again, a natural reaction but a stupid one as we slid over towards
the truck and edge again, realizing his mistake he adjusted quickly, with
smaller turns, left, right left right. Then like a broken horse, the car straightened
out, and we passed the truck completely in control.
I am not sure where my Guardian Angels are now, but I really
want to thank them for saving our lives. I didn’t scream at
Andrew, his English wasn’t good enough to understand anyways but he did understood
when I told him to pull over…now! I
pointed out the window and said, “Get out.” “So sorry sir, so sorry sir, so
sorry sir” was all he could answer. Anna
was out of the car hands to her face, and Mario jumped out of the back and in
his casual manner said “That was a big cliff past those trees, a very big
cliff.” I wasn’t really
listening as I was going to get my first experience of driving with a steering
wheel on the right hand side.
It is a funny thing death. It sneaks up
on you, tugs at your shirt sleeve and leaves before you can really
process what has happen. I drove the rest of the way, Andrew in the very back
of the car and Mario shot-gun, struggling with sitting on the left with no
controls. We joked about it casually. When we first left Kigali the song “Today
is your Birthday” was playing and we toasted that it was our birthday today.
Andrew called it a miracle, God helped us. I called it Karma and a damn good
guardian angel, but it wasn’t until dinner that
night that the reality of what occurred shot goose bumps all over my
body. We were at dinner at the Congo border with the Chief of Police in the
area. He was asking us what happened, and we explained it to him. “Yes,” he
said, “It’s very common. Cars drive too fast, the
road is too slippery and very dangerous. Normally when people slip over
the side it’s, “Bye bye, see you in heaven.” We were a
foot and a half from knowing.
Rwanda is the land of 1000 hills, one of
which we almost got to know intimately. It’s a beautiful country and a
spiritual country. But if you
should ever visit it, just make sure you don’t have a
driver named Andrew.
