Driving through Conakry the night Guinea won

We had spent the day getting two Subarus out of a stranger's yard and into a
mechanic's, and the evening in a restaurant watching Guinea play Gambia – a
country we had driven the length of the year before, on the same rally. Guinea
won, one-nil.

We knew in principle what that meant, having seen European cities after
victories. What we had not thought through was that our car was covered in rally
decals, that the other car had turned left, and that our shortcut back to the
hotel ran straight through the district where thousands of people had watched the
match and were now out on the road celebrating it.

There were five or six cars ahead of us and a few behind. We went slowly, because
no other speed was available. Then the crowd found us. People began rocking the
car, then climbing onto it, then jumping on it – at one point I think there were
more than twenty on the roof and the bonnet. I wound the window down to wave them
off and was comprehensively ignored.

What got us out was not us. Some of the people in that crowd decided we had had
enough, and started pulling the others down and pushing them back from the car. A
gap opened. We took a little more speed, the road made room, and we were through.

The damage came to a bent bonnet and a broken windscreen. The bonnet we
straightened. The windscreen we simply lived with, cracked, across five more
countries, all the way to the end of the trip.

What we kept saying at the hotel afterwards was that we had spent a year not
knowing whether we still owned these cars, got them back that morning, and nearly
lost the whole trip in one evening.

The part I think about now is the other half of it. The crowd that nearly ended
our rally was also the crowd that got us out of it, and those were the same
people.