El Messelemiya Higher Secondary School for Boys: # 8

Rain stops play

The return journey is cooler in the late afternoon and the bus speeds along. All is well. All is well until we leave the tarmac road. There has been rain here and our progress is difficult. At the point of no return, several kilometers from the main road, our driver stalls the engine and we are obliged to get out and push.

The rain has stopped falling but the evidence of it lies all around in pools of muddy water. My white trainers very soon become a muddy brown colour and are caked with an inch of the road’s surface. As ten or twelve men struggle with the mini bus, another two truckloads of people converge on the slippery corner and two more vehicles get stuck.

The sight of upwards of fifty people shouting, pushing and sliding about in several inches of mud is amusing at first until I realize that it is getting darker by the minute and the clouds are gathering for more rain. I had all but resigned myself to walking the remaining nine or ten kilometers to Messelemiya, and had convinced Salah that it was for the best if we started walking before it got too dark. We were ready to go when the engine fired into life and the muddied passengers jumped on board, only to find later that rain had only fallen on these few yards of the road, the rest of our way being perfectly dry and problem free, and we were duly dropped off at our own dusty corner in time for super.

Robert L. Fielding