Dr Kap's Tanzanian Summer: Get us to the church on time!

It's Saturday here, 10:30 pm, 2:30 pm your time, well cdt anyway. Today I went to my first Catholic wedding. Also my first Swahili Catholic wedding. Ah, but first there was the car adventure. As I've said before, we can't go anywhere without a driver. Well, the regular driver could not make it so he sent a friend.
The wedding was several miles out, towards the main road that goes to the rest of the country, it would take about 30 minutes we were told.

Ok, driving out this large road, paved, ditches to the left and shops in front of them, on the left, 3 lanes of cars, buses, trucks, scooters, bikes, pedestrians leaving town. On the right, 3 other lanes of cars, buses, trucks, scooters, bikes, etc headed towards downtown and shops on that side. Hot. dusty, fumes, noisy.

Suddenly the car sputtered, I thought perhaps it was overheated, I suggested we open the windows, driver agreed so we did. Sputtering did not stop. The car did. In the lane squeezed between the above mentioned movers and shakers. The driver speaks English thank goodness. Some men who were standing around help him push the car back, trying to get it off the road. Did I mention the ditch? It was ok, we missed it, otherwise the car would have rolled quite a bit, it was wide, and about 5 foot deep. Some of the guys pushing us were on the ditch side, lucky since we got mighty close. I was holding the 20,000 Tanzanian shillings to pay the driver. I think he was embarrassed because he grabbed a 10k bill from me and got out of the car. And left. to find petrol. First he bent into the car and asked for the other 10k. Then he left, looking for petrol on foot. One of the car pushers stayed to watch over us, 2 white older women sitting in a car in the way of traffic and next to a ditch. So we chatted, he is from Zanzibar which he likes much better than Dar because it is safe and beautiful.

Ok, so the driver returns, fills the tank and our new buddies begin to push the car back into traffic. However, now there is a steam roller, yes that's what I said, a steam roller in front of the car, I mean not just in front, but facing us, strange since the rest of the traffic was going the other way, including us. The steam roller managed to not hit us but did keep going, passing very very close next to us, inches, really. I couldn't quite get the photo of the passing but there's one here that's close. So 45 minutes after we stalled out, we continue driving to the church, making us almost an hour late, but a happy ending since weddings here are also on African time, we were there for the whole long service. But more on that tomorrow.

it may not look so close here, but I took the pic out the front window, you can see a bit of the windshield wiper but not the hood. So he is at the right front bumper