all my children

its been a while & life has been hectic & when i looked again so much time had passed & i havent written anything here. I have written elsewhere; i keep a sporadic journal – not entirely sure what i am meant to keep in a journal as it seems to be like a diary, but i also have a diary so i confuse myself by writing diary things in the journal then journal things in the diary. I write all the time – in my head & often grab a notebok & jot down things, stories or something I have seen which i feel needs recording. When I have the time, and normally this happens when i am not anywhere near any of the notebooks then i grab my shopping list book out of my bag & write in that. But life has been hectic as i said, my son was coming out from UK so i needed to work extra hours to build up time off days in order to spend the time with him, his wife and new baby. Plus i moved two houses, a process which is still going on as i separate things for the two areas and get rid of all that no longer serves my life.

Then life moved on. I am now with my son, his beautiful calm peaceful UK wife and gorgeous little 10month son. And we are staying with my older son. Its like chalk and cheese to see the two families. I have spent as much time as i can with my older son as he has grown his family, been there for the birth of all his babies & been there as they have grown in life. Now they are in school, the oldest in High School & the others graduating down to the baby of the family at 5yrs in ECD. As i said – chalk & cheese – from the wives of polar opposites dealing with their children in such different ways, loud and aggressive and calm & happy. I sit and watch and compare, i suppose that is not so good of me but with the rush and chaos of 5 children around, you do tend to compare. The shouting to be heard in their position in the family and the gentle quiet waiting to say something. Who am i to judge i suppose, 4 children on tech gadgets just to have a bit of peace or one child whose parents flatly refuse tech gadgets they say, until he is much older. I wonder if they have another baby now & then another a year or so after that, if they will still have the same attitude to distraction & keeping them quiet.

We were brought up so differently back in those dark ages. No electricity – but that is similar to now with the load shedding – no tv – but that is the same as now as they are all on their devices anyway. We were outside all day, exploring through the veldt around us, working with the mombies, playing in the garden, inventing games, living fantasies, making up stories, helping in the veg garden, eating whatever was ready & ripened after a quick rinse under the tap. Our devices consisted of a watch when you turned 8 – which was when you learnt to tell the time in school anyway – a proper bicycle when you turned 10 which had to last you until you were at least 15. When i brought my kids up i remember always wanting to get them what other kids had, but even those days there wasnt that much out there. Compared to now. So much out there now; gadgets, devices, clothes – all so necessary for the child to fit in with the “cool” kids. But really, is that the way it should be?

Life has moved so fast in directions we never even imagined when we were young. Our children grew up like we wanted them to but now they are bringing up their children in a world which seems to be constantly competing & changing. I am glad i had what i had & did what i did and would love to tell my grandchildren about it but their lives are so much more advanced they regard my stories with disbelief & boredom, maybe when they are older they would appreciate them more. But I am glad that I know all I know & learnt all i did – always learn from life.

moving

i feel rather drained. Hard to explain really. I needed to suddenly move what once was my household from the storage room it was in, to a cottage in a retirement complex. I haven’t had a proper home for nearly six years now, but my whole aim in these years was to try and make a home. Of course, with the constant moving, slowly all the ‘things’ which once made up my home have been sorted, resorted, stolen, broken, discarded; whittled down to boxes I haven’t really looked in for a long time. So much that was important and precious, that I guarded and protected in the first kms of my journey, I have now given or thrown away. I have reached the stage that if I haven’t needed it in a year then it must go. A whole antique sea chest that held my collections of vintage tea cups and bowls, baby clothes, children’s memories and I actually cannot remember what else, I never opened again and one day handed to someone I passed by in life.

when I get a chance to open a box I often wonder why I kept some of the items in it – what meaning did they have to me at the time of packing that I went to so much trouble to lug around for so long and now realise I didn’t want or need it. Some boxes have been a good surprise of things I did need, often things I needed enough to have to buy again, so ended up with two. Then I will unpack a box from another stage of my journey & find I have another of the same thing as I obviously needed it again. Things. I have outgrown, memories that were so important to me at one stage that now don’t seem that meaningful. This journey has taught me so much, I have changed. And I now know the meaning of the saying”if i knew then what i know now”.

