My first experience as a road rally spectator was anything but boring. I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in 1985 in what was then Zaire and is now again the Congo . I had just become Peace Corps Volunteer Leader in my region, and I needed to bring some new volunteers out to their posts in the Land Rover I drove. We dropped off the first volunteer at his post and continued on towards the second volunteer’s village. We rounded a curve on the bush road when a car hurtled at us. I wrenched the steering wheel left as the rally car screamed by. We looked at each other. The road was not closed, not to our knowledge, and we had many miles to cover before dark. Riding at rally cars was no fun, but I didn’t want a night in the bush either.
We continued on cautiously. We tried to estimate the number of minutes between cars as two or three more cars roared at us down the one lane road. Finally we came to a one lane bridge. There we waited till a car lurched around the bend in the road on the far side of the bridge and crossed in front of us. We hesitated briefly—once two cars were far close together than normal, but then we hurried on to the bridge and gunned the sluggish Land Rover engine across the stream. We stopped on the far side and listened before going around the bend on the side of the hill on the far side.
We continued on like this, watching the road ahead carefully and trying to be well off to the side of the dirt track each time another car came at us. We began to leave the clay behind and the track became a path through deeper and deeper sand. Getting off the road quickly became difficult and getting off the road at all became impossible in places. We reached a village where a weekly market was just winding down, so we parked the Land Rover, found ourselves some beers, and settled in to watch the stragglers go by. When about an hour had passed with no cars, we continued cautiously on. It was well after dark when we arrived at our destination, but we did not spend the night in the bush.
