This was me yesterday, no, not just feeling down, I mean literally being down. I thought I’d share the experience for you to see how this scene right here may very well effect my vote next year.
So what happened, well I’m not a mechanic so from what I gathered from Sam, my amazing mechanic who has saved me countless times, some ball joint thing came undone and so the whole wheel came undone and bent in backwards under the car. See below.
It’s not a pretty sight, but it’s actually allot better than it looks since we were able to fix it in a couple of hours. But when it was happening, it was just like in the movies. I was cruising down this stretch of road bopping my head to a song in my head when with a deep thud, I suddenly dropped a metre in my seat. I was like, ‘okay Emmanuel what are we experiencing right now?’ trying to understand what was going on, while a screeching vibration took over the floor of the car, which was drastically facing south, I suddenly visualised those films where cars have lost their tyres yet with inertia they are still screeching along the road with sparks flying from underneath. I’m not sure if I had sparks flying in my case, but once I realised what was happening, my next thought was, when am I going to stop or how do I stop. I can’t remember but I must’ve stepped on the breaks or something and obviously with the grinding I was bound to stop soon. So I came to a screeching halt and just gave a sigh of relief that I didn’t hurt anyone, then I stepped out of the car to meet the rest of my day.
What caused it? well it’s a little known secret, but I recently moved to a nice place by the sea at Taurama. Don’t tell anyone (but I might write about it one day). So the road leading down here is atrocious, thank heavens to the Peter O’Neill government a road is about 20% sealed on the way down here but we’re unlucky enough to not have a stadium down here so the roads aren’t moving as quickly as I’d personally like.
The way to get into Taurama used to be straight through the Taurama Army Barracks, but after the landowners around Taurama began selling up blocks of land at crazy prices they experienced not a boom, but an explosion of houses in the area. In the first year of the explosion I literally witnessed an entire valley change with newly constructed houses within months. The speed of the construction and setup was amazing.
So with an exploding population on the other end of an Army Barracks, it was rightfully agreed that Governor Parkop should create a whole new road around the barracks so that the Army Officers who scream ‘Pass Through!’ at their boom gates don’t get overworked and tire out, because if they’re busy managing traffic they might be too tired to fight or heaven forbid, win a war.
The new road looks like the pic above, there is the part being worked on by Global Constructions, which is being sealed, but then past what I like to call ‘Mangrove Roundabout’ is where the cause of my car accident begins, see below. (BTW from Mangrove Roundabout you’ll be able to drive around to join up to the Red Rock Bar Highway, I can never remember if it’s the Magi or Hiritano Highway).
This part of the road was literally created by dumping soil right through a forest of mangroves. I’ll admit it’s a sad sight to see, especially where they managed to murder a tribe of mangroves, but each day as I drive through I can’t help but wish the flyover near the airport could be re-purposed and moved here so that you could have this great drive over the mangroves, (which would be lush and green in my imagination, instead of being covered in blankets of dust), with a view of the sea and the wind blowing in my very very very slowly thinning hair.
As you can see, the road gives my car a good beating each day and my previous laxidazy approach to car maintenance will now have to change to suit the environment. I no longer live at Malolo Estate at 8 Mile where in 5 minutes I can zoom out to Vision City via the Erima Flyover to catch a movie at Paradise Cinema. (Actually now that I just mentioned that 5 minute trip, I think I’d rather just walk down to the beach with the kids for a swim).
My only hope now is that the road will be brought all the way round to my little corner. I think voting in Parkop in 2017 should ensure the road is built, my car maintenance bills are reduced and my Mangrove Drive experience can be enhanced, (hopefully with a mangrove flyover). But the best insurance I’m betting on for my road is that Parkop’s son lives in my neighbourhood, so for the sake of my car, I’d best vote for Parkop in 2017.
Masalai blog 