It was a night back in ‘08 like any other night--hot and humid. Here in Northeast Africa days are either hot, hotter, or the proverbial "hot as hell." Many people, who did not use profanity or cuss, soon employed such speech shortly after coming here. I mean, it literally DOES get that hot here. There's no other way to describe it. When you go outside after just taking a shower (regardless of what time of day or night it is) and you are drenched in sweat after a few moments, all you can say it "(insert cuss word here)________ it's HOT!" The heat here is the source of much misery. It gets up to and sometimes above 50 C or 120 F. Anyway, back to the night in ‘08. I wanted to stay here at the U.S. government run compound where I live and work. But my friend, well... I'll refer to him as "Lance," wanted to leave. He had a sense of urgency about him so I relented and signed off camp as his (required by policy here) "liberty partner." I promise, from the outset of it all, I just had one of those bad feelings. I was usually all for leaving this depressing place of work and residence in the middle of the desert to go into this nation's pathetic excuse for a capital city. But for some strange reason I really did not want to go out this particular evening. Lance in the other hand, a usually reserved guy in his mid-forties, was kind of jumpy and in a hurry to go--almost desperate. When I put those two items next to one another, I just got that bad feeling in the back of my mind that said, "Man, don't do it." However, being the loyal "buddy" that I am, we were on our way in no time. But that feeling of a not-so-good night ahead of me still lingered. As we stepped off the premises, I was on the lookout for something bad to happen. I didn't have to wait long. We went to the area right outside our compound where the local taxis gather and were met with the first omen...
Before I begin, let me discuss the taxi racket here. Number one, there is no real set of legitimate policies that govern the taxi drivers or their vehicles. They have only a loose union of sorts and their various forms of intimidation they use at times. In this country, the combination of extreme poverty, no traffic signals (at all), horribly neglected roads (wherever there are roads--seriously), no real desire for regular maintenance of these vehicles, and a taxi driver workforce that is pretty much chewing khat (a local plant that is chewed on to give one a small amount of the same effects of an amphetamine that is considered a narcotic in many western states) from the afternoon until late at night has created a fleet of vehicles that are very unsafe to say the least. Filled with dents, missing door panels, mitch-match body parts, seriously unaligned steering systems, missing rear windows, cracked and even shattered windshields, faulty brakes, hit-and-miss lights, heavy use of spare "donut" tires, balding regular tires, malfunctioning safety belts, and ever present rust, many of these vehicles belong in a junkyard or museum more than they belong on any road--let alone with paying passengers inside. Nonetheless, we risk our lives every time we step into these gas powered death traps just to be able to get away from this (prison) camp we call home and our workplace. On top of that, many the drivers are very shady. They are parked in a medium sized lot right outside the camp in order to pounce on the employees that leave the camp and force them to pay the mandatory "fees" to go to certain places in the city. These fees, I must add, are much higher that what the locals pay and even higher than the prices paid by the French (ironically their former colonizers who left nothing but a few buildings, their dying language, and an educational system that not only neglected to teach these Africans their own history or culture but brainwashed them into thinking that France was/is the center of civilization and also filled the minds these people with their anti-American rhetoric). The drivers don't allow people who park their vehicles in this lot to give any of the workers or residents of this camp a ride. If they see this, they will surround the vehicle and demand a payment of force the person inside to take a taxi. They also force people who park in this "public" lot to pay fees. If they don't they may find serious damage done to their vehicle. So, you pay for them to "watch" your vehicle and "keep it safe." The officials on this American run base are well aware of such occurrences but refuse to act. I guess there are more important things to deal with than the safety of their service member and civilian workforce when they travel off-camp. Anyway...
