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October 20th, 2007, Our Rover, by Jim Newton
To Rotary, and all the Friends of Edzimkulu.
Sometimes we think that all our stories of Africa will be about transport. The day before yesterday we took delivery of a beautiful, almost new (28,000 km), 2006 Land Rover Defender – an incredible donation by Rotary Clubs of Edmonton Glenora, Edmonton South and the Rotary Club of Edmonton, in conjunction with the Hilton-Howick Rotary here in South Africa.
For those of you not familiar with “Rovers” they are the archetypical safari vehicle in Africa, used almost exclusively off road to get into places where nothing else will go. Minutes after driving away from the dealership we picked up two new volunteers at the bus stop in front of the ubiquitous McDonald’s in Pietermaritzburg, sweating in the 36 degree heat, grateful for the air conditioning we would enjoy on the 130 km ride home. None of our other vehicles have working air con and between the three of them have clocked 850,000 kilometres. This new Rover is a significantly different vehicle, not solely because it is so new.
The next morning we left Douglas Drift at 4:30 AM to drive to Ndawana, pick up Busi Duma and Sara Jongisa, one of our nurses, and continue on to the village of Mangeni, one of the new communities where we work, to do the weekly blood collection. An all-night rain had left the road in very bad condition. They are rebuilding the road, adding lots of road crush, but the 6 km from Tsawule school to the turnoff to Victor Vane’s house has no crush and it is a very scary, slippery swamp. To go off the road is to roll about 1,000 feet to the river below. There was a heavy mist, which made the going even slower.
At Mangeni, we forded the small stream, then turned right, heading what seemed straight up the mountain. The Rover has full-time 4 wheel drive, which can be shifted into low range. It also has differential lock, which splits the power 50/50 front to back, and non-slip axles, which prevents one wheel on an axle from spinning while the other has no power. A very efficient set of drive options. All were in play climbing the mountain. We were heading for Victor Vane’s house to take his blood for a baseline test, re-doing it because his first baseline showed he was having trouble with his TB medications. The distance up and across the mountain is about 7 km which takes some 30 minutes, depending on how treacherous the road is at any given time.
When we were about two km. from Victor’s house, in the community of Sangweni, a man on a horse appeared out of the mist and stopped us. He told us that his daughter was very ill and he needed our help. Since he was a neighbor of Victor’s we went to his house first. We found his daughter on a mattress on the floor, heavily wrapped in blankets against the cold. She is epileptic, age 16, and had been having severe, uncontrollable seizures all night. We put her in the back of the Rover, with her mother, who was required to go with her to the hospital as her caregiver. She had several seizures in the three hours and 70 km from pickup to delivery to the Underberg clinic, for pickup again by an ambulance and transfer to St. Apollinaris hospital, another 50 km. Had we not appeared near their home, the family would have had to take the daughter down the mountain by tractor or horse, and would at that point still been some 120 km from the hospital.
But we had come for Victor’s blood, and we learned that he was at his sister’s place, another 2 km further down the road. Having drawn his blood, we still had to go to another community, so we drove most of the way down the mountain, in low range and diff lock, feeling the vehicle slip repeatedly, and turned onto a track toward the community of Lernford. The road, literally no wider than the Rover, led down a hill, with a drop-off just inches from the wheels, and muddy and slippery all the way. It led across a bridge made, almost literally, from twigs, and again no wider than the vehicle. Coming back up from that location the vehicle repeatedly slipped while we all held our breaths. But none of our other vehicles could have gone where we went at all. We wouldn’t even have tried, and that’s the point. If we couldn’t have gone where we went, the people would have had to do without access to treatment.
From there we drove back to Ndawana, traveled to three houses in Ndawana to draw blood, then to the community center where blood from another 20 patients awaited transport to the Underberg Clinic. By this time it was obvious that we would miss the 10 AM deadline for blood pickup at the clinic and would have to drive an extra 70 km to Pholela, where we had until noon to deliver the blood.
This story is more harrowing than most, but the importance of transport, and the remoteness of our patients, is the most central feature of the ongoing history of Edzimkulu. People’s lives depend, almost daily, on our ability to provide transport for village people, or blood, or food, or Canadian volunteers, or to rescue someone who has broken down in some remote place. Our old vehicles are in the shop repeatedly, sometimes leaving only one on the road. The Land Rover will make a significant difference in our ability to deliver our programs, and we greatly appreciate having it.
Thank you.
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