Now i know a memory is not a ‘thing’ its an experience remembered and felt. Its the dreams attempted, the mistakes made, the loves that slipped away because i thought differently. This journey has made me learn that in life you don’t need all the things you want. I wish i had known this when i was young, to savour every moment and experience as that is what life is about, not the furniture, the clutter, the over abundance of cutlery crockery for “in case” times. It was nice to have these things but now i look back and see how the whole story about growing up, getting married, making a home, has one huge flaw. Its a way of tying you down, it ties you to earning in a job you slave at to get things you don’t need to impress people you cannot call true friends.

But then i look at so many people who seem to have succeeded at doing this, why was i different, why did i feel that there was something around the corner for me that was more interesting, exciting, fun, fulfilling, rewarding? Would i be able to go back to that life, the one of a house full of things with a partner who over time you become compalcent and often condescending of and children who grow up and no longer respect your views and opinions. There is meant to be love, family, home, but i keep looking behind the curtains of other peoples lives to see if they found this, because i certainly didn’t and perhaps was too self centred to try and see beyond the flaws.

My life journey gets more complicated now because as i moved my ‘things’ into a tiny cottage in a retirement complex – a place i never wanted to be and feel too old to be in, a place in an area of a town which was once majestic and stately and is now run down and over run by vendors and car washes and run down streets and suburbs with bars and shebeens and constant noise. As i moved the above, 300km away where i work , i also am moving. from the room in the most beautiful house on the banks of a river to a badly built cottage, one of 6 erected as fast as possible with no thought to situation or future. They are a fish bowl of cottages. In this cottage there is nothing, not a bed a chair or curtain and i need some of the things in the boxes in the cottage 300km away. I only have one bed but now need two. So do i buy more ‘things’ to live in a cottage in a place where i work all and every day and only sleep in at night, squeezing in moments to sleep a little later or to sit watching the animals or to walk in the beautiful bush? Looking towards the few days a month when i get to time off and go to my cottage in the retirement complex where i don’t want to be, but where i will have the time to sit and watch the world go by & sleep late and blob amongst noise and stress and tension.

I started this post wanting to explain how drained i feel, not to feel sorry for myself but to try and see a way to get around this feeling of hopelessness. I am not just moving house. I am caught between two spaces, neither of which feel like home, both of which feel like compromises. It’s like being pulled between what I have to do and what I had hoped for, but neither one is giving me the rest and feeling of achievement I want.

small intentional steps, repeated daily, become a habit

1st day of April – for some reason it seems a milestone moment in my head. Its the beginning of my birthday month – always a good thing except it means I am nearly a year older! This April is a moving month for me as I have another cottage to move to where I work and a cottage to where my “stuff” can now live. Hopefully in my future I can join these two together or its going to be a spaced out journey ahead of me. April is also Easter month, but this year I wont be with my grandkids – I miss them

I have been sick these last few days – still not totally on top of it but know today that its definitely not malaria. Hate being sick, because I am on my own I always feel sorry for myself. But I am on the mend now so I will be fine. Caught up on my reading, building small habits, showing up for myself everyday and learning to move in the right direction. I never really knew the meaning of atomic – 1/ an extremely small amount of a thing; the single irreducible unit of a larger system 2/ the source of immense energy or power.

When things go wrong in my life, I have always looked at it as though it was somehow my fault. I look back at the series of hills of my life with the valleys being the results of some of my more crazy decisions. But, actually, I was building new habits, one small step at a time. The habits were against what suited others, which is why very often they were looked at as failures but I am now at a point in life where all that I have done & all that I have learnt has come together and I can accomplish so much more then is expected. In this past year, I have slowly changed the way I am looking at things & I realise that even my failures are achievements – no-one else has done what I have done because they were scared to take the step or make the small atomic change. I have learnt at the end of each day to take time to reflect on my day and see how it went & make a plan how to move forward with purpose.

