Rogers Coffees’ Rwanda Journal (2)

The car seemed to be gliding, slowly drifting in between the world of control and chaos. I looked at the driver and his hands were spinning the wheel to the right like a kid on a play truck. When the wheel stopped turning he started bending it more in prayer than in control. He leaned his whole body to the right, pressing his skinny frame against the door leaning in hope the car would respond…. but it did not.

Even the longest journey starts with a single step and this has been a long journey. Mario Serracin, Anna Russo and I left arrived in Kigali after 2 full days travel from Sacramento California on September 11th. It.s a brutal flight path with 21 hours of plane time and 14 hours of airport time. I was here in Rwanda to make sure the Mario and Anna.s journey would start off on the correct foot. Dr. Mario has been working with us in Panama for the last 5 years helping farmers produce organic coffee, reduce chemicals, increase yields, gain more income and produce organic fertilizer. We hired him fresh off his PHD from the University of Hawaii in coffee agronomy and have been having fun traveling around the world together changing farmers. lives. He is like the little brother I never had and my kids now refer to him as Tio Mario.

Anna carries a Masters Degree in Business Development, lived in Cameroon for 2 years with the Peace Corp and was brought into this project to help along the progress of the social projects in Rwanda, and or the lack of progress I should say. The idea came about from my brother Jim. I was complaining about the lack of progress in Rwanda. Schools that normally take 4 months are 2 years in construction and still not finished. I couldn.t understand their complete lack of desire to help out their communities but after spending over week with Anna I am sure she will be able to fix this.

Our price has also continued to climb, however farmers incomes have not followed. Farmers are producing less coffee beans, getting paid slightly more, but earning slightly less. Farms are in a continual decline, farmers in a continual state of frustration, yet the millers and exporters are asking for more money to cover their increased costs due to this very low production and not taking care of the most important person in the chain, the farmer.

With the help of Alicia Robb from FSD, who interview 93 applicants we choose the highly qualified Anna to run the social projects and nicely asked Mario if he would be willing to spend 1 year of his life helping the Rwandan farmers. My goal from this visit was to take them around the entire country and introduce them to the small farmers, washing station owners and contacts I have in the country. After 1 week of running around the country I was hoping to leave, well hoping and now praying…

My eyes floated back from the driver to the windshield. Rodney Atkins, „Cleaning this Gun. was pouring in thru my iPod. I reached forward and grabbed the handle just below the windshield, the windshield I would becoming very intimate with very soon. You see our problem wasn’t the car, with all it’s faults and age, it was our driver Andrew. I watched Andrew drive earlier in the trip. He was an older man, in his late 50’s, grey hair and wrinkles were begging to win the battle. His teeth were missing and those left stained from tobacco. His hands calloused, worn and wrinkled from years of hard work; I noticed his hands because they were gripping the steering wheel, at 10 and 2, very firmly and were shaking very badly. The steering wheel was on the right side of this very old Range Rover and I sat on the left. Unlike most right hand drive car nations Rwanda drove on the right as well. It’s a hard thing to do sitting on the left side while the car is pounding down the right hand lane. You wanted to control, and years of instinct are screaming at you to control the car but all you have is a small handle I front of you. So there I sat, me and my handle watching Andrew drive and drive very poorly.

He lacked the basic feel of a car and of the pedals on the floor. We would be cruising along at a moderate to slow speed and then suddenly as if he realized he was very late he.d slam on the gas, normally before a curve or huge pot hole, and surge the car forward, then realizing his mistake he would jump on the brake stalling the cars momentum. He drove the car like a man breaking in a horse and we rode it like a bucking bronco. Along the straight roads and in the cities his style was annoying but not terribly dangerous, but on the curvy wet roads of the Nyungwe National Park it is a ticket to Heaven. We slid once and I scolded him to slow down, perhaps too nicely. So now here we were gliding down a wet slippery road heading straight for the forest and a small cliff.

I remember thinking “that’s not so bad we can survive this” as our car floated to 100 feet from the edge. I heard the strain of the steering column but the tires remained silent. We slid past the hard 90 degree right hand curve and I glanced to my right again. I saw Andrew still completely out of control and the road we were supposed to be on beyond him with traffic lumbering up the hill. I looked forward again 50 feet, 40, 30, then 20. I could clearly see what lay ahead for us. In front were several small cinder blocks, we.d blow thru those I thought and a gradual drop of 30 feet with a small clearing and some very small trees beyond the clearing. “If we can survive the drop and those trees hold us we can survive this” I thought. At 10 feet I noticed my hands tense on the handle, at 5 feet I pushed my feet out pressing the brake that was on the other side of the car.

At 2 feet the car suddenly responded. I have heard of the hand of God, never seen it but if I could I would have seen a very large hand smack the left side of our car, hard. The car literally jumped to the right and our ass end brushed the cinder blocks. Andrew pulled the emergency brake and we spun harder to the right, he had broken the horse. Horribly over corrected we now lay in between euphoria and fear. Our ass end glided past the front of the car, Andrew spun the wheel to the left hard as we were now perfectly sideways in the left lane with a huge truck lumbering up the hill. The horse responded again shooting our ass end to the right towards the cliff wall, a much better place to crash I thought. Andrew turned the wheel hard to the right again, a natural reaction but a stupid one as we slid over towards the truck and edge again, realizing his mistake he adjusted quickly, with smaller turns, left, right left right and then like a broken horse the car straighten out and we passed the truck completely in control. I am not sure where my Guardian Angels are now but I really want to thank them for saving our lives.

I didn’t scream at Andrew, his English wasn’t good enough to understand anyways but he did understood when I told him to pull over¡¦now. I pointed out the window and said, “Get out.” “So sorry sir, so sorry sir, so sorry sir” was all he could answer. Anna was out of the car hands to her face, Mario jumped out of the back and in his casual manner said “That was a big cliff past those trees, a very big cliff,” I wasn’t really listening as I was going to get my first experience of driving with a steering wheel on the right hand side.

It is a funny thing death. It sneaks up on you, tugs at your shirt sleeve and leaves before you can really process what has happen. I drove the rest of the way, Andrew in the very back of the car and Mario shot gun struggling with sitting on the left with no controls. We joked about it casually. When we first left Kigali the song “Today is your Birthday” was playing and we toasted that it was our birthday today. Andrew called it a miracle, God helped us. I called it Karma and a damn good guardian angel but it wasn’t until dinner that night that the reality of what occurred shot goose bumps all over my body. We were at dinner at the Congo border with the Chief of Police in the area. He was asking us what happen and we explained it to him. “Yes” he said, “It’s very common. Cars drive too fast, the road is too slippery and very dangerous. Normally when people slip over the side it.s bye bye see you in heaven.” We were a foot and a half from knowing.

Rwanda is the land of 1000 hills, one of which we almost got to know intimately. It.s a beautiful country, a spiritual country and if you should ever visit it just make sure you don’t have a driver named Andrew.