So, as probably most people who read this already know, I had a little *incident* a couple of weeks ago. Got a little bit stabbed while trying to avoid football riots. Now there’s a sentence I never thought I’d say!
The way it happened was something like this...
I’d been out to visit a family in a nearby village (well, sort of near, just over an hour’s drive on a good day) and it was wonderful! It’s the rainy season so there’s green everywhere and we had a lovely time, eating, siesta-ing, and chatting. The problems began on the way home... We knew that there was a football match that evening and actually went back a little late so that we’d avoid the crowds. That was the plan. But the best laid plans and all... What we hadn’t realised was that it was a very important football match, one of those make-or-break ones. And it was a break. We lost and that caused some, ahem, consternation! We were on a Diague Ndiaye, which is a public transport kind of like a car rapide but for longer distances (see a post aaaaages ago about transport systems). Anyway, this was fun; I was having a nice chat about how fast I can text with one hand and not looking at the phone, with the guy next to me and ignoring comments from my two companions about the destination of the afore-mentioned texts. We’d reached the outskirts of Dakar when we started to notice large crowds of people, wearing footballs shirts, pouring out of the city. This was the first sign that things might be a bit different to normal. The second sign was when traffic going in slowed to a halt and we realised that there were no vehicles coming out! The third, and arguably most worrying sign was when a couple of truckloads of riot police zoomed past us on the other side of the road and our Diague Ndiaye driver asked us all to get off as we weren’t moving and I suppose he wanted to go home! We could easily sympathise with that.
So, there we were, unsure as to how far we were from home, with no clear way of getting there. At night, with football rioters possibly heading our way. It wasn’t the best situation to find ourselves in, to say the least. We decided to get off the main road in an effort to avoid large crowds, as we’re always told to, and wandered around a bit until we were fairly sure that this wasn’t a terribly safe option either. We did meet some lovely people who told confirmed this – ‘it is not safe for you here’ is a pretty direct translation of what they said to me. So, we were very glad when a taxi appeared out of the night. We hopped in and he headed off to find a different way into the city as that one was blocked. We were rather relieved at this turn of events – heading away from the trouble and in a car rather than on foot. We all breathed a sigh of relief and turned our thoughts homewards.
Alas! We relaxed too soon. We’d just reached the other main road into the city when traffic again slowed to a standstill. This is fairly standard for trying to get into Dakar of an evening so we weren’t too worried –it was mostly cars etc now rather than crowds of disappointed football fans, what could possibly go wrong? Well, someone could yank open the back door of the taxi and try to take my friend’s handbag. And did. I looked around from the other side of the back seat and saw her pulling away from some random guy so I leaned over to help push him off, realising that he had a knife as it slid into my arm! Fortunately, our taxi driver then noticed the commotion, looked around and leapt into knight in shining armour mode! He exited the taxi in one fluid motion, grabbing the baseball bat he had concealed down the side of his seat and chased off our attacker – what a hero! We locked ourselves in (admittedly something we should have done before and normally remember) and headed home to put antiseptic on our wounds! Luckily, the knife, if it even was a real one, was terribly blunt and we each escaped with two tiny puncture wounds which we antisepticked with three different kinds of ointment and went on to eat the pizza and chocolate thoughtfully provided by our wonderful Acting Director. All’s well that ends well they say, and we have amazed and confounded many people by how remarkably unfazed we were by the whole experience. My lasting feeling is one of relief that it wasn’t worse and slight disappointment that I’m not even going to have a scar! Most people are very sympathetic about the whole thing, in a manner most amusing to us as they generally seem more traumatised than we do, but there are the odd few who see our wounds and say ‘is that it?!’ Someone described mine as ‘pathetic’. And I have to admit, I quite agree. I’ve had worse injuries from mosquitoes. As proof, here’s a little challenge for you! Which of these pictures do you think is the real stab wound...?
Okay, the bruise may have given it away. ‘Twas the second one. And this is what it SHOULD have looked like (thanks to some wonderful photoshopping from the talented Rachel).
Impressive, huh? No prizes for guessing which one I’m going to show my grandkids when I’m telling them stories of my adventurous life!