Oh the baboons!!! They are very annoying at the moment. As I lay on my bed trying to sleep through my nasty bug, they were holding World War three outside my bedroom window. I didn’t have the energy to go & tell them to shut up, so they decided they had my whole garden to themselves & that was where they needed to have their tribal fight or whatever is going on with them. There has been a very thin lioness spotted in the area, so it could be that they are shouting at her, but their troops seem to have multiplied & we now have big males that I haven’t seen around before. Yesterday they rearranged the Guesthouse. Can’t help but have an “I told you so” moment privately to myself there, as I have been warning for a while that the baboons were getting closer to the open lounge kitchen area, and they should always have a staff member there. Yesterday lunchtime, they redecorated everywhere – the lounge cushions were scattered all the way down to the river, all the beautiful, very expensive cookie jars filled with rusks & biscuits lay shattered. I wonder if any shards of glass were ingested with the biscuits? And of course their messy smelly calling cards everywhere!! But the noise carries on – as I sit here this morning, the sun is slowly lightening the outdoors, but the baboons have been shouting since early hours – noisy things.

Here’s to all blessings at the start of my birthday month xxxxxxx

building small habits

I have heard so much about the book Atomic Habits that I was quite surprised when I saw it in a grungy little bookshop in Chiredzi yesterday – for usd20. I didn’t think, I just bought it as I was so excited. So immediately I broke the minimalism habit I am trying to attain, of not spending money unless absolutely necessary so that I can get to a place of security, comfort, fulfilling all I want to do. Not sure if I have enough years left to achieve this but I had started as best I could. Anyway I bought the book and have started reading it. Its good – not sure if usd20 good as yet but maybe I will get there.

so I wanted to tell you more about my walks these past few days. I love this river in front of the house and its been awesome to live in this house with the river flowing. Its a dry river so only flows when the dam upstream overflows and we have had quite a good rainy season in the surrounding areas this year and the river has stayed flowing since New Years Eve. I try nd walk in the river every evening, just walking in the sinking wet sand or pushing my legs as exercise against the flowing water. More often then not I end off sitting in the water watching the baboons cross to their roosts in the trees. It becomes a game between us of their dancing challenges and antics showing off. The sun will set while I am down there and when it is definitely below the tree line I make my way in the early darkness back to the house.

Saturday I think I mentioned we normally have the afternoon free if no clients or nothing is needed at work. I try and cram a whole weeks worth of life into the afternoon and one thing is a long drive or walk. This past Saturday I decided to walk up the rivulet river to the crossing by guest house and then back down on the road, I think its maybe 2km or a bit less, not far but in the wet sand its a nice work out. When I got into the bed there were 3 dsaddle billed storks parading up the river. Stunning beautiful birds, like passing thoughtful professors in the University of Life. I followed after them watching their sudden unbending into excited flapping bouncing chickens as they saw a frog or some delicacy, then they would fold their wings / arms behind their backs again and carry on pacing. I was walking on the opposite river bank, meandering amongst the stones & close to the border of overgrown bushes, when I heard a growl.

I actually thought I hadn’t heard it so stopped to listen closer, straining my eyes to see through the leaves less then a meter from me. The growl sounded again, a sort of panting purry growl, grunt. Not one but two. Two of something grurring at me, not exactly angrily but warning. Staying as still as I could but moving backwards as rapidly as I could, hoping I could develop eyes in the back of my head & wings on my feet to elevate me over the rocks, while keeping my gaze firmly on the bushes where I knew something was watching me. I arrived back on the other side of the river, still with my gaze fixed on the bushes. Then I had the decision of going back to where I had started or carrying on forward, I was closer to where I was aiming for so started moving forward, much faster then I had before and with my head constant swivelling checking around me.

The rest of my walk went fine. I actually don’t remember it as my heart was racing so much. But I met up with some people and told them about it and they said oh sorry you aren’t on the same chat group!!!! Leopards are mating in that area. Ridiculous that I am not on the chat group seeing as I spend a lot of time walking but that is normal in this company I have noticed. But can you imagine? I was right next to mating leopards! My walks have been shorter and in the opposite direction since then. The leopards went on for 3 days! Amazing.

half day saturdays

We work every day of the week here – 7 days a week 6 to 6. Then we are supposed to have 6 days off each month. It doesn’t work like that because of the workload and time sensitive submissions of different financial docs & wages or orders from the camps. Its all about timing – I have to time my off time as its far to travel to either my parents or to my son, so travel in time off takes up at least two days. Then I have to try & squeeze in everything most people do over a month. Its draining working like this and I have really battled to adjust as I no longer really have time to myself, time to make a home & be creative which is my outlet – cooking, sewing, knitting. I try and fit exercise into my day by yoga at 4am and sneaking out of the office for a 20 min walk then in the evenings I try walk or go down & play with the baboons in the river. But I don’t feel as though I am really fulfilling much any more.

