sample from Cooking up Crap by Lissa Judd

from adventures in Zimbabwe, p.41:

To my recollection we didn’t stay more than two nights in any particular place, and the lads would erect each campsite anew while we were out walking and soaking up Leon’s encyclopaedic knowledge of the African wilderness. On one such occasion, after a long afternoon tracking rhinos, we got back to our vehicle just as night was falling. There was a bit of a drive back to our campsite by the dry river bed, and we chatted energetically about the close encounters of the day, the adrenaline still running. We approached the campsite down a bit of an incline, bouncing our way with some speed over the rough terrain. The suspension was pretty dodgy, but in a lot better shape than the brakes as it turned out. The lads were sitting opposite each other peeling potatoes languidly into a bucket, the embers of their campfire glowing nearby. Leon sounded the horn, to no avail, as that didn’t work either. As he changed gears, and pumped the brakes ineffectively, the lads turned nonchalantly towards us. The last thing we saw before ploughing through their kitchen, was the startled whites of their eyes, large and gleaming in the headlights. They leapt balletically to safety in an impromptu pas de deux, clutching at the potatoes and landing on their arses.

As the lads dusted themselves off, we veered past a sizeable tree that rather suddenly stepped out in front of us, and proceeded over the edge of the riverbank, becoming momentarily airborne. Our flight was relatively brief, on account of Leon’s vehicle not doing that well either, and we landed with a whump in the riverbed. I suspect this is when the muffler came to grief.