Breaking down 8 hours from civilization (the Africa Rally)

The Africa Rally is the stupid, wonderful thing a few of us do most years: buy old cars too cheap to cry over and drive them south from Europe through West Africa until they fall apart. In 2023 we drove from Gibraltar to Guinea.

Day fifteen was the day we lost a car, and it turned out to be the best day of the trip.

The plan was to reach a village called Mali, in the highlands of Guinea. The road was so broken it took five hours to cover a hundred kilometres, and somewhere in there we put three holes in the fuel tank, deep in country with no town in any direction. Locals on motorbikes rode off to fetch help. While we waited for the car to be patched, a few hundred kids appeared from a village that had looked empty, and we played football on the main road until the light went. We lost.

We fixed the tank, turned back toward Koundara, and sixteen kilometres later the gearbox died. This was the worst possible place for it: no way to tow, no trailer, no parts, no mechanic, and hours from the nearest town in the dark. So we made an offer to the locals riding past, the whole car, for a lift on a motorbike. One man said yes, probably the only one who believed we were serious.

We stripped the Subaru for parts the other cars might need, handed him the keys and the documents, and three of us rode out in the back of his bike. For him the car was worth several years of wages. One down, two to go.

You cannot plan a day like that. You can only put yourself somewhere it might happen.