Its all about focus though, I have realised. Learning to appreciate all the small pieces in my day where I do what boosts me. Some mornings – like today – I haven’t done yoga. Saturdays, if we have no pressure from clients in camps or urgent repairs, we get an afternoon downtime. Very often, sadly, I get home & just fall asleep. Such a waste of free time! So now I plan my Saturdays and try & have a balance – I need the rest of sleeping & blobbing, but I also need to see something different so now I plan picnics. I pack a small picnic and then just drive. I don’t get lost so often now which helps as it can be nerve-wracking, but I explore when I am lost as well so it works out as a boost to my brain anyway – and isn’t there a saying – Do one thing every day that scares you. Some of my getting lost experiences make up for at least week of fear.

But here I go – time to get ready for work. I should give myself longer in the morning to write proper things in here, so I will work on that. I will get into a groove of making sure I have at least 30mins some time during the day to write things about my life that I often wish there was someone out here I could talk to about. But there isn’t, only the baboons. Who are currently making a heck of a noise outside my window as the morning wakes up. Its still a little dark and there they go – the francolin have said good morning to the sun – that is always my sign that the day is starting, when I hear the francolin. But the baboons are shouting so it must mean there is a leopard of lion walking round. Let me dash down to the river bank & see if I can see anything – Have a good day

been away a while

I haven’t written here in so long and it seems there are a lot of changes – in my life and to the WordPress life it seems. I came home last night feeling that something was missing – I need to do more things fulfilling, I need to feel the creativity and relaxation I used to feel from what I do. All I seem to do now is work. From 6:30am to sometimes7pm, 7 days a week. I have lost my life and life is passing me by as I am always too tired to do the things I love like knitting, crocheting, writing, and creating. I hardly cook anymore and if I do it’s purely to make meals to last me the next couple of days – I get the urge & want to make things I see on social media but it’s to find the time and the mood.

Life has changed so much for me in only 4 years and somewhere I lost myself. I am 59 years old this year and haven’t been able to find a job that suits my passion. I work in a beautiful area I wanted to be in but am in an office in front of a computer all the time. I am surrounded by the bush and wild animals but I only truly have the opportunity to… see them before 6:30 and after 6pm. It’s a good thing that some, like the Nyala and baboons walk around the workshops and HQ and even here outside my bedroom window – or I would basically be the same as living in the middle of a city.

Let me tell you how I live – it won’t be for much longer but it’s certainly the best place I have lived in since my days in Chirundu. This is a beautiful thatched roof curvy house built about 20 years ago. I love all the Spanish curvy Meditteranean effects, the tiles, the nooks and crannies – but sadly I won’t be here much longer and the couple moving in after me have a lot of changes they want to make. But I am grateful for the few months I have spent here. The house is right on the river and although there are other houses in the area, we are remote from each other. I moved in first as they had nowhere to put me and I took over the main bedroom with its ensuite dressing room and bathroom

Oops gotta go – time is up – alarm says I must start getting ready for work

Now I am back I will make sure I carry on

time goes past so fast

Every day I try to write something and every day I think to myself, I must get onto my wordpress site and write what I am thinking or observing because, human nature, I have this opinion that people find what I think and say interesting!

But then my day gets under way and I get distracted and other things take up my time and suddenly it’s the end of the day and I am too tired to write but now I also have an experience or observation during the day which I am sure will be of interest to someone. And suddenly my days catch up with each other and all my interesting things become mundane as time passes or lose the effect they would have had if I had just gotten down and made the time to share. Also, so often what I thought was such a brilliant insight into life at the beginning of the day is suddenly overshadowed by something else I think is more insightful.

It gets confusing trying to keep all my ideas in order so that one day I can get down to keeping up my writing. But then the other day I noticed how time has gone past, how much has changed in my life and how, as time goes by, I am not saying the right things to the right people. Those people who mean so much to me or to my life. My circles.

