Not their day vol.2

"BANG!"
I jumped up with the sound like an explosion. It became noisy inside the bus. The driver and conductor looked each other and talked something, then pulled over the bus.
"What's happen? Explosion?" I asked the woman next to me. "No. The bus hit a ..." "The bus hit what?" "Don...Donkey" It's on the main street of rural town. Before long, people gathered in front of the bus. The driver and the conductor got off and took part in the crowd.

According to a passenger, the bus hit firewoods on a donkey's back. The donkey fell over the owner. Although I heard the owner was injured, he looked being recovered now. He was already standing by in the center of crowd and describing in tears what had been happen on him to the people surround. One of the mob found me inside the bus. He looked at me as if saying "Hey, Chinese on the front seat! You come down too!" Yeah. But it's not my fault... I was just taking a nap ...

Shortly, a local police came up and began the inspection. The police centered mob moved to the site of accident like ants surrounding a candy. Finally, the driver and the conductor was told going to a police station with the bus itself. We were left in front of a restaurant and said "Lunch time!"

Nevertheless we had finished lunch, still no signs for the bus coming back. One hour had passed. I was called "China!" even in this small town. But today's "China!" was different from the usual. It's China who had taken the bus which hit the resident's donkey. I was uncomfortable thinking of it.

Two hours had passed. "Can we get to Addis Ababa today?" I asked about it for another passenger. The answer was that it's depend on the safety regulation of the bus company whether they would operate the bus after dark. Then he added words "Where are you from?" "Japan" "You got some story for souvenir, uh?" Yeah, certainly.
I had nothing to do in the end. So I hung around with camera. After all, I knew people in the small town called Dembecha were friendly enough.
Thanks for them. I could take a time. Three hours later, finally, the bus came back with the driver and conductor. The driver became more careful than before. It's a bad day for the driver and the conductor. However above all, for the donkey owner, it wasn't his day. I was sure the donkey was an quite important transporter for him.

150 miles to Addis. Although the sun was lowering in the west, I would get to there today. The bus stopped at the road side space for a rest. I looked over the rift valleys of Ethiopia. Then looked back the bonnet of the bus. It's roughly dented. "Look. A bus imported to Ethiopia is always like this. This part is extremely SOFT" His reddish face in the sunset light was smiling with little shyness.