Travelling out to the villages is often a bit of a challenge … especially at this time of year, as during rainy season, puddles of water cover the roads and change the roads. The regular roads to the village would be considered “off-roading” …. yet, on the day of the 3rd mosquito net distributions …. I took my field director on a wild ride that took the term “off-roading” to a whole new level!!
That day, we were in a village area that is covered with crevasses and dry gulches. In order to reach the distribution location (the village representative’s huts) – we had to go quite a few kilometres out of our way to skirt around these deep cracks in the ground.
This is the last deep dry gulch that we had to cross through. I got out of my truck at the entrance to walk through and see the distance and level of the ground dropping – as well as the exit. At times, what my village guide may think my truck can drive, I refuse and insist we find another road. …. So before I drove my truck down into the gulch, I wanted to ensure the exit was passable!
After I drove out of the gulch – this is what I saw …. And my guide said “Just follow the road Khadiza!”
Can you see the road??!?
Finally, we arrive – in what seems like the middle of nowhere, to a grouping of three huts – the home of my village guide!
Here, about 30 people have gathered for the teaching – they have walked to this location from 4-13 km away!
And of course, on the way back – we had to drive back through the dry gulch. We had preplanned for a video of my breaching back out – so, while Tim walked back up the dry river bed to position himself at the exit to film my driving adventure, I took a few pictures.
And this here … this is why I am so glad that I have a 4x4 truck!!! I guess, in our planning that the truck could make it down and out on the way in – it was not necessarily a safe assumption the truck could make it back out on the way home!!
One last section of road that has washed out since my last trip … we followed a donkey cart path to its left to skirt around these little mini-crevasses!
… and another large dry gulch.
This one, actually, the rains have improved – it used to be an adventuresome, nerve wracking trip down a steep bank, then through deep sand while skirting around a gulch ridge to the left and drop off to the right, climbing another steep bank – and then abruptly turning around the left of the tree, a few feet to spare to the right without hitting the tree and a few feet to spare on the left without falling into another crevasse! The rains this time created a plateau in the middle of the first drop and leveled out the entrance.
In the first picture below, you can see just past the open truck door the road between the tree and the drop-off – normally, I would drive around the tree to the left of my truck.
The village guide had been concerned about this gulch – but it was a piece of cake today! (As compared to the one in the video above which didn’t seem to occur to him as possibly being a problem!)
All in all – it was a fun village day of teaching and mosquito net distributing! And - It was a thrilling and adventuresome drive!!
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