I have written down a lot of things but what about saying them to that person. The memories which have been made are there in my head but did the person who made them with me know what I was thinking or experiencing at that time.

Time goes past too fast and we need to say the things at the time, we need to write the observations at the time, we need to keep our memories.

Life Changing Moments or Moments Changing Life

It never ceases to amaze me how much more I achieve when pushed to my limits. How I cope so much better then I expect to, how inventive I become and how much I realise about myself.

Covid changed so much for so many and we have all come out the other side realising we have to learn a new way of living. I have always believed that we should treat this Earth we live on with care and mindfulness. It is a living breathing being as we are and we know if we neglect or mistreat ourselves then we get hurt and get sick, so why not the Earth as well?We have been going along creating damage and pollution everywhere we step on this planet; taking out the natural trees and plant life to build towns, using up all the water resources, killing the animals. The Earth is hurting and so it has started fighting back. The virus has forced people to sit back and take stock and learn how to slow down. We had to learn new ways of interaction and survival.

I live in a beautiful valley surrounded by wildlife and beautiful African bush. Its hot and uncomfortable and difficult, but the rewards are the stunning sunrises and sunsets and the constant interaction with the wild and the River.

We were trying to start a new venture with not much backing but really loving what we were doing, so it was back to basics. All my household was put into storage and the first couple of months ourselves and our two cats lived in a small tent under the huge riverine trees on the banks of the Zambezi River. No electricity, no running water, no cooking facilities and just the basics. We operated with solar lights and a small solar system we connected which gave us lights for part of the night and sort of ran a temperamental little freezer. We had an ablution building but the toilet was a wobbling white throne with no seat, the shower wasn’t connected to pipes and there were no windows or doors. No kitchen, we cooked out in the open under a huge Wild Mango tree. We had an old upright gas stove, a proper antiquated think with the toaster at the top and the oven under. It worked beautifully once I figured the wind directions, dropping mangoes or marauding monkeys.

The tent would not survive the Valley storms and we couldn’t find a house so moved the Houseboat which hadn’t been used in a year off the River & onto land. A carpenter came each day to build a set of steps from the ground all the way up to the deck. It took him 5 days and about ten bottles of an unknown drink which seemed to help his work and inventiveness and we ended up with steps which looked like they came from that rhyme about the crooked house. There were no handrails and they were quite steep but the cats & myself learnt to get up & down very nimbly, especially in the sudden downpours of rain which came with force and wind and buckets of water.

Living in the houseboat was, I think, one of the most beautiful places I have lived. There were no windows but canvas flaps which I kept up as much as possible & became very adept at closing at speed when the rain came. We were never hassled by bugs or mosquitoes and always had cooling breezes. I lay on our huge mattress at the one end of the boat & just had to angle my head slightly to be able to look over the edge at the powerfully flowing water and had panoramic views of the bush around and across the River to Zambia. We were in the tress with the birds and monkeys who used to watch us watching them, very confused that we were so high.

We stayed in the boat for five months and in that time completed a kitchen area under roof as well right on the banks of the river and protected by shade netting. Still often visited by the leguaans, monkeys and baboons but they couldn’t get to anything as we had installed a huge metal locker cupboard plus we now also had a small fridge. Our solar system increased to the point where our lights lasted all night and I could even use my sewing machine. We had wifi so music played constantly and we had solar fans plus lights. The ablutions were completed so I could no longer sit on my throne and watch the river flowing past and the shower worked so I didn’t carry a bucket any more. It was perfect and I realised it was all we actually needed. I missed a few of the more essential items in storage but we survived without them anyway.

It couldn’t last. Someone bought my house and took it off to fix it up and I believe it has changed completely now. We are back to living in a house. Back to windows which have to be closed as the electric lights attract bugs. Back to curtains which have to be drawn as we are worried about who is watching us. Back to fans and air conditioners which make so much noise I can no longer hear the sounds of the Bush.

