-Seneca-
We were leaving Labe today and heading for the wilds of
Guinea for the next day, possibly 2 as we make our way to the border of Guinea
Bissau. We have 2 bush camps allocated,
hoping we only need one and that we don’t need an EBC (an emergency bush camp)
making 3 bush camps, which would be the pits, as we have done that already, but
fingers crossed it doesn’t turn into that.
I know I sound like a broken record, but it really depends on the
unknown conditions of the roads and with the rain that came down all night, it
does make the roads a little more challenging than the normal challenging. Breakfast was set for 8.30am and they all had
the pie that I was given yesterday morning, plus the usual baguette, jam and
coffee. The group was still a little off
kilter after their massive day yesterday and the drama of getting home last
night, but they were all in high spirits and we were all getting ready for an
on time departure at 9.30am.
At 9.20am, Zoe went to turn the truck on and it went
click, and no noise. I was standing
right near the door when she attempted the first time and I knew that it was
bad news. The first question that Zoe
asked was if I had charged anything on Madge while they were away, and I could
thankfully answer no, because I would have felt really bad if I had and then
Madge didn’t start. Because Madge wasn’t
going to be driven for 2 whole days, before they left Sam disconnected the battery,
which was a new one that they had obtained in Freetown. Madge had also decided to not start there and
hence the new battery. I guess now that
it has been the second time in a week that the battery has gone flat may
indicate that there may be another issue beside the battery, but that is my
untrained and mechanical mind saying that and I am certainly no judge as I
can’t even change a tyre. So Zoe faffed
around a bit, checking the battery and fiddling with a few things while Sam
finalized the hotel payments and then he came out and then the searching for
the problem and solution started in earnest.
The tour company guy Sulu was there this morning to say good-bye, which
was just as well, as he made a phone call and within 30 minutes a guy turned up
in an old model Mercedes and had a truck battery at the ready, just like
that. Like I said I am not mechanical
minded at all, but they had jumper leads and people around and a group of us
just watched the goings on and the others decided it would be a perfect
opportunity to pull out the Scrabble board.
I think that was an indication that we may be a little longer than
expected. The one battery didn’t have
enough oomph, so the Mercedes guy went and got another one and they tried that
to no avail. That clicking sound was
very depressing each time Zoe was told to start the truck. Plan C was to get another truck in to jump
start it from a running battery.
So we had to wait another 30 minutes, which in Africa
time is pretty good and then the Calvary arrived in the form of a massive
yellow tip truck just after 11am, along with 6 more local people. So Canary (my name for the new arrival) was
parked as close to Madge as they could get her, so that the jumper leads would
reach and with her running, Madge was turned over and was still dead as a door
nail. CRAP. This got people scratching their heads, as we
all really thought that that would have been the answer. The thought was out there that the fridge had
drained the battery, so this was disconnected and then it was a process of
elimination trying all sorts of things and then turning over Madge to see if
she would start. Nothing worked, so an electrician
was called to see if he could isolate what the problem was. So we waited for another 30 minutes and then
the electrician arrived and after that it was a little bit of a blur, with
Canary getting started and turned off, Madge trying to kick over, Sam and Zoe
under the truck and the 6 locals that came with Canary also putting in there
10c, there was a lot going on. Scrabble
was still being played and can you believe that Lord Byron, who hadn’t plated
before started the game with a 90 point word ‘whopped’ and ended up winning the
game. Talk about beginners luck. Helen pulled out an 83 point word with
‘seventy’, but can you believe Lord Byron’s luck. Hilarious and he was that tickled pink he had
to come out and tell us all his fluky fortune and then ran back in to finish
the game.
