Between Teeth and Bullets
by Erik Mirandette
“We need a welder. Where are we?” I asked, frustrated and angry that one more pleading with God had gone unanswered. No sooner than we started to make some real progress toward our destination, something else broke and delayed us again.

Kris looked at a more general map of the region and pointed to the middle of a big green area south of Mpanda labeled Katavi National Park and Game Reserve.

“It looks like we’re right about here.”

The words of the man from the gas station at Sumbawanga began to ring in my head. “The lions, dey eat you. If you don’t stop, and off the road at night, maybe you make it.”

Here it was just before sunset, and we were stuck indefinitely right in the middle of a national park that was famous for lion spotting. Apparently the most unique and attractive quality of this particular stretch was that at night the lions all came to the road. Because it was so wet in this jungle, and normally lions live in dryer brush, the beasts traveled on the road at night to avoid having to walk through the tall wet grass when the dew settled.

“Even if we could get it fixed tonight, we can’t carry all our gear on just two bikes” noted Alex. “And look at your bike, Erik! The seam of your duffel’s ripped out.”

“What?” I looked, and sure enough the back of my bag was wide open and I had been spilling clothes and even a couple tools for the last, who-knew how far. It must have torn when I crashed. I couldn’t believe we didn’t notice it sooner.

“Perfect, absolutely perfect. Could things get any better?” The situation looked grim. We were stranded—out of food, out of water. And I was tired of begging God.

No one was excited about spending another night in the bush. We were already dead tired, and now it looked like it would be at least another day until we would be able to eat and rest.

Just as we were preparing to dig in for the night, we noticed something. Through the quickly fading twilight, we saw a speck of white bouncing down the road in the distance.

“What’s that?” At first I could barely make it out. “Could it be a truck?” We hadn’t seen another vehicle on this road since Sumbawanga.

It got bigger and bigger. We recognized it. It was a Land Cruiser! Kris stepped into the road and stopped the vehicle while Alex and I rushed to the window.

I couldn’t believe it. Here we were in the middle of the jungle, stranded, hopeless, all alone, and out of nowhere comes a man who not only spoke English but was also willing to help us. He might as well have been an angel. It was still going to be a long night; we had at least 100 km to go and we were already nearly beaten to death. But at least we would not have to fight off lions. We had hope and we had a goal. Sometimes that’s all you need. If we were lucky, we would be able to rest in a bed tonight—with a full stomach.

The road was grueling. We had to battle rock, sand, and ruts every kilometer. Our stallions were as broken and tired as we were. Alex’s bike was the first to go. Kris and I were riding side by side talking (something that could only be done at low speeds) when Alex hit something in the road, swerved sharp to the right, and took a nasty crash into a big hole. I rushed over to him and ditched my bike. He was down about six feet with his foot pinned under his bike. He was struggling for air. I jumped down to him as Kris lifted the bike off his foot.

“Hey, you all right?”

He choked a couple of breaths.

“Yeah. Just knocked the wind out of me. Give me a sec.”

He breathed, just breathed and nothing more, for a few moments. Then he slowly got up. It looked to me like he hit his head pretty hard.

“Whoa, what was that? I was just driving straight, I hit a little rut, and my bike shot out from under me.”

Kris inspected Alex’s bike while I inspected Alex. Nothing was broken, but he did have a bad headache and felt like vomiting. It looked like a concussion, but to be honest, Kris and I both felt similar, what with hardly anything to eat or drink all day.

“Hey, Erik, look at this,” Kris shouted.

Alex’s steering was so loose that the bolt holding it together was ready to fall off. In addition to that, his exhaust pipe had broken off and his front rim had been bent badly in the crash. Countless other bolts had vibrated loose as well.

Sbaa and his driver had noticed that we weren’t behind them and turned around. We took our tools and tightened everything as best as we could given the circumstances and inspected the other bikes. My steering was also loose and several bolts were ready to fall out at the next bump in the road. Kris’s didn’t look any worse than it had a couple hours earlier, but that wasn’t really saying much. We threw Alex’s hot exhaust pipe into the back of the Land Cruiser as Sbaa nervously scanned for lions and elephants. Alex was hurting; he took my bike. It was in the best shape of the three. Kris took Alex’s bike, which still sort of ran, just very loudly. I rode in back on Kris’s bike, acting as a sort of cleanup man. We had a hurt rider on a good bike, a good rider on a hurt bike, and me trailing, ready to pick up whichever of the two broke down first.