Worrying Times

There are probably millions of blogs out there similar to this at these times. We are all so worried. Living in these times is like all of the sci-fi, drama virus infection movies we have ever watched.
Where I live where all news and coverage of the virus in the country is blocked or hidden, we rely on rumours and word of mouth opinion. Rumours and stories are rife. I have been reassured that this virus has been in Zimbabwe for many years anyway and nothing has been done about it. I have been told that our immune systems are so strong in this country because we have been exposed to such a variety of diseases, viruses, and infections due to our lack of municipal infrastructure, the general lack of interest by the population to make an effort to clean up and with no medicines and medical facilities or money available, the coronavirus is just added to the list and won’t affect us.
Slowly countries around us are shutting down. Borders are closing; South Africa is going into lockdown today I think, deploying the army around the country to enforce this. Flights from most major international airports are cancelled. A funny thing though, a day or two ago I noticed a news article lauding the Zimbabwe Government on the purchase of its one and only operational viscount aeroplane. All our others are broken down in other countries.
Watching News from around the world I keep wondering if I am in a surreal science fiction movie. I had this feeling as I watched the planes hitting the Twin Towers on September 11 as well.
The false news and propaganda have me pushing down my feelings of panic and just getting on with working and doing what I have to do. There is no way we are going to be able to fight this in this border town but staying healthy and positive would be a good start.
I live in the border town of Chirundu, working in an oasis 2km from the dirty border Chirundu border post. An area described on Trip Advisor as the armpit of the country. We have no municipal trash collection services in the whole country but especially not in Chirundu. It is a very small town that has grown up around the servicing of the long queues of trucks that get stopped at the border for days at a time waiting for clearance into Zambia. The drivers of these trucks travelling from South Africa or Mozambique ports need places to sleep, food to eat and the other comforts of the night – lots of alcohol and of course prostitutes. For up to 35km along the degraded and dilapidated road you have a queue of trucks throwing the litter out of the window, washing and doing their ablutions on the side of the road and eating as much junk food as they can. We ride through a sea of plastic bags, take away containers, chip packets, broken glass, and plastic bottles and containers, used condoms, etc, etc. Wildlife is around us but is slowly being driven further away, we frequently see elephant, buffalo, hippo, crocodiles on the road, signs of lion, leopard and other night-time explorers and I beg them silently in my head toot go foraging too close to the town or they will be hurt or poached. Elephants are deliberately ridden into by the big trucks as then they will have to be shot by National Parks and then there will be free meat. We see the elephant droppings full of plastic, paper money, pot scourers and other things they have scavenged from the trash dumped all around. Baboons are everywhere breaking and destroying vehicles and buildings to get to the food. The smaller vervet monkeys are also around but are not as brave as the baboons venturing among the populace and rather stay around the camps and houses.
For myself, I feel I am strong enough to withstand this infection. With this around me, I know I am going to get it, if not have it already but I am strong and healthy. I cry a lot these days because I wish I could be with my family at this time but I must stay away as I know I would carry it to them. My little grandbabies in the centre of the countries are protected on their little farm, I worry about the little one with asthma and hope she gets through this, I worry about my pregnant daughter in law – will it work out ok.
I mainly worry about my aging parents far far away on the other border of Zimbabwe next to Mozambique. I have this horrible doomed feeling inside me – my dad is badly asthmatic, has heart problems plus is diabetic, my mum is diabetic, has osteoporosis arthritis, just had an op which went septic and she is still mending.
I can’t be there to help them I can’t be there to protect them and it makes me so very very sad.

What happened

On Sunday I worked with my partner running a bar at a function held at the Airport. We started packing up the bar by 5pm when it started raining, loading all our cold boxes, trestle tables and stock onto our 7tonne truck. I left the airport at about 6:15pm driving in my Rav4J in front of the truck. I was going very slowly as I was concerned about the truck on the muddy dirt road. It was very dark and raining heavily and on reaching the strip tar road I had to wait for traffic, visibility was very bad. On the strip road itself I hadn’t gone very far when I came up behind a pickup loaded down with wood parked in the middle of the road with no lights on. I was going very slowly after that making sure the truck was always safe behind me.

Once reaching the full tar road I came to a point where there was a curve then the road went uphill slightly. At the top of the rise there were a lot of headlights shining and I realised there was an accident and slowed down on approaching.

There was a white SUV type vehicle slightly off the road on my left with its front passenger side in the bushes. Directly in the left hand path of the road a Honda Fit was parked across, its front facing the right side of the road but the right side of the road was mostly open, the boot of the vehicle was standing open. I saw a young European man standing in the middle of the road with blood running down his face so I stopped and ran to him to see what I could do.

