By Chris Moore Many years ago I had signed up with the-then SWA Department of Wildlife and Conservation, a romance many young people have, but one which, like marriage, tends to wear thin. People keep on increasing, and the wild animals and the wild open areas keep on getting less. With wives it is the other way around – if you follow the convoluted analogy – that by the way. In those days, the roads were so good I never had to worry about speed limits. There were other things I had to worry about … When the great Namibian sun goes down, even the thermals take a break. Not so the poor “bokkiewagter” who, in order to try and come to something more than guesswork about game numbers, must sit up all night at the waterhole. Anyway, it is one thing to drive all day, but another to drive all over, and then to sit up all night. What is more to the point is to also have the anxious gnawing desire to rush back home to the new love of your life. The one you stayed up all night with after the braai… It was after I passed the “karretjie-mense” in the shade of the trees in the riverbed having lunch and a sensible siesta that I realized I should have stopped. But love-befuddled brains only think about how far you still have to go to get home and how long it is likely to take. When I hit the new wide open tarred road to Mariental I could have been forgiven for thinking that all my problems were over. I can quite honestly state that I have experienced that split second of resignation to impending doom. I am not so sure I can categorically state that I saw my life flashing before me. What I saw was that there were big boulders in front of me – VERY big boulders. I might have thought of my true love’s sweet kisses – perhaps that is what saved me. The Ford F100, I can categorically state, lives/lived up to its reputation as the toughest thing on the road, almost as tough as a Namibian grader. It travels quite comfortably on nice, wide, tarred roads at 140kmh. You need to be as tough as a GV to drive for one, two or three days and nights without sleep though. To sleep, perchance to dream, but no nightmares. Unfortunately, these are what you are likely to have when you fall asleep at 140kmh – even on a nice, wide, tarred road. One with steep banks and lots of big boulders left over from recent construction. It was quite a hopeless situation. I am still not sure how I managed to slowly – but like a flash of lightning – turn the steering wheel, slide back up the bank without turning over, then ram through a drainage ditch and land back on the tar on four wheels at 120kmh? I am sure not even Evel Knievel could have stunted this one. Perhaps GOD feels sorry for love-sick travellers? Perhaps I was spared. Perhaps because I am named after the saint of travellers, through my middle name? What can one put this sort of luck down to? Was it that the area in which the incident took place had an over-abundance of dying and that I was allowed to balance the scales? *Chris Moore is a former Namibian residing in Pietermartizburg in KwaZulu-Natal.