There are all manner of pests here in the Philippines. Rats the size of a small cat, flies, mosquitoes, roaches, scorpions, itchy caterpillars, and the kind on two wheels. They are simply everywhere on the road like so many fruit flies. It didn't used to be this way...I think there's a motorcycle conspiracy here. Now, I'm not anti-motorcycles, in fact, they can be quite fun. But I absolutely HATE them when the weave in and out of traffic with no regard for the bigger vehicles. I can easily count at least 20 of them idling at any given red light as they squeeze their way through waiting cars. I've had no less than a dozen near misses since my arrival and have been repeatedly warned about them. Motorcycle deaths are to blame for the highest road fatality numbers.
Yesterday I had my first run in with one. I won.
I was driving up to a medical clinic run by an American missionary doc to learn how to conduct ultrasounds. There's this "secret" back road that skips out on much traffic and angst. It's pretty small and unused. At this particularly sharp turn going up a steep hill, I get stuck in a line of vehicles behind a big truck chugging in first gear up the hill. It was too tight to safely pass him. Folks, he was going PAINFULLY slow. Of course there were dozens of those little fruit flies passing us on the left and right. We finally neared my left turn to pull into the subdivision of the clinic (and the birthing clinic!) and I was excited to skip out on the rest of the funeral march behind the truck. I put my blinker on, glanced in my mirrors, checked the oncoming lane and started to turn left.
BANG!
Shocked, I checked the left mirror and there was a motorcycle falling to the ground in very slow motion. I quickly pulled into the subdivision, hopped out, and ran down the road to check on my victim (or was I the victim?). Not only was there a thoughtless, reckless dude driving the motorcycle, he had his two young kids he was taking to school!!! The kids were standing up and walking to the edge of the road and the guy was picking up his bike, quite shaken but appeared to be unharmed. I checked over the kids, kneeling down to see their eyes while I asked them if they were ok. The driver pulled off his jacket and revealed a cop uniform! Yikes, this guy was a cop! By this time all the guys hanging around the clinic came running down and started chewing the driver out for being reckless. Then I yelled at him because he still had part of his bike in the road, just asking to be hit again. I asked him if he was ok, he sheepishly showed me his scraped knuckles, but he was extremely lucky he was ok and his bike was unscathed. His kids piled back on the motorcycle and he skedaddled before the other guys took their own vengeance on him.
I didn't bother with taking him to the police office to file an accident report because who knows what cronies he has there that would conveniently make it my fault. As a white person, it's always our fault. A friend recently had a drunken motorcycle driver hit the back of her car, dislocating his shoulder. And SHE was expected to pay his hospital bill and purchase his sling simply because she's white. So I wasn't going to push it.
My car has a scratch and a small dent which I should be able to get hammered out. I was shaken, but thankful it wasn't worse. A different missionary turning left at the same corner creamed a motorcyclist and that dude had broken bones. God knew I didn't need that kind of drama this soon.
On a happier note, I scanned my first fetus yesterday under the gentle and guidance of a fantastic Swiss missionary doctor. I loved it! I'm very excited to be able to do this confidently and competently in the future for the moms at the birthing clinic.
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