I Was Lucky Enough to Survive (2)

The second time I was lucky enough to survive, but might very well not have, was about 25 years ago, when I was in American Samoa.

When I travel, I always make it a point to go out and meet the people. A hotel, after all, ius not only a set of walls to keep the local people away from the guests, but also a set of walls to keep the guests away from the local people.

I was riding in a rickety, mostly wooden bus along with about five other passengers. American Samoa is mostly mountains, with a shelf of level land around the edges where most of the villages and the town of Fagatogo is located. We were way up in the mountains. Our driver kept talking with one of the passengers. Thisd wouldn't have been nearly as bad as it was if he hadn't kept half turning and trying to make eye contact with the person.

At one poiint when he was paying very little attention to the road we hit a soft shoulder. We skidded off the road. This wouldn't necessarily have been serious had we been soimewhere on the level part of the island. However, we were up in the mountains.

We went straight out into space. Below us, a hundred feet or so was a small spit of land sticking out with a palm tree growing on it. Beyond that was a drop of perhaps 500 feet ending where waves were breaking over a partly exposed reef.

I remember thinking to myself as we sailed out into space, "This is going to be interesting." Then I felt as well as heard a rending crash of metal and shattering glass.

When I became conscious again, I was lying on my back. The bus had broken in half, and one of the halves had pinned my legs against the trunk of the solitary palm tree. Someone came alonmg and pushed the bus half just enough to allow my legs the drop to the ground. Although my left leg was crushed slightly, it wasn't broken. Nobody in the bus had been killed, as we all would have been had that palm tree not been there to stop our descent another 500 feet onto the reef.

All of us seemed to be bleeding from various cuts, but no one had been injured close to death. One of the other passengers, a young man, had a broken leg. We all craweled up the slope, bleeding as we went, to the road. Once there, we simply lay on the grass, trying to recover a bit. Within a few minutes another bus came along. Seeing us, they screeched to a halt, and everyone aboard jumped out and dragged, carried and lifted us onto their vehicle. The new driver found a safe place to turn around, then sped as fast as his bus would go, taking us to the hospital.

That night I was to board a frieghter that was scheduled for a 12-day run between American Samoa and Los Angeles. After the hospital exam, I was taken by one of the other passengers to a nearby home to rest for a while. I was then taken to the freighter. I spent most of the next 12 days with my legs elevated to keep them from swelling much. When I got to my home in Berkeley I saw a doctor, who drained a certain amount of fluid from my left leg. Over the next few weeks I mended, and I felt as good as new.

Serious injuries like this one are never really over, though. During the last few years I have had recurring arthritic pain in the leg that I'd injured. Now it has become so bad that sometimes I have to take pain medication even to get out of my home and shop at a supermarket.

I am able to get about, however, and I am still able to enjoy a great deal in life. Judging froim the normal life expectancy of the men in my family, I have about 14 more years before I am gone. The last four of them I shall probably be drooling somewhere in a wheelchair, unable to remember where I am. Buit for the time being I AM HERE ! And I shall enjoy life enormously every day that I can.