Minibus River Ride

I’ll never forget the day I escaped death on a minibus taxi engulfed in river rapids. They say right before you die your life flashes before your eyes, but all I could think of was what an asshole daughter I’d be to make my parents travel to Africa to claim my remains.

Wendy and I were bright-eyed Peace Corps Trainees excited to visit veteran volunteer, Jenny, for a taste of life in rural Lesotho. We boarded an already over-crowded taxi at 4 a.m. My delicate American stomach immediately contested being squeezed in the hot, stuffy taxi and within an hour I was vomiting in a bag.

Each hour brought increasingly dilapidated road conditions as the relentless rains ravaged the already rutted route. We’d gotten stuck on a few precarious cliff edges where fellow passengers introduced me to new Sesotho phrases: “We’re dead”, “We’re finished” and “My God!”

While the nail biting curves and cliffs left me a nervous wreck, the driver remained imperturbable. But not even he was prepared for what came next. The rains had turned a trickle of a stream into impassable white water rapids.

With a deep sigh and a lick of his lips, the driver gripped the torn steering wheel and accelerated. My mind raced with possible escape routes. I felt for the door handle but my hand was so clammy it slipped. Then I remembered Jenny was trapped in the back seat; there would be no way to rescue her if we went down. Only fate could save us now.

Somehow the minibus managed the first few feet, but as we approached the center of the river we began to stall. Reducing our speed left us vulnerable to the swift current of the river. The taxi swerved as the back end dipped and I knew a tire had slipped off of the hidden cement bridge below. I grabbed Wendy’s hand and prayed for a miracle.

Just as I was giving up all hope, the back tire miraculously popped back up and we started moving again. Upon reaching dry land everyone in the crowded bus began screaming and chanting; some shouted praises to God and our driver, while others cursed him for tempting death.

When we finally arrived at the safety of Jenny’s village, we retold our versions of the near tragedy with panic-stricken animation. Out of sheer disbelief and post traumatic shock, we began to laugh hysterically. Processing the event together through storytelling shifted our distress to vivacity and finally gratitude. We all knew we should've died on that trip, but fate intervened. On this day we almost died, we'd never felt so alive.