"On the Way..."

Last Sunday we headed off to church, as normal.  Someone asked me if the direction we were going we would encounter traffic.  My response was:  "Usually going this direction, no we move along pretty good."  Boy, was I wrong this time!

About 25 minutes from the church, we encountered a slow down in traffic...then an absolute stop.  We waited about 20 minutes and then moved on. 

The problem was, it had been raining that day.  At home this is really no big deal.  In Africa it is.  The roads are narrow, mud often slides onto the roads, vehicles are terribly overloaded, and tires generally have little to no treads.  All a recipe for disaster. 

On Sunday, this was the mess.  A truck was turned sideways on the road with its front wheels sunk into the soft mud along the side of the road.  Creating a virtual impasse.

In my naive thinking, I thought:  "Well this should be cleared up by the time church is over" (which generally is about 2 1/2 hours)...Truly I should have known better!!

Traffic was already starting to back up on the other side of the truck...

2 1/2 hours later...

Traffic had completely backed up-added to that were the large truck which could not go around the stranded truck...

The police moved us off to the side of the road because we had four wheel drive land rovers...

My concern was, once we were moved out of the line of traffic, we would be left there and never get back into the line when it started to move.  Fortunately, the police man was watching out for us and when traffic started to move, he quickly directed us in.

As we passed the truck, again, I wondered how they were going to move it.  There are no large cranes available here-just pure man power...

It will be interesting to go by next Sunday and see if the truck has been moved or disassembled...