The Ballad of Yellow Man

Travelling to Rumphi a couple of weeks ago on the M1 [think a potholed Totteridge Lane with no pavement] I witnessed, possibly, the most brutal scene of my relatively visually gentle life. I was sitting next to the driver of my Toyota mini-bus, speeding along, hawk-eyes on the road. The car in front slowed down for no obvious reason, so did we, I saw a man in a yellow T-shirt dawdling across our path sucking at the remnants of a mango or maize cob. My peripheral vision saw another mini-bus quickly overtake us as we changed speed to a crawl. Yellow man, minibus, minibus, yellow man. I anticipated it. I even had time to think ‘that bloke in the yellow t-shirt isn’t going to make it across the road’. I think I knew before he did, I’m not even sure he saw the white Toyota at all. What I saw, 5 metres to the front and right, was the conclusion to my anticipation, and worse. Minibus hits man at bone crunchingly high speed. Yellow man goes flying, maybe 15 metres into the bush growing from the bank below the far side of the road, limbs twisted in swastika fashion. Followed by the minibus that hit him.

Oh fuck

‘Could have easily been us’ is my first thought, ‘thank fuck it wasn’t us’ … selfish? Self-preservation? Human nature? Who knows?

Girl sitting next to me clasps her head in her hands in her lap. Sobbing ‘oh my god, oh my god’. I pat her back like an awkward paedophile … ‘there, there ... it’s ok, we’re fine’. Not really sure whether it’s socially acceptable to pat the back of a twenty something anonymous girl. ‘Could have easily been us’. Silence … then the wailing starts.

Our minibus pulls over. All the passengers quickly abandon their chitenji covered wares, possibly dried fish or ground maize, alight the bus and run over the road to get a better view. I have never felt like such an outsider. Alone on the side of the road under the hot sun, a little shaky, smoking a cigarette. Then comes the dilemma … I’m first aid trained, certainly not a paramedic, but capable and licensed to give mouth-to-mouth and CPR. The American DVD and book that I learnt from consistently espoused the importance of ‘barriers’, pocket masks and rubber gloves when administering first aid, imperative to stop the transmission of disease. There isn’t much risk of contracting an illness this way, but what a shit way to get AIDS … no fun in it at all. Maybe that is just an excuse, maybe I just don’t care enough. A body has been pulled up to the side of the road, a man in a grey t-shirt. A tearful woman, clearly in shock, staggers up the bank helped by others, falls down, stands up and falls down again. Petrified, I resist the urge to have a peek with the enthralled crowd, scared of the future nightmares that may be impregnated. My guilt is increased when I realise my only motivation to wander over is to take photos … I don’t have my camera with me. I may be able to save one, or help a few, but probably won’t be able to do anything. Am I being sensible? A coward? A man walks past me, escaping the wailing, head in hands, grieving someone or haunted by what he has experienced. A young girl follows him, spluttering and crying intermittently. It is as if she is trying to force the emotion out, as if she knows that this is how she should react, but she isn’t feeling how she should. Like a person crying at a funeral because that is what is expected.

I text Lucie, something quite clinical, something like: ‘Just witnessed a horrific crash. Definite fatalities. I’m ok. Will be running late.’ Still a bit shaken, but ok.

The passengers start returning to the bus, take their places, and move on. I look back for the final time and see an ambulance pull over in our place. 100 metres down the road we are flagged down by an expectant traveller, pull over again, pick up more people and continue our journey. I wonder how many buses I have been on whilst the other passengers have just witnessed a fatal crash. Business as usual, life goes on, driver slows down a little. Every time I board a minibus I think that this maybe the one that I never get off. An awful way to travel, similar to getting on a Jerusalem bus in 2003 … is this the one that will never reach its’ destination?

Thinking about yellow man crossing the road, dawdling without a care in the world, possibly pissed, possibly not, reminded me of a thought process I had a few months back. As I travelled on Malawi’s roads I used to get infuriated at the complete lack of traffic awareness by pedestrians. Kids jumping out of the way of vehicles, cyclists constantly veering into the middle of the road, people crossing at ridiculous times. Like many thing in Malawi, it is easy to get wound up by the apparent senselessness of it all, and shrug your shoulders and remark something like ‘ah, but this is Malawi’. It took me a while to realise this is simply lazy thinking, reasoning that the un-reasonable was caused by a blanket response that in fact didn’t address any core issues at all. I thought about it.

In the late 70’s and 80’s the UK government initiated, funded and continued a massive ‘road crossing’ campaign. Every schoolchild could recite parrot fashion the mantra of the green cross code man … ‘stop, look both ways, look again and cross’. I hazily remember adverts with ‘Green Cross Code man’ [useless trivia: He was played by the bloke who played Darth Vader] and being taught about it at school. This must have been a response by the government to a pressing need. There must have been loads of kids being knocked down on their way to school every year, enough to cause some sparky MP to do something about it. In a country where the principal motorway looks like a country track and government money is frugal, I imagine that spending money on road crossing awareness campaigns at the expense of ‘child abuse’ campaigns is well down the agenda.

About 95% of Malawi’s population live in rural areas, with one relevant factor to this rant being no tarmac and minimal vehicles. Many Malawians may never walk on a road, with the fastest moving thing being the local shepherds’ ambling cows or maybe even a rattling Chinese made bicycle. Road sense isn’t something that automatically becomes second nature to a country bumpkin, ask someone from a farm in Wiltshire what it’s like walking in London … terrifying I imagine. If you aren’t used to roads, you aren’t used to speeding cars, probably don’t know how dangerous they can be, and probably are not particularly good at judging speed.

Another factor may be child rearing. I have heard a theory that many black Africans have good peripheral vision, but bad spatial awareness and distance judgement. The reason being that many kids spend the first few years of their lives strapped to their mums backs, lessening the development of touching and judging distance as all they can see is a brightly coloured top 3 inches from their face. At the same time honing peripheral awareness and being more aware about what is happening at the extremities of their lateral vision. I use this excuse to try and explain why I am crap at football, and known as ‘malco’ at school as I’ve got awful co-ordination. I reckon that because I never crawled as a baby, I skipped an integral part of my limb-eye coordination process … though, I may just be shit at football. Hence, possibly many Malawians are just awful at judging speed and distance, due to the way they were carried as a kid.

Then again, maybe yellow man was just hammered after an afternoon drinking with his pals.

I arrived in Rumphi safe and sound. Lucie, a little concerned for my mental health, asked me what I thought the reason was for yellow man crossing the road. I think she was trying to get me to personify yellow man. Give him an existence, a reason, a personality. I answered the obvious ‘to get to the other side’ chuckling at my wit.

Well Yellow Man. Maybe this is your eulogy.