Rescued

I had a Uganda moment yesterday.

Late morning, I parked outside a small supermarket, the Co-op, went in to buy a few necessaries, came out - and found my car leaning ominously down on its back haunch. Flat tyre.

My immediate thought was, "Oh bother, I'm not in Uganda any more!" Because the numerous times I had punctures in Uganda (and in Zimbabwe), somebody always appeared at the roadside, walked over and offered to help, fixed it in very short shrift, accepted some small amount of money and disappeared again. In fact, once, I phoned Dan from beside the Kampala Road at 7.45 am, because I had had a puncture and I had two small children in the back of the car, and even though I know HOW to change a wheel, I couldn't even lift a Prado wheel off the ground. Dan's reply - "Don't worry-  somebody will show up and help you soon." Shocking as this show of unspousely lack of concern might well seem... and much as your husbands would probably have jumped in a neighbour's car and rushed to the scene to rescue you... of course he was right, and the minute I hung up the phone, two men sloped up and offered to help me.

Once when I hit a huge pothole and got a flat tyre literally in the middle of nowhere, when we hadn't seen a mud hut nor a village for miles and miles and miles, when we had been driving along a dirt road passing nothing but dried brown grass and tall red anthills for hours, not even seeing a person on a bike for ever - even then, three men appeared from the bush and changed the wheel for us.

But in England, that does not happen. Here you have to change your own tyre... I opened the back and poked around under the flooring thing, and managed to locate the spare and the jack. I pulled out the jack a bit pathetically, thinking, "Oh dear, it's a long time since I did this..." (twenty years?)

But then, up came a cheery-looking chap with a beanie on. "You look like you're struggling with that!"
It was one of our Redcliffe students, Graham, who is even in Dan's tutor group! I felt like an angel had just appeared! I could have kissed him!

In ten minutes he had changed the wheel and I was back on the road...

Another one for my list!! A big one.