Jun 21 - Cow Collecting

June 21

Trying to screech to a halt from almost 100km/h is no easy feat, especially in the dark of night with a cow having suddenly wandered onto the road. Needless to say, when we managed to thud into the impressively large beast, its head cracking into the windscreen with a rather disturbing ‘cow’s head hitting a windscreen’-like sound, it just capped off what can only be described as a bad day.

12 hours earlier we had awoken to a sunny Saturday, the start of holidays. With Cat and Sandy arriving the following day in Lilongwe, we thought we could quickly get our car serviced that morning, then whip up to the small village of Dedza, an hour from the capital, for an afternoon of reading books, relaxing, and enjoying being out of town.

The first hitch to the day came when the mechanic, a highly recommended guy who services vehicles for big businesses around town, turned up an hour and a half late. Added to this, a part I had bought was apparently not to his liking, so he had to then head back into town and get the right one, further delaying things. Four hours later, having sat around the house waiting impatiently, they told us the 3-4 hour service would only be an hour more. Two hours later it was only 20 minutes more, then an hour and a half after that we finally had our car ready to roll. Got to love Malawi.

Being able to finally laugh that one off we jumped in the car to head off, ready for our holiday to begin. You can then imagine how calmly I reacted when our previously perfect vehicle began spluttering and stalling after driving for less than five minutes. Another hour later, our mechanic having met us at a service station and rather swiftly fixed the problem, we drove out of Blantyre a few minutes before 4.30pm (okay… so it had been my fault buying crappy spark plugs).

The problems with driving in the dark in Malawi are so innumerable that it makes planning your day rather carefully around not driving in the dark in Malawi a very worthwhile undertaking. Given yesterday was the winter solstice and hence the shortest day of the year, we would not have that luxury this time. At dusk every man and his dog (or 'every villager and his sack of maize flour,' as they say here) are frantically scurrying along the road trying to get home before darkness falls, with no sense of danger from the cars hurtling by them. Many of the cars, buses and trucks only sport one headlight, and for some even that is too much, which makes detecting them extremely difficult given the complete absence of any street lighting. Not to mention that several drivers have just finished off their afternoon Greens or Chibuku, with absolutely no notion that drink driving may be somewhat dangerous. Add to this a random pothole or two, almost invisible police road blocks and stray dogs, goats and cows and you have yourself one hell of a difficult drive.

So when the aforementioned bovine wandered into our headlights from the abyss of darkness, despite a good swerve and a few metres of tyre being painted onto the road, we still managed to collect a good portion of his head with our windscreen whilst traveling at the best part of 30-40km/h. Luckily, other than one hell of a headache for the cow, and a bloody fast heartbeat for Heth, everyone went their separate ways unharmed.

“What the hell was he thinking!” was Heth’s immediate reaction, a little shaken.
“Heth,” I laughed, “he’s a cow.”