driving mishaps

mishap #1:
the other week i was cruising along to the airport to pick up a grassroot soccer cape town employee. windows were down, nice weather, music playing, all was good. then all of a sudden a man jumps into the road and starts flailing his arms in the air and points for me to pull over. at first, i'm a bit confused, but i obviously have to pull over because he is blocking the entire road with his body. then, i realize he's in a uniform and this is zambia's way of pulling me over. the uniformed man walks over and says i was speeding and would have to pay a fine. big bummer. i ask him nicely if he can let me off with a warning because i have no money on me and just arrived to zambia recently (a little white lie). he then sends over his boss, a lady police, so i do my best to sweet talk her and give her the same story. she's a bit more forgiving luckily and lets me off with a warning, as long as i promise not to do it again. phew! dodged that one.
the whole process of the way they pull people over, though, was ridiculous. there was no one in a car to chase after cars that didn't stop. and i don't believe they had any device to catch people's license plate numbers fast enough before speeding by. so i wonder if people just drive past ever and just don't stop.

mishap #2:
yesterday i was driving and backing up out of a shopping area, when all of a sudden i heard a crunch. a bit of panic set in. apparently another car had started backing up as well (after me, i might add), and we accidentally backed up into each other. bad news. we get out of the car to look at the damage. luckily, there is no damage to our car, but there is a small dent on the trunk of the other car. it is me and tommy (one of the americans i work with) in my car, and it is a car full of zambians in the other. they saw we were white and assumed they could get some money out of us from this accident. they wanted us to pay for the full damage, which made no sense at all since we were both at fault. he wanted to take it to the police (cause we don't speak nyanga, he figured he would be able to negotiate with the police and we wouldn't be able to understand). so reluctantly, we decide to go to the police station with them. first though, we stopped back at the office to pick up one of our zambian co-workers, izek, to take with us to help translate for us if needed. we then head off to the police station. when we are almost there, the other car randomly puts his hazards on and pulls off to the side of the road. a bit confused, i follow his lead. he got out of his car and came back to my window to talk. "i thought about it again, and i changed my mind." awesome! no police. i slipped the guy 40,000 zmk, which is like $10 usd, to help with the damage, we shook hands, and called it even. we all got out of the car then and started chatting and realized tommy plays soccer if one of the guys who was in the car, and the guy who had been driving is cousins with izek. small world for a city of over 2 million people hah.
i was talking with the lady who was in the car, and she said everyone else in the car had been telling the driver the whole time not to deal with going to the police and to just settle it between us. the police take so much time, are usually a bit corrupt, and wouldn't have any real say/reasoning in the matter since it was our word against theirs. it also would have been a long, drawn out process. soo very glad he came to his senses and just settled things. izek said that is how things are normally dealt with in zambia when it comes to little fender bender accidents. most of the cars here are in pretty horrible shape anyways, so an extra little dent here and there doesn't really make a difference.

alright, there are my driving mishaps. hopefully there won't be any more anytime soon