We were very (un)lucky today. Lucky because we are unharmed, unlucky because we lost our car. We had been away early for shopping in the city and stopped on our way back for a breakfast - sandwich shrimps for me, sandwich chicken for Wim - at a restaurant. We parked the car in front of the restaurant about 6m away from the roadside!
The public transport here is done by private vans, which load as many people as possible and they drive very reckless. They cause every year accidents. While we were sitting in the open air restaurant, a van came along with VERY high speed. At the moment that I looked up, he got of the road with his right front tire just before our restaurant. But the side is 15 cm lower so he lost control of the car. Because of the speed and the difference in height, the van bumped up, and with that speed he landed 20m further on top of our car, pushing it 30 meters further into the bush. Our car weights over 2.5 ton! There were at least 20 people inside the van. (adding to thats total weight) Result, our car is what we call in the Netherlands: total loss. Lucky nobody was hurt. The Gambian police was very soon here and working very adequate to my surprise.
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| in the front some people who were siting inside the van during the accident. |
After some time they also stopped a sand-truck to try to let him pull of the van from our car. They first tried it with a fishing net. I told them to wait until my brother Wim was back because we had a good cable in our car, but I did not have the keys. Wim had went home to get our other car and of course that was not starting today. I stayed at the scene to guard the car. But Gambians... they know it better. Of course the net broke. Then a bypassing car offered his tow-cable, broke also. But then Wim was back and with our cable they succeeded after several tries.
We then asked the police to call a taxi to transport all things inside the van and us to home, including 5 cans of diesel (just bought for the generator), a gasbottle, big chest with tools, spare wheel, etc. Anything you leave in a car beside the road will be gone tomorrow here. Some local friends came to help us because that was also a heavy job. OK, went well until we got home, then the taxi would not start anymore... ;-) this is Gambia. same in India and Thailand.
But we have a big problem now. Probably nobody is going to pay for the damage here.