He didn’t seem badly hurt, the blood on his face seemed to be coming from a gash on his forehead but he seemed to move ok and there was no other injury noticeable. He was dazed and very shaken and all he said was please can you help me please can you call my brother Michael Bailey at the airport. I realised he must have been one of the son’s of someone who I work with at the school, but I didn’t recognise him as I dont know him very well.

I went back to my car to get my phone. I had parked in such a way that my lights and hazard lights were lighting up the area around the Fit and beyond. I called my partner and told him quickly to get the boy’s brother to come.  I told the driver of my truck behind me that I was going to wait for the brother to come then we would go. The road was very busy and I was worried as being on the curve, my truck was also now becoming a hazard.

I noticed on the far side of the Fit a lot of people milling around, about ten to fifteen and I noticed parked along the left verge beyond the Fit there were four other vehicles with people inside them and standing next to them, their lights were all on and I remember 3 small cars similar to the Fit and a minibus, all loaded with boxes and bags on roofs. People were taking belongings and bags out of the Fit and were moving to these other taxis. There was a man who seemed to be in charge of everyone, helping them get their stuff and talking, he had a white bag slung across his chest. I remembered listening to them talk about ZRP so I presumed he had phoned them. He was taking stuff from the open back of the Fit and passing it to people.

The young man sat down on the ground by the front wheel of the Fit and I was worried he was in shock so I tried to keep talking to him reassuring him his brother was on the way. I asked him if he had all his belongings like wallets & phones out of his car and he said he had someone elses phone on him. I was very worried about the bang on his head and shock setting in but he was very quiet and restrained.

While crouched down next to him I noticed that the Fit’s park lights were on but the main lights were off and the engine was still running. I called to the men talking on the other side of the Fit that I thought we should turn the engine off as I was worried about fuel spillage. The man with the white bag came and switched off the vehicle, I had assumed from his actions and behaviour that he was the driver.

While the vehicle was being turned off I moved to the back of the Fit and noticed a pile of clothes in the back which seemed to be moving, there were pieces of wood on the road and there seemed to be material hanging out of the back of the boot. I wondered what was under the moving material but I didn’t look closely and as none of the other people at the vehicle seemed to be paying much attention to it, I presumed it was a goat or something they were transporting. No-one had really been around the back of the vehicle except the man with the white bag and he had also been taking various people around to the passenger side of the white SUV and they were looking at something but I never checked what. At various times, the man with the bag and two other of the men around the vehicles said to me that I should take the boy to the hospital but I replied that his brother was coming and he would deal with it.

The brother arrived and the young boy broke down and was crying and crying.

I was very worried about the amount of traffic backing up behind my truck and being on a curve like we were it was a dangerous area even though we had hazards flashing. The rain had subsided but there was still a light drizzle. I signaled to the driver we were going and climbed back in my car and started pulling away. As I came along side the young men around the boy I said to them they must try and keep him warm as I was worried about shock and the one man reassured me that it was ok they would look after him. I drove around the Fit and paused on the far side to make sure my truck got around ok and while waiting I noticed that all the taxis and minibus which had been parked on the verge were now gone. There was still a lot of traffic on the road though.

I was involved in this over the weekend and it has really shaken me, this is part of the statement I had to submit to the police. The taxi situation in this country is the most awful and totally out of control. There is no control of them by the police and the drivers very often have no licences and the taxis are in the most un-roadworthy condition. I fight every day coming to work and going home as I have to be constantly alert for which side of the road these lunatics decide to drive on, decide to overtake on, decide to stop on. They have no manners, no worry about other road users and definitely no concern for their passengers – the amount of accidents they have caused where the passengers have been hurt or killed and the driver gets out of the vehicle and runs away.

The pile of clothing in the back of the car was a body, the young boy was unlicensed and had been drinking. It was a dark and rainy night and almost positively this Fit had no rear lights showing. There was a man leaning over the back of the car lifting his luggage and wood into the Fit, the impact severed his body in half.

The sad thing is that nothing has been done about the fact the vehicle was stopped in the middle of the road with no lights in such bad conditions, the focus is totally on the young boy being unlicensed, probably not sober and white.