It was now coming up to 12 noon and Madge was still
clicking unsuccessfully. We had our
photo taken by some foreign guys who happen to spend 5 months of the year in
Guinea. They said it was unusual to see
tourists at all in the region, let alone a group of us travelling together on a
truck. There are a few more foreigners
around, but they are all here for work with aid agencies and NGO work, so I
guess we are a little unusual!!!! I was
trying to help with the whole situation by speaking soothing words to Madge,
and a few gentle strokes, which didn’t seem to help one iota and was my only
contribution. In the meantime Cathy
asked if she could borrow my adapter and use our room to charge some things,
obviously with Madge out of power, it wasn’t a good idea to even ask to charge
something, but it would have been funny, but possibly not the right time. So we got Rich to pass all the required stuff
out the window as we couldn’t get in or out of the truck and Cath went to the
room to plug in and in the meantime I was waiting next to the truck and Canary
started up and I got super excited that it was Madge, and I whooped (90 point
word) and then realized that it was not Madge and then Zoe tried Madge and she
started and this time I could whoop a (90 point word) and we were back in
business. YOU BEAUTY. Funnily Cath came straight back out of the
room and said that would be right and I told her she should have done that 2
hours ago, Murphy’s Law strikes again. It
didn’t take Canary long to leave, and I guess they had other work to do,
Mercedes man was given a payment and the electrician hung around a little
longer to take a look around, but then we really had to hit the road and he was
paid for his time and then we were locked and loaded pulling out of the hotel
at 12.30pm. Three hours late wasn’t too
bad……
We had to stop in town to purchase some fresh food for
the coming days, namely bread, eggs and sandwich supplies, and luckily Ready
Steady Cock only has to do a breakfast and a lunch in 3 days’ time, so we only
needed eggs and we would try and get further supplies in a few days. I had a good look at the cooking roster and I
think our team has done pretty well out of it with us only having to do dinner
once and that is on the 3rd last night of the trip with a few
breakfasts and a few lunches. Cathy was
happy to go into the market for our team to get eggs and I stayed on in the
truck, as it is my job for truck security, so a few of us stayed on board while
the others ran around to get the supplies.
I felt bad for the stall ladies as they were getting a little fumigated
from the Madge fumes, and Zoe would normally turn off the truck, but after just
getting her started, there was no way we could turn the truck off now, which
they did say something to us, but in French, we didn’t know and after one lady
going off her nut at us, they all settled down and we waited and waited and the
quick turnaround we were supposed to happen took us 40 minutes. It seemed the bread was the hardest thing to
find, which is funny as we saw 2 lots of ‘bread men’ with dozens of bread on a
tray on their head walk past us as we waited.
We had to drive a little further up once we had everyone
on board again, we pissed off a few more locals that weren’t happy that Madge was
parked in front of their shops, as Sam slipped out to get the bread that we
finally spotted on our way out of town and then we were finally out of Labe at
1.30pm, 4 hours later than planned and we will see over the next few days the
knock-on effect of how that will affect us.
But there is nothing we can do about it, so it is time to just get on
with the next 3 days on the truck and the next 2 nights of bush camps, as I am
starting now to countdown my days left on the trip which I think is a natural
reaction when the trip has been as hard as it has been. I am looking forward to getting home;
catching up with Nairobi, especially after what the city has gone through the
last few months while I have been away and then I get to blend in with other
white people for a glorious 5 weeks before settling back into Africa for my
second year with some big changes to come.
After only 15 minutes we stopped for a lunch break. The day just keeps ticking by, but we need to
be fed and if we are quick we can turn a lunch around for 14 people in 30-40
minutes, not bad really. The good thing
with the new group, even though we all have allocated jobs, everyone is happy
to pitch in where they can and things move along so much quicker with this philosophy
and it is also good for the group morale.
When the guys bought eggs at the market, I had noticed that they were a
little warm and I said that I think that they had bought pre-boiled eggs. Ian showed us a trick to be able to tell
without cracking the egg open and it was if you spin the egg and it actually
spins it means it is boiled, if it doesn’t then it is raw. So we spun the egg and it twirled nicely, so
we had just purchased 28 boiled eggs. We
had a brain wave that we could use them to make egg and lettuce rolls for
lunch, which would make a nice change from tinned meat and tuna (which I am
still not sick of) and then they were sent back out with Zoe to get some raw
eggs that we could use for breakfast over the next 2 days. So after what must have been nearly a world
record lunch we were FINALLY back on the road now to get some distance over the
country. Some people mentioned that
since it was getting so late now, to stay in Labe another night and to head out
early in the morning, and at the start of my trip I would have thought the same
thing, but the more distance we can get out, even if it is only 4 hours, could
make a BIG difference to the other end of the travel days and there is also a
cost factor, as another night in a hotel with meals vs. bush camping and a meal
off the truck, it made sense to push as far as we could this afternoon.