Our taxi driver drove up. We were stuck with him because they wait in line and whoever you are lucky to get is your driver. First of all, I had never seen this guy before. He looked old enough to have his driver's license revoked just on age alone. I am in my mid-thirties and this dude would have given my eighty-something year old grandfather a run for his money. Of course he drove slow like his car was a float in a parade and we had to repeat everything two or three times to him (no that it really mattered--he like most in this only francophone nation in East Africa spoke only the local language, Somali, the religious language, Arabic, and the colonial language, French). He gripped and hugged the steering wheel like it actually supported him and sat his head up so close to the spider web cracked windshield that I doubted if his poor eyesight allowed him to see too much past his own face. We soon found that to be true. Lance and I looked at the car. Wow, it looked like a Chevy Citation and an 80's era Toyota Tercel got together and produced this vehicle after a drunken one night stand. Either that or Optimus Prime (leader of the Autobots from the Transformers movie and cartoon series) squatted at a junkyard, took a dump, and this car emerged. The car was about the size of any super compact car. It was definitely not made to function as a taxi. Lance and I looked at the car, the driver, and sighed the old "here goes nothing" sigh and slid in. The car looked worse on the inside than the outside. He and I are both about 6 feet tall. But we felt like giants in this matchbox. Not only that, there was no door panel present, over half of the dashboard and other internal covering were missing--exposing an interesting array of internal wiring. On top of that the old man seemed to be talking to himself the whole way. We told him where we wanted to go and he nodded as if he understood. With a few pushes of the gas pedal, Lance and I were on our way. For some reason he was taking this unfamiliar route to our destination. Every time we repeated where we wanted to go, he would quickly quiet us with this, "I know, I know, I got it." universal type nod. Oh yeah, of course the seat belts didn't work either. Back to the route... the way he took us would bring us past the entrance near where the president lives. Of course his residence is far from the road, but it is so huge that it can be seen from afar. When you approach this area, there are flashing lights actually within the street. There is also a series of speed bumps, a stop sign, a small guard shack with a couple of his AK-47 armed presidential guard, and finally some strategically placed small metal barriers that will not stop a car per se, but will force one to slow down because of their narrowness.
As we approached this area, instead of this car, which was already traveling at a crawl, slowing down, the driver increased his speed as we neared the stop sign. At first I didn't pay any attention, but soon enough he not only ran through the stop sign but be whizzed past the guard shack and beyond the metal barriers. I was so shocked that I didn't even feel the speed bumps. By this time we are yelling and screaming at him to stop the car. He then hit the brakes and the only thing that kept us from going through the cracked windshield was that fact that we were already stuffed in the car to begin with. As soon as he stopped, there were two AK-47 clad troops running towards the car--faces intent and focused and weapons ready to fire. We both put our hands up and as soon as they approached the car we screamed and pointed to the taxi driver, "It was him! It was him! It was him!" All the while, this driver, who was probably born before the first car made in onto African soil, just sat staring out of the window continuing to mumble to himself. How could this guy not be alarmed? Had he not realized how close to death we all were? Anyway, the soldier must have realized from the petrified looks on my and Lance's faces that we were truly innocent, so he lowered his weapon and asked the driver a few questions to which the driver always replied in some mumbled gibberish that I am sure even he could not comprehend. After a few minutes of this, we finally lowered our hands, exhaled, and unclenched our anuses. The guard instructed the driver to make an immediate u-turn and drag his carcass of a vehicle down the road. Needless to say, we were more than happy to do so. As we sat in silence, save the car’s engine which was as closer to death than the fossil behind the wheel, I wondered how truly close I came to death... How would it look for me to be killed in such a way? An unfortunate chain of events leading to my demise. I just couldn't shake it.
Finally, we were at or destination. The normal fare would have been about $12 but this guy had the nerve to try and ask us for twice that. I could not believe that he had such courage to so do. First, $12 was a hugely inflated price, then for him to try and double it was even more insulting. Yet, for him to try this after almost getting us killed is what set me off. I yelled something at him that I am sure he could not understand anyway and threw the equivalent of $12 in their currency on the passenger's front seat. I also told him if he didn’t agree he could come and get the remaining money from me himself. He simply shook his head, continued to mumble and eased on down the road.
Thank God, the night went by without any further incident. But when I made it back to camp, I wondered whether or not if the president was even home. I say this because in countries like these, the authorities, whether police or military, tend to shoot first and ask questions later. And with us racing past the stop sign and barriers like we did, I am sure that if the president was inside, the guards would have added plenty of bullet holes to the dents and rust on the taxi that night--not to mention killing Lance and I and putting "Methuselah" out of his misery. Oh well, I am here to tell the story. I have lived another day--or two. I guess these are the things that we hate going through but say, "One day we will all laugh at all of this." Hopefully you have had a few.
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