Dear praying friends,
I am sure many of you are already aware of the accident that happened this past weekend but I want to share in some detail anyway, especially for those of you who may have not heard the news:
As I stated in my last update, this past weekend we had a bit of a motorcycle trip planned. The weekend started with three friends making the 3-4 hour ride to our place in Mbulu from where they live in Arusha. They were: Dan (retired Minnesota police officer), Eivind (MAF pilot stationed in Arusha – from Norway), and Ove (another Norwegian who has volunteered at Arusha’s Scripture Mission for this past year). These three arrived on their motorcycles around 2pm on Friday, we had some lunch and then got on the road for what we estimated to be another 3 hour trip to the town of Katesh where our missionary friends live who we were all going to visit. I should add at this point that between the five of us, Eivind is probably the most experienced motorcycle driver. He has plans to ride from Tanzania to Ethiopia with his cousin this Christmas.
About an hour and a half into the trip, Eivind was leading, and as he had probably already done a hundred times on this leg of the trip, he came up behind a bicyclist traveling the same direction. Since here in Tanzania we drive on the left-hand side of the road, Eivind went to pass this bicyclist (who was driving right down the middle of the road) on the right. Thankfully, since we were entering a village center area, we were only going about 35-40 Km/h. When the bicyclist heard Eivind approaching from behind him, he made a sudden turn for the right side of the road putting himself directly in Eivind’s path of travel. To be honest, it is only the mercy of God that this has not happened already to any one of us as bicyclists around here often have no clue what side of the road they are supposed to be on and regularly make sudden and unexpected maneuvers without looking just as this young man did. Well, this time there was no way to avoid the collision. Fortunately, due to our reduced speed at the time, the bicyclist was not terribly hurt other than some cuts on his head and a few bruises. Furthermore, both would have walked away except for a big rock that Eivind’s head was rammed into after wiping out. The rest of us, after removing his motorcycle, found him totally unconscious and bleeding from a cut on his face. I tell you there is nothing quite like an incident like this to impress on a motorcyclist the importance of good safety equipment all of which Eivind was using and without which he would be dead.
As things ended up, he began talking/moaning after about 4 minutes of being totally unconscious. He was actually coherent enough to tell us to remove his helmet and give him some water. Up to this point we had been afraid to move him at all incase he had severe back or neck injury. When he “came to”, however, he was moving around quite a bit on his own but obviously in extreme pain. We were happy to see him move his left foot when asked to do so and also squeeze my hand. From that point, his coherence only decreased. We loaded him up on a passing truck and took him about half a kilometer to a local clinic. They were not equipped at all for such an incident so an ambulance was immediately called from a large hospital about an hour and a half away. It was a sobering hour and a half as we cradled his head, tried to comfort him when he cried out, and basically tried to keep him from moving around. When the “ambulance” (Land Cruiser with no back seats) arrived, we loaded him up and decided that Dan would go with him. The remaining three of us now had five motorcycles to deal with as well as 5 people’s bags. The people in charge of this clinic agreed to let us store Dan and Eivind’s bikes over night so that we could get everything sorted out. Then Ben, Ove, and I took all the bags to a town about 30 minutes away where we checked in at a guest house for the night. The next morning, we went to see Eivind at the hospital where they were preparing him for an airlift to Nairobi, Kenya. It was so good to see him doing better. In fact, he was speaking quite clearly even though he was still quite confused. The doctors (all Norwegians and good friends of Eivind) told us that they had done x-rays, C.T. scans, and ultrasounds but had not seen anything to be too concerned about. You have to know Eivind. He is a young guy (my age) who loves his job as a missionary pilot in Africa. Apparently, when he became coherent enough to somewhat understand what had happened, the doctors told him that he could be taken to Nairobi or even back to Norway if he wanted. Eivind said he wanted to stay in Africa because “going back to Norway would be boring.”
Upon his arrival in Nairobi, they apparently did find a small fracture in his neck but I am under the impression that he continues to heal well. I called him on his cell phone yesterday and was thrilled when Eivind answered it himself. Please continue to pray for him as he will be dealing not only with the physical recovery but with the psychological impact of the incident as well. In fact, when we saw him on Saturday he was already saying things like, “I’m such an amateur” and “I shouldn’t have been going so fast with people and bicycles around” (even though I don’t think he remembers a thing).
I didn’t mean for this to get so long but wanted to fill in some of the gaps for those of you who had heard bits and pieces and give the complete picture for those who are now hearing about all this for the first time. The rest of us are doing well and actually continued on with our plans for the weekend after seeing Eivind off to Nairobi and getting his motorcycle to a friends house. Thank you so much to those of you who received word of this incident early and have already been praying for Eivind for days. It is all a very clear reminder of the uncertainty of life. Things can change without a moments notice. What a blessing to know that despite all this, God is in control and always does what is best for His children.
Ben and I are now wrapping up our final week for this year here at Waama. On Monday, we will be going by motorcycle to Arusha where we will fly out of on the 3rd. We appreciate your continuing prayers…
Serving Him,
Jesse Long
Mbulu, Tanzania
