Jon Fenning blog March 10
First and foremost, never ever ship your car to Africa on a roll-on roll-off ferry.
Every single team that shipped their car to Dakar returned to it to find something missing. Our Beetle was effected worst than most. The buggers couldn't work out how to open the bonnet, so they wrapped a rope around our bumper in an attempt to pull it forward and bend the wings out, in the futile hope of popping open the bonnet!
Happily, our car survived although they did nick the numberplates. The bonnet refused to open and it now looked thoroughly ‘Africanised,’ thanks to the bent bumper and lack of identification. So we tore off across Dakar, convoy in tow.
For anyone who hasn't experienced it before, African driving is fairly unique. There are no real traffic rules, apart from the use of the (now klaxon) horn whenever you do anything other than drive in a straight line.
Initially we were practically spoiling the Africans with our English indicating etiquette, however we very quickly realised that this courtesy was most unnecessary. We soon discovered that there is a hierarchy determining right of way in Africa:
Goat is overruled by Motorbike,
Motorbike is overruled by Donkey,
Donkey is overruled by Car,
Car is overruled by exceptionally overloaded lorry,
Cow is King of everything – and frequently takes advantage of this causing the local traffic to dive off the road in all directions.
I'll raise your Beetle, by a Cow.
Before long our convoy suffered its first breakdown. Our lovely beetle was behaving itself, it was the little Renault 5 in our group that had problems. The alternator was not charging the battery, a problem we very quickly traced to worn brushes. Unfortunately, this could be not so quickly fixed.
So we got our first glimpse of African mechanics. The brushes were replaced using no more than a bit of wire, a multiheaded bike spanner and a knife. The pièce de résistance came when soldering the wires back together; a cable was simply touched across both ends of a car battery until one end was hot enough to melt the solder. The ensuing sparks were taken as commonplace by the locals.
Unfortunately due to suspect surroundings, everything vaguely valuable was kept well out of sight, so we struggled for photos of this particular event. Fear not though, there's plenty left to come...
Posted: 9:51am, 5 March 2010
Words: Jon Fenning
Images: Jon Fenning
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