The Riot I almost drove into

Monday I went into the hospital and talked to Dr. Vindu and did some computer stuff and I got my car. Well, I should say Harper Got my car and I've been driving the Suzuki. I'm waiting to go to Mawe Hai with someone the first time with the stick shift just in case something happens. I'm pretty confident, especially since I've only ever stopped like 3 times on the way there, but just in case I've been driving the Suzuki. If I ever go into the hospital in the morning again I might drive there too, but I'll worry about that later.

Tuesday Melisa left with her parents and they used the car right away in the morning so I headed to Mawe Hai around 10 am or so. I'm driving along and having a grand old time avoiding the pot holes (it's kind of like a video game) and I get onto the main street and I'm a driving for maybe 4 minutes and something happens that has never happened to me before (and may or may not be coincidence) - every other car on the road except for me pulled off the road.

It was the middle of the morning so there wasn't that much traffic, but there was enough that when I was the only one on the road I began to think "oh crap, what's up?" I thought maybe a military convoy was coming and I somehow missed the signal, or someone important, or I didn't know what. I was looking side to side, and behind me, and was watching for cars ahead.

Then I saw what made me turn around. People were running on the side of the road towards Mawe Hai (the same way I was going) and maybe 500 meters ahead of me the street was full of people and more people were running there every minute. It took about 15 seconds of curiosity before I decided I should probably turn around, and by this time I'm still the only car on the road and now a lot of people are running past me. I turned around in an intersection and the police there were on walkie talkies and looking and shouting at the huge crowd. The thing the was interesting though was the soldiers also on the corner doing nothing, but until night when they pillage the houses themselves, they don't usually do anything in the city.

I finally made it out to Mawe Hai on Wednesday and this time Wilfrieda was with me. I started telling her what happened and we stopped at a shop along the way that was a friend of hers. Here's what happened.

The night before there were some robbers in the houses off the main road and they ended up killing a woman. I was fortunate enough to be driving down the road shortly after the people found the robber and were going to administer a bit of justice of the people. I'm not sure how they were planning on doing it, but he was going to die. The police showed up sometime and tried to take him into custody but the people refused. They ended up shooting into the air to try and get rid of the crowd. I'm not sure what happened to the robber and I don't know what part I was lucky enough to chance upon this, but I'm pretty darn glad I turned around. Coincidentally or not, I saw one other car on the road while I was driving back to the turn off from the main road to Maji. That was probably worse on my mind even than the people in the middle of the road.