I was on my way to the hospital to try and get some meds for a bad cough I have and not 5 minutes after we pulled out of the driveway we hit a person.
I am still getting over this incident, I wasn’t driving (between the insane drivers and the insane pedestrians you couldn’t pay me to drive in this town) but I still remember it in slow motion starting with the driver slamming on the brakes and honking. A young guy was crossing the road and was standing in the middle waiting for a chance to go across I guess but all I remember was hearing the brakes and seeing us careening towards him, he smacking our windshield, and then his being thrown down onto the pavement. This is a first for me, and in truth I don’t feel as bothered by it as I think I should be (certain dehumanizing aspect of humanitarian work are troubling at best).
I have to admit though that the heartening part was how our driver ran out of the car, scooped the guy up, a witness jumped into the car with us and we raced to the hospital but the irony was that the person who could have easily drove off (my driver) was the one with a lot to loose (another person with my organization was jailed for hitting a pedestrian just recently) was the one who risked quite a bit, we raced to the hospital and the doctors actually made the guy wait and made my driver go get a ticket then they spent all of 5 minutes looking over him and then said he was “hoobas” (fine/good) no x-rays, not checking for internal bleeding etc just hoobas; I was miffed and ready to shell out the money if anyone asked “who will pay” (or more likely to pay a bribe to expedite the process) but honestly everyone seemed satisfied with the diagnosis including the victim.
The victim wasn’t mad, yelling or anything (though he could very well have at least been partially at fault but in Afghanistan that is a moot point, the driver is always at fault and the victims can quite often make quite a bit off the drivers in bribes). We then went by a pharmacy and my driver dropped me off and then took the guy home…
It’s still rather surreal.
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