Tumbling down the Mountainside

My arm hung there aching, numb and useless, but fortunately not broken. 

The most dangerous predators are the ones you don’t  notice and don’t see coming. A crocodile lying in wait when we went down to a river to bathe or wash clothes, a venomous snake or a scorpion in the grass when we got out of the tent, or in this case a wet mountain road as slippery as black ice. 

Tumbling down the mountainside in the highlands of Cameroon was a sobering reminder that we were alone and vulnerable.

Anybody who’s ever driven a motorcycle can’t resist a winding road, gearing down, leaning into curves and accelerating, shifting up, but if you ride long enough something is going to happen. You will fall, slide, make a bad judgement call or the driver of a car will, you’ll hit wet leaves or an oil slick, streetcar rails could mean disaster.

My mishap occurred in the highlands of Cameroon, five hundred kilometers from the nearest help.

There was a light shower during the night, but not enough to wake us.  The tent was still a little wet from the brief rain so we took it down and hung it over a branch to dry before we placed it in its satchel and tied it with bungi cords together with our sleeping bags on the bike. 

We ate our breakfast, broke camp, packed, and started out. After drinking strong coffee boiled in a cup of water on the Primus stove, and stradling the motorcycle,  I experienced a moment of well being and felt the freedom of the road, but instead, just then,  should have been paying more attention to its condition.

Just as riding took skill so did laying a motorcycle down and falling from one. A few hundred meters after starting out, I felt the back wheel lose traction and we began to zig-zag from left to right.

Without us realizing it, the dampness left a thin slick on the trail we were following. I compensated by first leaning one way and then the other. I reacted quickly, trying to steady the bike and regain some stability.

In a normal situation it wouldn’t have been difficult to get the bike back on track, but we were weighted down with water, petrol, spares, sleeping bags, camping equipment and a passenger. When the back wheel inevitably lost its grip and we went careening down the mountain in what seemed to be slow motion, my only thoughts were, “no broken bones” and when I was thrown off, I instinctively pulled my limbs and head into the fetal position.  

Kersti jumped or fell off as soon as we left the road, I continued another ten meters down the mountainside. The bike rolled over me, the footrest making a deep gash in the reinforced shell of my helmet.  A little dazed but with nothing more than a few scrapes and bruises, we made our way back up to the road. The adrenaline was pumping and I hadn’t begun to feel the aching in my shoulder.

We hadn’t seen a vehicle on that trail for days but as though it was an apparition, a van with a Swiss couple came by and offered help.  It took all four of us to get the bike up to the road, but it was miraculously undamaged. We made tea, exchanged some stories with our benefactors and they left us with some band aids for our scraped arms.

Our trip could have easily ended that morning in the deeply forested hills of Cameroon. I had lost the use of my right arm which was not very practical for a motorcyclist. But there was a little silver lining in that dark cloud.

Our motorcycle was undamaged, our petrol and water supplies hadn’t leaked out. We were shaken but basically unscathed, and below my injured shoulder and arm, I still had complete dexterity in my hand and wrist and could use the gas and brake. 

If necessity is the mother of invention, the unavoidable is its father. The reality of the situation was that we didn’t have any other choice but to get back up on the bike and continue. Camping on the mountainside until I got back use of my arm wasn’t an alternative.

We pitched the tent again, took stock of the situation and after a day and night of rest, decided to move on. We repacked in the morning and Kersti held the bike steady while I straddled the seat and used my left arm to lift my injured right onto the handle bar. Kersti climbed on behind me; I let out the clutch with my left hand and could twist the throttle with my right.

We were on our way again.