Mozambique: Vilanculos..........Accident Day!

Saturday 4th July: Vilanculos, Mozambique.

So, you wake up one day and ponder how you will spend a day in paradise. Then, in the space of a few seconds, that tranquility is shattered. Read on...................

 We had breakfast on our terrace, prepared by ourselves in our own kitchen.

We then went for a drive around town and explored the outlying areas.

Aside from Casa Rex, we surely had the best spot in Vilanculos. We had lunch at a small restaurant, chatted to a young American couple who were doing an overland trip from Johannesburg to Zambia & Namibia. We drove back into town to look for the art & craft shop that Mark, the manager of Casa Cabana owns. As we slowed at a junction in town, we all saw a motorbike coming up a side road from the left. What happened next happened so fast we barely had time to register it. A biker was travelling very fast, had no helmet on and was making no attempt to stop at the stop sign as he approached the main road. He was coming from our left hand side and was approaching the point in the photo below that the vehicle is stopped at.

Worse still, he was making no attempt at avoiding us and he hit Dusty on the rear left wheel with a sickening crunch. I estimated that he was doing  30+ kms per hour as he approached us. Naturally enough, he carried on and he smashed into our rear side of our car, his head impacting the left rear side window. I have anti 'smash n' grab' film on all windows except the windscreen. It's designed to withstand great force, and possibly even bullets, not that I want to find out. In this situation, it kept most of the glass intact. Very impressive indeed.

I was out of the door as he hit the ground & of course there was a large crowd of people around anyway, as we were in the town centre. He hit the ground, face all bloodied. He jumped up immediately, fell back down & then passed out momentarily. I was convinced he was going to die right there on the spot. I’d followed his movement right to the point of impact, always expecting him to veer around behind us. It was an inexplicable and totally avoidable accident. John remained in the car & I asked someone to call the ambulance and police, which they did. As it’s a small town, I didn’t feel it would take long.

Ambulances are rare in Africa so I wasn’t sure what would happen next but I did ask about a hospital and was told there was one in town. I asked if someone could call for help & next thing the biker is back on his feet, looking very unsteady. He was clearly in shock and I was well aware that the combination of head injury & shock is about as serious as you can get. His bike was wrecked, the wheel flattened where it hit our vehicle. I realized that I was lucky he didn’t impact on the passenger door at the front because I would have been injured, possibly seriously. I was the only one sitting on the left hand side. Suddenly, he was gone, taken to the hospital by someone. The police didn’t arrive for about 15 minutes but when they did, they immediately approached John in the drivers seat & told him to get out. He was asked for his drivers licence & insurance documents which he produced. Fortunately, a couple of people had said the biker was speeding and there was no sign of any mob justice, a relief for us all.

Mel, from Casa Rex, was passing and she stopped to help us. She made a phone call to get an interpreter from the local tourist office. His name was Jonas. Mozambique is a Portuguese speaking nation & few police speak English. The police loaded his bike onto their pick up & we were asked to follow them to the police station. A young man, a fish seller, who had seen everything also travelled with us as he spoke reasonable English. When we got to the police station, our interpreter turned up soon after.  Eventually, John was taken inside along with the two English speaking men, one of whom was a witness as well. Meanwhile, I was getting a guy who was washing a car in the police yard, to clean the fragmented back window and bodywork because there was blood & bits of flesh stuck to it. John & Jonas were back out after an hour, minus his passport, drivers licence & insurance documents. We had to remain in Vilanculos another 2 nights, visit the police station tomorrow (Sunday) at 11am & again on Monday at 8am. Our main concern was for the well being of the guy that hit us. Mel, Robert & a couple of others reassured us that the locals are really tough but having watched & listened to the impact, I thought he’d need to be very tough indeed. Especially as he was not wearing a crash helmet. Of course the fact that he was injured by hitting our vehicle played heavily on our minds and we prayed he was one of the tough ones.

We were also told that he was quite drunk, which would tally with his reckless speed and inability to realise that he was going to hit us. However, if he lapsed into a coma, things would not be good. If he was drunk, that might help because he didn’t look like he braced for the collision so he would have been relaxed when he hit. All the things that were going through our minds and not knowing what was happening at the hospital, left us very concerned. We were told the hospital was good in Vilanculos. We sat around back at Casa Cabana for quite a while & then decided we’d better get some food & a change of scenery.