An elephant trumpeted to my left, not a stone’s throw away, yet I couldn’t see it so black was the night. On the ground I saw fresh lion tracks in the sand. Animals were there, on either side of us, before and behind. We could sense their presence, hear their savage screams; we knew they were watching us as we slowly passed, barely moving down the road. The bikes couldn’t take the terrain any faster in the condition they were in. For the first time on our journey I was afraid. Not startled, like how a charging elephant will make you feel. I mean a bonechilling, deep fear. I was afraid of the dark, of the monsters hiding there, of another crash, of a million things waiting to harm us—but it was more than that. Sure, I was aware of the immediate dangers we were facing, but my fear came from beyond. I had a disconcerting sense that all was not well. We were unwelcome strangers in this place, with no idea how much longer we had to travel before we reached Mpanda.

We lost all concept of time; minutes dragged on for hours; hours took days to pass. The sun should have come up by now. I hung over the handlebars far behind the rest, waiting for the next crash. Alex must have been so tired. I could barely keep going and I hadn’t taken that fall. Kris was negotiating not only his fatigue, but also a bike that threatened to stop running at any moment. Mpanda became a myth, a fairytale in my mind. It was a place that existed only in dreams. I didn’t actually expect to ever arrive.

But then peeking through the jungle was a light. At first I questioned whether or not it was even real. It was just a glimpse, just a spark. The road wrapped around one more bend, and sure enough there it was: Mpanda, our refuge, our rest. We followed the white Land Cruiser through the small town, down dark dusty roads to a guesthouse. The Good Samaritan did all the negotiating; we merely sat on our bikes reassuring each other that our journey was over for the day.

“You have a room here.”

Like lifeless zombies we grabbed our bags out of the back of the Land Cruiser and lugged them down the narrow hallway to a room with two beds. Heaven. Here we would be able to rest for a few days, nurse ourselves back to health, and get our bikes ready for another demanding stretch of road.

“We must go now; the restaurant”—there was only one in Mpanda—“is about to close,” Sbaa said to us.

We compliantly got back on our bikes. Alex, too beat to ride, climbed onto the back of mine. We followed our friend to the restaurant and ate as much gristly goat meat and rice as we could fit into our stomachs.

Back at the guesthouse, we slept soundly in our beds for what was left of the night and through most of the next day.

I awoke with the sun, already high above the horizon, shining through our window. Alex and Kris were still lying peacefully on their mats, Alex just to my side; Kris across the room seven feet away. I grabbed my journal and stepped out into a paved courtyard littered with cheap white plastic lawn furniture. Immediately I felt uneasy as several concerned eyes looked up to meet my gaze. They said nothing, nor I to them as I walked out of the guesthouse and into the dusty side lot where we had left our tired and broken bikes the night before.

Kris and I explored the area surrounding the guesthouse in search of something to eat. A stand selling fresh sugarcane was the only thing open.

“What’s going on here? Why is everything closed?”

“I don’t know. It’s kinda creepy.

A nicely dressed man briskly walked out of the guesthouse and was passing us indifferently on the street, obviously not in the mood to talk.

“Hello. Excuse me, sir.”

“Yes?”

“Do you speak English?”

“Yes,” he answered, visibly annoyed.

“What’s going on here? Why is everyone so upset?”

“You don’t know what happened the last night?” he asked. “The gunman come tru and kill the people!” And quickly the man explained to us what had happened the night prior.

Just after sunset, a man came wandering up the street with a loaded AK-47 and a bottle of booze, apparently wanting money and some form of transportation. He casually walked up to a taxi driver sitting in his car waiting for the next customer to emerge from the restaurant, lifted his gun to the open window, and shot the driver right through the head. People started to run as he pulled the lifeless driver out of his car. The gunman looked around him for his next victim. The people in the restaurant watched helplessly through the window as he stared each of them down, surveying the scene, and then strolled over to a nearby shop. Inside the shop, the owner was hiding behind the counter. A couple of rounds into the old man and he died quietly. The gunman helped himself to the money and whatever else pleased him and wandered back over to the now empty taxi and drove away.

“This happened last night?” Kris asked in amazement. “Yes, it happen just last night. The people is dead going to be buried now. TOO MUCH this happen!” The man turned around and without a good-bye continued down the street.

“Kris, we would have been in that restaurant last night at sunset.”

He just stared at me, speechless.

From The Only Road North by Erik Mirandette