The Kudu on the R40 and the Car I Could Not Look At

The Last Shot of the Night

The wedding was at a lodge outside Hazyview, a long beautiful day in late May. The bride wore her grandmother's veil. The groom's father cried during the speeches and then pretended it was the smoke from the fire pit. I shot nineteen hundred frames, the last of them at about ten at night, a group of cousins dancing badly under fairy lights, and every one of them was laughing.

I packed up my cameras, said goodbye to the couple, and started the drive back to my flat in Mbombela. I had done that road a hundred times. I knew the bends. I knew to watch for animals, because everybody who lives here knows to watch for animals.

Half a Second

It was a kudu bull. I did not see him until he was already in the headlights, stepping up out of the long grass on the left side of the R40, enormous, those spiral horns catching the light. I remember thinking how beautiful he was. That is the strange thing. Before the fear, there was a half second where the photographer in me just thought, look at him.

Then I braked and swerved and he jumped, and kudu are tall, so when a car hits one the body comes over the bonnet and into the windscreen. I heard a sound I will never forget, a deep crack and then a shower of glass, and then the car was in the ditch on the right side of the road and the engine was still running and the radio was still playing, which felt obscene.

The People Who Stopped

I was not badly hurt. Cuts on my arms and forehead from the glass, a bruise from the seatbelt that went purple and then yellow over the next three weeks, a ringing in my ears. The kudu was dead on the road behind me. I could not look at him.

A couple in a bakkie stopped within about five minutes. The woman sat with me on the side of the road and held my hand while her husband phoned for help and dragged the kudu off the tar so nobody else would hit him. I do not know their names. I have thought about them every week since. I hope someone sits with them on a dark road one day.

The first thing I did, when I had stopped shaking enough to think, was check my camera bag. It was in the footwell behind the passenger seat. Both bodies, all the lenses, both memory cards with nineteen hundred frames of somebody's wedding. Every single one survived. I cried then, properly, for the first time.

The Car

The car was a silver Toyota Corolla Cross, three years old, the first car I had ever bought new. I had saved for it for four years. It was the car I took to every wedding, every engagement shoot, every newborn session in a stranger's lounge. My business lived in it.

After the tow truck took it, I did not see it again for nine days. When I finally went to the yard to collect my things, I barely recognised it. The roof was pushed down on the passenger side. The windscreen was gone. The bonnet was folded back like a piece of paper. There was kudu hair caught in the wiper. I stood there for a long time, unable to touch the door handle.

The Insurance Problem

This is the part I am still angry about, mostly at myself. A few months before, money had been tight in the quiet season and I had changed my insurance to save a bit each month. I had read the new policy too fast. I had not understood that the excess had gone up a lot and that the way they valued the car had changed.

When the assessor came back, the insurer said the car was not a write off. They would pay for repairs, minus my excess. The repair quote from the panelbeater was long, and the wait for parts was even longer, and the excess was more than I had in the bank in the middle of winter, when nobody gets married.

And the honest truth, which I did not say to anyone for weeks, was that I did not want the car back. Every time I closed my eyes I saw the kudu coming over the bonnet. The thought of getting back into that driver's seat and driving that road made my hands go cold.

Borrowing Cars and Lying About It

For two months I borrowed my brother's old Polo for shoots. I told clients I was having my car serviced. I drove the long way round to avoid the R40 at night, which added forty minutes to everything. I turned down a wedding in Sabie because I could not face the drive back in the dark.

My brother, Sipho, eventually sat me down at his kitchen table. He said, "You cannot pay to fix a car you are going to be afraid of. And you cannot keep driving mine."

He was right. He usually is. It is very annoying.

Learning That There Was Another Way

I did not know you could sell a car in that state. I genuinely thought a damaged car was something you either fixed or let rot at the back of a yard. Sipho was the one who looked it up. He found that there are buyers who will sell your damaged car on your behalf, or buy it outright, without you having to fix it first.

I spent an evening reading. I learned that a lot of people sell damaged cars every year, after accidents, hail, floods and every other thing that happens to cars in this country, and that the price depends on the damage, the model, the parts that can still be used, and the paperwork. I learned that I needed to check with my insurer and with the bank, because I still owed money on the car, and that everything had to be done properly and on paper.

I phoned around and got more than one offer. I asked questions I would never have known to ask before. Who collects it? Who handles the paperwork? When do I get paid? One person who called me back was pushy and kept saying the car was worthless, which I found strange for someone who wanted to buy it. I did not deal with him again.

The Last Time I Saw It

The car was collected on a Tuesday morning. I went to the yard to sign the last papers. I made myself walk around it one more time. I took the small things out of the cubbyhole that I had missed before: a lens cloth, a hair tie, a crumpled order of service from a wedding in Graskop. I touched the door handle, finally. Then I let them take it.

The money did not make me rich. After settling what I owed, there was enough for a deposit on a smaller second-hand car and a little left over. But it was money that came to me, instead of money going out for a car I could not bear to drive. It meant I could stop borrowing Sipho's Polo and stop lying to my clients.

Driving the Road Again

It took me until September to drive the R40 at night again. I did it on purpose, with Sipho in the passenger seat, after a shoot in White River. I drove slowly, with my brights on, scanning the grass on both sides. When we passed the place where it happened, I did not say anything. Sipho did not say anything either. He just put his hand on my shoulder for a few seconds and then took it away.

I have photographed eleven weddings since then. I leave a little earlier now. I drive a little slower. I keep a small torch and a first aid kit in the boot, and a card with the number for animal rescue in the cubbyhole, because the next time I see someone on the side of a dark road, I want to be the person who stops.

When people ask me about selling damaged cars, which happens more than you would think now that I have told this story to a few friends, I tell them it is not only about the money. It is about deciding what you are willing to carry. I was not willing to carry that car. Letting it go was the first step toward getting behind the wheel again.

I still have the photographs from that wedding in Hazyview. The couple sent me a message on their first anniversary, a picture of the album open on their coffee table. In the last frame, the cousins are still dancing badly under the fairy lights, and everyone is still laughing, and none of them have any idea what happened on the road an hour later. I like it that way.