Yep, I’m breaking the silence. Why? As a public service to those who come after us and to count my lucky stars.
First the background. There are no rules to driving in Ethiopia, or at least it seems that way. See the 2 pictures below. There are very few stop lights or stop signs. Everyone has the right of way. People, animals, bicyclists and cars all share the road. No one drives in their lane or on the side of the road they are supposed to.
Everyone weaves in and out of whatever is in their way. Horns were invented for Ethiopian drivers. Cars pass with in inches of each other. There are no seat belts in most of the cars and no child car seats either. Yet somehow it is actually a controlled chaos most of the time. There are wrecks but not as many as you would think.


And you get used to it. After a while you even stop closing your eyes and just ignore it. It really is a controlled chaos.
But in Awassa, on our journey from the lake to our next stop we weren’t so lucky. As long as I live I will never forget that moment. I was in the back of the vab talking with my sister. Elliott was being held by the social worker in the back seat next to me when all of the sudden our driver braked suddenly and we were all thrown forward. Yes- wreck number 7 in my life. Lucky number 7.
We all hit the seats in front of us but social worker (who was holding Elliott) was thrown from the backseat, forward, past the middle seat and into the back of the second row of seats. She turned as she was thrown and her butt ended up wedged in the step well of the door.
She turned to protect Elliott. Elliott ended up held tight in her arms, completely protected. She was scared but absolutely fine. Our social worker was too (though I’m guessing a little brusied), as was everyone else in our van.
A motorcyclist turned left in front of our van and our driver tried to brake suddenly to avoid hitting him but was unable to stop in time. We were scared to say the least. Scared that the motorcyclist wouldn’t be okay, scared about what would happen to our driver (we all had visions of him being thrown in jail even though he wasn’t at fault), scared about all the people who were suddenly mobbing our van. The crowd built in a matter of minutes to 100 then 200.
The motorcyclist got up and he was fine, a little bruised but fine. Our driver was found to not be at fault . We got to see an accident reconstruction Ethiopian style. Very interesting.
Evidently normally the police aren’t involved though. Instead it is more common to just pay the person off. Bribery, the backbone of nations. I asked if it had ever happened to anyone.
As for the people mobbing the van, we sat with the windows closed and Mahi yelled at them when they tried to open them. It was a little freaky. But eventually they called us a second car to take us around the rest of the day while the rest of the accident stuff got sorted out.