Of Mud and Trucks...

Of Mud and Trucks
Even horses will get stuck in the mud. It happens. Didn’t you ever see ‘The Neverending Story’? Man and beast have been conquered by the elements as long as there have been elements to be conquered by. When it rains, it pours and when it pours on dirt it makes mud. When that mud is created in places where man must travel then a lack of travel occurs. I encountered this phenomenon rather intimately while I was in Darfur. The miles and miles we covered in our Landcruisers came with the price of many long and sweaty and grimy hours of having to dig our trucks out of the sand or, as was the case in the rainy season, mud. It is so helpless and hopeless to be driving along and then suddenly be deprived of motion. The spinning and whining tires unsuccessfully claw at the mud which just gives way like New Orleans levies. Man and beast are stilled conquerable by natural forces, even when that beast is replaced with a roaring, combusting machine on wheels.

I say all of that to set the stage for our adventure this morning. We got stuck. Yesterday’s ample rainfall turned the back-country tracks we’ve been driving on into narrow ice-skating rinks with occasional deep soups waiting for the unsuspecting motorist like the eternally digesting Sarlac. My friend Jordan was driving at the time and one of those soups took advantage of a slight loss in forward momentum and thus our tires were set spinning in place. Jordan handed the wheel to me and suddenly I was back in the bush of Sudan trying to free myself from the clutching ground.

Even in four-wheel drive the hefty 1987 Ford Bronco with semi-bald tires wouldn’t budge. We were looking at a very disappointing day and it was only eleven in the morning. Jordan had gotten stuck crossing a creek about two weeks earlier and had to walk for seven miles back home to get help. Unlike that experience we carried a cell phone but still the prospect of having to ‘limp’ home via cellular communication didn’t seem very appealing and so we set to removing our vehicle from the mud with dedicated fervor.

I was glad for my Darfur driving training and soon I was rocking the Bronco back and forth trying to gain some momentum to push past the muddy bog. That only served to dig me deeper and I stopped when I realized I was almost up to the chassis. We didn’t have a shovel (standard truck equipment in Darfur) and so digging out was to be accomplished with hands and sticks. Jordan dug mostly and Nathan and I piled sticks under the tires to provide traction. After several attempts our efforts were rewarded and groaning and screaming the Bronco burst free in reverse.

We still had to push a little farther on up this ‘road’ to our film site and so I backed up the two rut track to get some momentum to carry me through. Keeping it in 4-wheel drive I smashed the gas and shot down to the mud patch. There was a patch of dry ground to one side so I stuck my left side on that and punched through. Fishtailing and sliding I came free and was able to swerve in time to avoid a tree. Success.

I truly felt as if I were back in Darfur and it was kind of fun. It is nice to be the ‘expert’ and my numerous adventures of this kind certainly qualified me. Alhumdel’allah.

We ended up having a great day of shooting and although I am staying up late to write this I am dog tired. So I sign off...