Stroller Diving

My last Uzbekistan post and one of my two craziest moments...



The drainage ditch and the area between the drainage ditch and the sidewalk.  (It is very important when driving not to drive off the edge of the pavement.) 



This is the average water height in the drainage ditch.

So there we were.  The kids and I were on the way home from the grocery store, Vic strapped into the front seat of the stroller and all the groceries in the back seat.  I turned around briefly to encourage Seth to stop dawdling and pick up the pace.  I turned back around in shock to see the stroller careening off the sidewalk past the dirt and into the drainage ditch.  It was deep enough that particular day, fortunately a balmy 96 degrees, that Vic was underwater.  As any mom would do, I went into the ditch after him and picked up the front of the stroller.  Some nice but definitely startled Uzbek man helped me actually get the stroller out of the ditch and a screaming Vic out of the stroller.  The water, the extremely, extremely dirty water, was waist high on me.  Other than a bit scared and dirty, Vic was fine.  My next fear was my purse because it had all my i.d.'s in it.  It was soaking wet but still in the stroller.  A sippy cup and some groceries were missing, but that seemed pretty minor considering the event.  And, many of the groceries had to be tossed out because you just don't want to eat food that got wet in a drainage ditch in Uzbekistan.  The Uzbeks that we met on the four our so blocks left to our house looked at us with absolute confusion.  They so value cleanliness and Vic and I were wet and covered in various types of debris.  It all happened so fast that it wasn't really a nightmare experience, just a crazy one that I never want to repeat.  Vic did remember the episode, and the next time we walked that way he whimpered until we passed the spot.