Road Hazards

My colleague and I wedged ourselves into an old Russian-built taxi for the trip to the airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. As we were zipping through the streets of the city, a large, blue dump truck came barreling at us from a side street.

Great ... 10 minutes left in the country, and we’re gonna have a wreck. After having safely negotiated 795 miles of rural roads, what irony! A few seconds of creative driving prevented any paint from being exchanged, and we continued on.

Vic Hess, Coordinator of JAARS Transportation Assessment, and I had been asked to do a survey to help find solutions for the travel challenges faced by translation teams in Ethiopia. These include: lack of effective rural air service, the high cost of vehicles, training for drivers and mechanics, and safety issues.

During a four-day trip down-country, we experienced what seemed to be a road hazard every 15 seconds: broken-down trucks, rocks, people, donkeys, baboons, cattle, logs, busted asphalt, and enough potholes to make the moon look like glass.

In Africa, roads range from asphalt, to broken pavement, gravel, dirt, sand, or just a track. During the dry season, when an oncoming vehicle passes, you must stop in order to avoid hazards hidden by the thick cloud of dust. Thankfully, speeds on rural roads are slow enough to prevent most serious accidents.

During the wet season, the expanses of highland terrain induce thunderstorms, rain and flash floods. In the remote places where translators and literacy personnel work, roads go right through streambeds, some 100 meters across and five meters deep. A worker we talked with recounted how he was once caught in a flash flood. The water overturned his vehicle, and he was barely able to get his family out before it was swept away.

Clearly, translation teams in this part of the world need innovative transportation solutions.

This story originally appeared in "Getting There," the Spring 2006 issue of Rev. 7.