Driving Stick In Africa

One of the roles that the volunteers here at Chaminade take on is transporting students to the hospital in the school car in the evening after the school driver has gone home. Driving permits cost a great deal of money here, so very few Malawians can legally drive. Since all of us Americans have valid licenses, we get called on a lot to drive.

Tonight, there were a few students in the hospital, and the school needed someone to transport food to the students. Dugan, the regular volunteer driver, had just received a phone call from his parents back in the states; and when you get a call here from the states, it takes priority over everything else. Dugan had given me a short lesson in driving an African stick-shift last week, and he deemed I was fit to drive tonight. I got the keys from Mr. Nyangulu and recruited Emily as my co-pilot.

The trip there went quite smoothly—that is if you don’t count the ten minutes it took me to get out of the garage. My first issue was the fact that there was no light in the car or the garage, and I couldn’t tell if the gear stick was in reverse. The school car is a small pick-up truck that beeps when you put it in reverse, and so I rejoiced when I finally found reverse and heard the car start to beep. But then came my second issue. I first released the foot brake and then gradually began to lift the clutch; but we didn’t go any where. I pressed the gas a little, and the engine revved, but no movement. It took me another two minutes before I realized that I still had the parking break on; this was going to be an interesting ride. Luckily, though, things went very smoothly for the rest of our trip. The highlight of the adventure was on the way home when a massive black bull ran out into the middle of the road about ten feet in front of the car chasing an only mildly smaller brown cow. Maybe they heard I was throwing rocks at one of their friends today and wanted payback.