Yet Another Adventure

When you read this I will be winging my way across the Atlantic. So looking forward to enjoying fall again. Sweaters, boots, tights, brisk breezes, ahhhh!

Our last few shopping trips have been pretty ordinary. I guess it was time for an adventure. Keep reading to find out what happened.

A couple weeks ago we traveled to Mansa via Terra Nova Farm where Tom stopped to work some more on the French Trough that is running along the driveway and making the place look so posh that people keep stopping at the gate hoping to get a room at our luxury resort. :)

I meanwhile worked on the security guard’s time sheet. We have a nice system of buttons which he scans with a wand so we know he’s made his rounds each night. We then pay him according to the amount of rounds he makes each night—up to 12. This gives us peace of mind and keeps him on track. Once I’d done this I fell asleep in our cozy little security house while Chewy kept me company.

We moved Chewy to the farm a few months ago since he was not happy at the Children’s Home. He was much more likely to be found mixing it up with the female dogs of the village. It made more sense to move him to a less populated area where he could also work off his adolescent energy.—much like the plan for Terra Nova Farm ultimately. We plan to move our older children there so they can study half the day and spend the rest of the day working off extra teenage hormones/energy on the farm. Chewy is just the pioneer. LOL And he loves it there. Every time we drive in he runs up with a huge doggy smile on his face. His coat is shiny and sleek again. Makes my heart happy.

When we reached Mansa we visited a few government offices, shops, and the bank before they closed just to tick a few things off our fairly extensive list.

That evening we spent at a hotel preparing for the big push of the next day. It was an early night to bed so we could rise early the next day.

Friday got off to a good start. I finally managed to find clear glue for a fun project I want to do. (I’ll share it when I do.) We went to the bank again and then I headed in to Shoprite—our grocery store—while Tom went to run around to all the various shops that are necessary to completing a shopping trip: hardware stores (yes, plural), agriculture store, animal feed, granary, etc.

My time in the grocery store is worthy of its own post so I’ll have to do that some time. Did I tell you all that our store burned down last year? It did! And the temporary store they put up during construction is tiny! It’s quite an adventure getting all our list filled. But, I managed—and in pretty good time too.

When Tom came to pick me and the dozen crates, boxes and 60 cabbages up he assured me he only had a few errands to run and then we could be on our way. It was approaching noon, so this was good news.

Tom wanted to get the truck checked out because an odd light had come on the dash and we weren’t sure what it meant. The truck was running well, but we wanted to get ahead of any issues. We went to a mechanic we’ve worked with before. The shop came well recommended so that was reassuring. This day however, Tom and I both noticed that the mechanic looked a little hung over. Unfortunately this isn’t an uncommon thing to see in laborers so we didn’t pay it a whole lot of attention. (I wish we had though)

I decided to leave Tom to sort out the truck issues and to pick up the remaining hardware items while I walked to the lunch counter to get our order started since it can take a while.

My food had just arrived when I got a phone call from Tom. 

It went like this:

Tom: Our mechanic has hit a pedestrian and the police have impounded our truck.

Me: That’s not remotely funny. I don’t like that joke.

Tom: I wish I were joking. It really happened.

Me: …….

Tom: I’ll call you back when I know more.

Tom tracked down our truck and got the story from the police. Apparently our mechanic had swerved off the road while looking at the dashboard and hit a pedestrian hard enough to snap off the side mirror. When the door popped open and he saw someone lying on the ground he panicked and swerved back on the road (with the door still hanging open) and hit a car. To his misfortune (though we were grateful) a police officer in another car observed the whole thing and immediately arrested him. We were also so thankful that the impact with the other car did no damage to our truck.

As per procedure our truck was impounded and taken to the police station while the investigation could be carried out. This was worrisome to us as all our belongings were in the cab—including our two laptops—and two weeks’ worth of groceries (perishables too) were in the truck bed.

Thanks be to God, nothing was damaged or stolen.

Now came the waiting game. We had to sit outside the station in the hot sun waiting for the police to take statements from everyone involved and eventually formally charge the mechanic with drunken driving, driving without a license, reckless driving, and fleeing an accident. Whew! We were so glad that we weren’t dragged in to the situation—just inconvenienced.

Another good thing was that the mechanic shop is actually owned by a good Christian family and one of the owners came right over to inspect the damage to our truck and find a replacement mirror. The police wouldn’t release our vehicle until we had that repaired.

Four hours later we were finally able to finish our last couple errands and get on the road. Driving at dark is never fun—and less so on pothole covered roads, but we were so glad that we were actually getting to go home and our truck was not incapacitated. We pulled into the gate at 8:30 PM

God continues to look after us in the midst of our adventures.

And that dashboard light? Turns out that trucks have something called an engine brake that you can use when going downhill to save your brakes and gears. Who knew? We didn’t! Apparently the day before when Tom had the truck cleaned someone had bumped the switch and turned the engine brake on. The light was just letting us know it was on. Steep learning curve (see what I did there??), but that’s life.