This is part of an occasional series on how to negotiate roads in certain parts of the world. Today’s focus is on the use of oxen.
During my cubicle man in Maryland days, I had a photo of one of our South Sudan project NGO-white Landcruisers stuck in the mud nearly to its window level. Across the bottom of the photo, I wrote “Why the Report was Late.” What I didn’t know was how or even if the truck ever got unstuck.
I do know how I got unstuck the three times when I was in that situation.
The first time was when I was on my way to take supplies to a very remote rural clinic in northern Malawi. The trip was during the rainy season and I was traveling on a red clay road. I rounded a corner and found a local bus filled with people parked in the middle of the road, so I stopped and waited behind it. It didn’t move except for the mango pips, chewed sugarcane, banana peels and mealie cobs that were thrown out the bus windows.
I continued to wait. I counted the number of caged chickens tied to the top of the bus. I counted the number of trussed-up goats tied to the top of the bus. The mounds of mango pips, chewed sugar, and mealie cobs grew taller, augmented by the occasional banana peel. And still I waited.
Until I could wait no longer. I decided to drive around the parked bus. And halfway along its side, my truck fell into a deep clay mud hole. Halfway meant I was in full view of all the laughing passengers, who were pointing at me and shouting “Mzungu,” which literally translated means someone who walks around aimlessly, or in my case, drives around apparently aimlessly. Now here’s the crazy part: the instant I drove into the mud hole, the bus and its cackling, pointing passengers drove away. I realized at that moment they were waiting for me, patiently, but with evil intent, until I sprung their trap. I had no way out.
I had no way out until sometime later, who knows how long I waited, maybe an hour, possibly a week, a man leading a team of oxen appeared in my rear view mirror. When he got close enough, I exited the truck and approached him. I didn’t need to explain my situation because he understood it well enough. I offered him a generous reward in kwacha, even as he was guiding the sturdy animals into place. He attached the beasts to the truck, I jumped back inside to steer, and with seemingly no effort, the truck was freed. By the time I gingerly walked around the mud hole, he had unhitched the animals and was on his way. I tried to pay him, but he wasn’t interested. Maybe he was the Oxen Angel who went from hapless mzungu to hapless mzungu to save them from the afflictions caused by their infernal impatience.
The next time I needed help from an oxen team was not a situation of my making. I was escorting a newspaper reporter who wanted to see our programme in Haiti, because I had drawn the short straw back at the office. We employed a local driver and were making our way across the southern side of the Central Plateau when we arrived at a wide river crossing. From our side of the river, we could clearly see where vehicles exited on the far river bank. It seemed simple enough to steer the vehicle directly toward the exit point, and it would have been simple if we hadn’t found a rather deep hole near to that point into which the Landcruiser sank and settled onto the bottom at an obscene angle. Thankfully, the nose of the vehicle was out of the water, but the water level inside the vehicle started at the lower front of the front window openings and angled to the top rear corner of the window openings. The rear of the interior was completely flooded, so the rear seat passengers were forced to evacuate through the window openings like passengers on the Titanic. I don’t remember how I got out, but I do remember walking up out of the water in my erstwhile blue button down shirt and khaki trousers feeling a little like General Douglas McArthur triumphantly wading ashore on a beach in the Philippines, except without the triumph and the corncob pipe.
On that far bank, near the raised white nose of the Landcruiser, I found a farmer plowing a field with a brace of oxen. He eyed me suspiciously as I sloshed my sodden self toward him. I explained what we needed and unexpectedly, he agreed to help. Soon the oxen were attached to the Landcruiser, and with seemingly little effort, they beached the vehicle. When I opened the door, an avalanche of water, debris ( I think it was our lunches), and flotsam flooded from the vehicle. Apart from a thick interior coating of stinking mud, the vehicle was still serviceable. I paid the farmer a handful of sodden currency and we were on our way.
The third and final incident seemed to defy physics. I was once again traveling on a damp red clay road in Malawi when the road turned into a rather steep incline. The climb started out okay, but toward the top, even in four wheel drive, we spun to a stop. The part that defied physics (and gravity) is that we could not reverse back down. What to do?
I was hesitant about walking back down the red clay mess, but there was a nearby village in that direction, so I started walking. Because of the sticky red clay, I grew taller with each step until the accretions broke off and new ones started. I eventually found someone with an oxen team, but the oxen were unharnessed and the owner was in no hurry to ready them. I waited for what seemed an hour, but which could have been a week before we were ready to head back up the sticky clay mountain. As before, the animals freed the vehicle with very little effort. I decided to retreat back down the mountain and reorient my agenda, because I was tired of backing up, scraping red clay from my shoes, and didn’t cherish the thought of wearing red-stained clothes for the next few days.
I developed a deep respect for oxen during these incidents and have often pondered their superior utility over that of most other vehicles. They eat locally, and although they have large hooves, they have low carbon footprints, except for the methane gas problem. When they finally wear out, instead of ending up as a rusting pile of metal in a field, they can be recycled as a sandwich or a pot roast. Try that with a tow truck.
Although the dream grows more distant with the passing of years, I still carry the hope that someday Switter Jr.-in-law will honor his bride price debt with at least one Texas Longhorn riding steer that will convey me to and from our village at a lazy but thoughtful pace. I know when that day finally arrives, I will have experienced a finite but precious moment of perfection in my life.
Oxen rule.