Just to slow things down when we were biting at the bit
was road works. There were a lot of
diversions down temporary muddy roads while they completed near finished new
roads. It was very teasing to have to
turn off a pot holed road, down a muddy track and pass what looked like a
completed road to me. It wasn’t just a
section, it would have been a good 2 hours of driving that was currently being
worked on and from the signs and a few of the people we saw, was being funded
by the Chinese. It will be a whole new
section of road when they finish, and I wonder when that will be and how long
it has taken to get some of the sections to where they are at now? It is a slow process at the best of times, but
in an African country where there is a lot more manual labor, these things can
take longer and with the wet season just about finished it must get more
productive? There was a lot of mud, mud
pools and at one point we showed up just as one of the road work trucks was
pulling out one of their others out of a massive pool of muddy track. We slipped and sloshed our way through with
no problems but it was reassuring to know that if we needed help, there were
enough trucks going in both directions to help if we needed. Just after 5pm, we left the plains and
flatness and headed into what seemed to be a mountain road that didn’t end. There was no land on either side of the road
that was suitable for us to camp, so we just had to keep driving until we found
a small rocky outcrop where we could get Madge off the road and enough room for
the 6 tents. It wasn’t the best spot,
based on the rock, as it was hard to peg out the tents and it was going to be
hard to sleep on but it is overlanding and bush camping at its best. You always wonder what is just down the road
though and when you leave the bush camp the following morning, you always check
for the next 30 minutes to see if there was anything more suitable, but when do
you stop in the evening?
It was 6.30pm when we found the spot and 30 minutes later
we had the camp up, the tents erected and the cook team on dinner, who happened
to be Team Ollie Rogers, which is cool with reference to Ollie and Roger but no
Suzanne. These guys were organized and
had bought some white beans at the market this morning and then had them
soaking in water, in a container, in the esky (to avoid spills) for the whole
afternoon. I just had to remind Suzanne to rinse the beans as they had found
little insects and bugs on the beans as they popped them in to the water a few
hours ago, but we figured a bit of protein never hurt anyone and didn’t mention
to people that they had been ‘bugged’ and we also figured that they were still
to be cooked, so no fear of eating a raw bug.
With the dinner, bean based and some tinned vegetables it had been a
totally MFD (meat free day) with both meals being vegetarian and Ready Steady Cock
would NEVER have no meat! WTH (what the
hell). But the meal was delicious when
we were finally fed at 8.30pm and a lot of beers were consumed during the
waiting and when I peeled off to bed at 10pm; they were still rocking on, but
with no more beers as they didn’t want to exhaust the stock with another bush
camp tomorrow. I am loving the cook
group roster as it is giving me so much more extra time for me to sit on the
truck and work on the blog and to just chill.
You dint really have that option when you are in a smaller group and
after 7 weeks it is taking some getting used to. The downside of tonight’s truck time and my
computer is that the back of the truck smells to high heaven as everyone’s
shoes got so drenched yesterday, that they now need to dry them out, so picture
9 pairs of sneakers, which I am sure were a little pongy to start with, now wet
and pongy, times that by 9, it really is an awful smell. Add to that, I was sitting under the girls
washing that included some ‘smalls’, people shirts and some pairs of shorts
around, I felt like I was in a Chinese laundry!!!!
Considering we had really only travelled 4 hours, we got
80km under our belts today and we all have high hopes that we will get some
good distance tomorrow (but not confident) and then be rewarded of arriving into
a new country and a hotel for a good wash and some R&R. I don’t know how the guys are coping actually
after a full on 2 days hiking, and yesterday being a long and tough day, how
they were able to keep going today, but kudos to them all.
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