We landed in Zanzibar at 11 pm, still hot and exhausted from our airport battles. The next hurdle to jump over was, would our bags be there? The last time we had seen them was in Burundi and in our experience, whenever a flight is canceled… the bags go on a little vacation of their own. Thankfully, the bags were waiting for us. They were locked up in a dank musty room, but they were all there and we exited out of the airport into the night air five minutes after we arrived. We looked at each other and said, “Wow, that was easy!” We hailed a taxi, jumped in, and drove off!
Something was going to go smoothly for once, I thought, not at all like the rest of the day had gone. Then the taxi driver pulled the car over into a dark empty lot. He turned to us and said, “We are going to switch cars now.” Coffee Guy and I looked at each other, then back at him, and in unison said, “No, sir, we are not.” Except that I left out the “sir” and Coffee Guy, ever the gentleman, didn’t. The driver hesitated and then said that he just needed to get something out of the other car. My brain really does have a mind of its own, and I was thinking, “What, like a gun?” He jumped out, grabbed his cell phone, jumped back in and we were off. Dark alley crisis averted.
Five minutes down the road, the driver brought the car to a rolling stop on the shoulder of the very dark highway. It was dead. Not us (yet), but the car. The driver hopped out and got on his cell phone. Coffee Guy tried to get out to see what the problem was, but his door had been child locked. The driver peeked his head back in because we were the definition of back seat drivers by this point, yelling at him to try again. He made a half-hearted attempt to start the car from the outside, and it didn’t turnover. Meanwhile, I am trying to keep my silly brain from thinking that he has stalled the car on purpose. Back home, in South Africa, if you are in this type of situation…. the likelihood of your immanent death far outweighs the likelihood of your survival. Am I right South Africans? Holler for me!
The driver started pacing outside of the vehicle. Was he waiting for his other henchmen? Then, with no warning, he waved down another car, jumped in, and left us on the side of the highway. In that moment, in the stillness of that dark highway, in a taxi with no back window, in a country that I didn’t yet know, with a firm belief that this could quite possibly be the last place on earth I see, I prayed the most fervent prayer of my life.
Out loud. Loudly. While crying buckets.
I prayed for the little boy asleep I my arms, I prayed for the little boy tucked up in his bed in a country far away, I prayed for life. I prayed to live. I prayed for God to see us in that moment. I told God I was scared, more scared than I had ever been. In my entire life. I was angry. Angry that we were so vulnerable. Angry that there was nothing we could no, no place we could go. We had to wait.
A few minutes later, headlights appeared behind us. Our driver re-appeared and put petrol in the petrol tank, jumped in, and started driving.
I was still crying silently in the back seat. I didn’t trust that this guy was actually taking us to our hotel. Then, suddenly, the streets were full of celebrating Zanzibaris and traffic came to a halt in the middle of Eid al-Adha celebrations. People were banging on the car, jumping over the car, shouting around the car. The streets were impassable. Finally something gave, and we began weaving through the small alley-like streets of Stonetown in Zanzibar… to our hotel. As we arrived safely, our driver was not the murdering type after all, I vowed not to leave the hotel room until we departed for home. Which, of course, I didn’t do. Zanzibar is a photographer’s feast, but that’s tomorrow’s story.
Luv,
me
Kristy Carlson 