How To: Butt, Back and Beyond

Clearly, this is not medical advice, and clearly different situations require different solutions. That said, two items that cost me under $20 total were a huge help to me on my trip to Africa and would apply to any rigorous vehicle endurance test as you explore the real countryside of whatever location you are visiting. I have had a
herniated disc and sciatica problems, and I was quite worried that bouncing along rural dirt roads would wreak havoc on my vulnerable back which I had gone to great lengths to finally see improvement.

When my daughter and I traveled in Ethiopia and Kenya, there were at least ten days of bone jarring marathons in a vehicle of some sort. Rich people fly from one destination to another in Africa, and sometimes that is advisable because of time, but generally speaking, I would never give up the many hours we spent driving into the most rural areas of Ethiopia and Kenya because the vistas before us, one after another,
were like living a full color spread in the National Geographic and the drive was a quintessential African experience for me.

When I say the vehicle bounced, that's a lie. It LURCHED as my body was thrown from side to side and up towards the roof and down again. Imagine all those cartoons you have seen of some poor soul with his bones vibrating and his jaw clattering up and down vigorously, and then put yourself in the picture. Ouch.

Here is what worked for me. I used the infllatable pillow I had really bought for the airplane ride behind my neck, and I could feel that it absorbed a lot of the shock away from my neck and back. My daughter thought I looked a little dorky, but I yielded to the greater outcry from my poor, aging body My neck pillow doubled as a lumbar
pillow, so I sometimes slid it down to my lower back also. Then I had a flat tempurpedic seat cushion I had bought at Big Lots for $12 to sit on, and it cushioned my gluteus maximus and also absorbed the jarrring from my back. The neat thing about the tempurpedic is that in my suitcase it compressed down to practically nothing . Of course, the air neck pillow also deflated to a flat item, so between them, they took up very little room and were worth their weight in gold. I actually was surprised that I was OK with grueling, usually about five hours a day, bone wearying drives.

I lived for two decades on a long, dirt lane, so I am not unfamiliar with the non-macadam journey. but when you imagine dirt roads in Africa, think ruts, not roads. Think sudden whiplash-potential swerves to avoid goats, cattle, chickens, camels or even children. Think about rainy seasons with no road crew to come out the next morning for repairs and roads -uh, ruts- practically washed away. Think about
mountainous roads that spiral around where you just trust surely there is road just past the horizon where you see only sky, like an amusement park ride. Think about drivers for whom this rugged terrain is all they know, and so cover as much territory as possible quickly even if the Americans are struggling to keep up.

Sometimes the only way to get to the most entrancing places far beyond the tourist traps and well known sites is to challenge one of those ruts for hours. Sometimes it is better not to follow the obvious and well-worn path, but to follow where your heart leads you and make your own path. Your heart will rejoice, and if you protect your back, it will survive to come back another day.