Diary of a Man Being Driven Around Africa on a Truck with Some Other People

Diary of a Man Being Driven Around Africa

on a Truck with Some Other People

By Lance Cross

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2015 Lance Cross

All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Thank you for downloading this free ebook. Although this is a free book, it remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com. Thank you for your support.

For Michelle

Table of Contents

Day 1 - GIBRALTAR/MOROCCO

Day 20 - MAURITANIA

Day 27 - MALI

Day 47 - BURKINA FASO

Day 50 - GHANA

Day 73 - TOGO

Day 76 - BENIN

Day 80 - NIGERIA

Day 92 - CAMEROON

Day 107 - GABON

Day 121 - CONGO

Day 135 - DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

Day 138 - ANGOLA

Day 143 - NAMIBIA

Day 154 - SOUTH AFRICA

GIBRALTAR/MOROCCO

Day 1, Tuesday – Wrong Way Home

My head felt like it was inside the over-stuffed piece of inflexible carbonised luggage I was dragging behind me.

I hate airports.

Being in one with the flu is as much fun as being tied to a treadmill while someone glues bricks to your head. And why did I have to feel like seven types of shit today? I spent last week sitting on my sofa doing nothing and I felt fantastic.

At least someone was picking me up. I didn’t fancy fighting my way out through hordes of Brits who couldn’t wait to get into the nearest English theme pub to stuff themselves with gammon and chips.

I didn’t have to get up early to throw my towel on to a sun lounger and I wasn’t tied to the next happy hour either. I was free for a month. Confined and restricted by a schedule of breakfast, tourist site, lunch, tourist site and dinner. But essentially, free.

When I spotted a Foreign Fun sign I sneezed twice and headed straight for it. It was held by a man hovering in front of a souvenir shop selling blow-up palm trees and luminous flip-flops. He was wearing a threadbare Alice Cooper Trashes The World Tour t-shirt and looked like a surfer who had been dumped by too many waves, and just the type to wear garish footwear.

At least he had a friendly face.

‘I’m Craig,’ he said. ‘Who the hell are you?’

I had to concentrate as I stood in front of him. ‘Steve. Steven Stapleton.’

While Craig searched for my name on a clipboard and random bits of crumpled paper stuffed in his pockets I was jostled by a posse of hen party girls not wearing enough clothes and chanting, ‘Sharon’s getting married. Last chance to get a shag boys. ’

The bride-to-be was shouting it the loudest, and was wearing less than the rest.

I pitied the boys Sharon was going to get her hands on. She wasn’t the type of ride I had come on holiday for.

I wasn’t feeling too well as I sat on my luggage and had flashbacks to a 1972 Ziggy Stardust concert at the Rainbow Pavilion in Torquay I’d never been to.

I popped another flu pill. It was a good gig.

Ziggy thrust his pelvis towards my face and a spectrum of strobe lights pulsed overhead while my head throbbed to the music.

A cute bottle-blond standing next to a box of beach balls threw me a furtive look.

I smiled.

‘Hi. I’m Steve,’ I said. ‘Are you going on holiday with me? Is this your first time at the Rainbow?’

She scuttled off.

I hoped she wasn’t going to book us a room. I had a girlfriend already.

The music stopped abruptly and I found myself staring up at the surfer dude who was waving his hand in front of my face.

Oh, yeah.

I was in an airport.

In Gibraltar.

I staggered to my feet.

‘You’re not on my list,’ said Craig.

That jolted me awake.

‘What? I must be.’

‘You’re not here. What trip are you on?’

‘Cities Of Spain.’

He had a puzzled expression. ‘I’ll ring the office and we’ll get it sorted. Don’t worry.’

Craig hid behind an inflatable palm tree and had a heated discussion on his phone while I was left standing next to a group of rotund, pallid blokes all dressed as Elvis. They were chanting, ‘Gary’s getting married. Come and get some cock girls.’

I wondered if Gary was getting married to Sharon.

Craig finished yelling into his phone, and I started to worry.

He didn’t take his eyes from the clipboard as he approached me. ‘There seems to have been a bit of a balls-up with your booking, mate.’

‘A balls-up? ’

His eyes stayed glued to the list I wasn’t on. ‘Yeah.’

‘How? I booked it with Foreign Fun. You’re Foreign Fun. And here we are.’

‘Not quite,’ he said. ‘Someone in the office left your name off a list.’

I sneezed, sending a blob of liquid mucus onto the back of an Elvis wig. ‘Which list?’

‘All of them,’ said Craig.

‘But you took my money.’

He paused. ‘Yeah.’

‘Which means?’

‘We have a problem.’

‘Look, mate,’ I said. ‘I booked a tour and paid for a tour so this is your problem.’

‘Thing is, the Spanish tour has already left and was fully booked anyway.’

‘Are you having a laugh?’

He wasn’t laughing.

‘But I’ll miss seeing Barcelona, and some other places.’

‘Yeah.’

‘What trip is this if it isn’t the Cities of Spain tour?’

‘This is the Overland tour,’ he said.

‘And what’s the difference?’

‘We’re in a truck. We sleep in tents. We cook our own food. And it goes for twenty-two weeks.’

‘You spend twenty-two weeks travelling around Spain?’

‘Africa.’

I stared at him. ‘You’re joking?’

Craig stared back. ‘No.’

I searched in vain for a patch of dry handkerchief before the next sneeze came. When it did it was loud enough to get the attention of Sharon’s entourage and wet enough to get Craig jumping backwards.

‘You’ve got a couple of options,’ said Craig, wiping his hand over Alice Cooper’s face. ‘You could go back to London today and go on the next Cities of Spain tour, and that’ll come with a reasonable discount. Or you could continue on this tour and as we stuffed up so badly we’ll give you a massive discount.’

‘When does the next Spanish tour leave?’

‘In six months.’

‘Six months? I got permission to come from my girlfriend. I can’t hang around for another six months waiting for the next bloody tour.’

Christ. If he only knew the hoops I had to jump through to get to Spain.

‘This trip is better,’ he said.

I frowned. ‘Really?’

‘It’s a twenty-two week trek from here to Cape Town down the western coast of Africa. It goes through Morocco, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon, Congo, The Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Namibia and South Africa,’ said Craig. ‘Doesn’t that sound fantastic?’

It went through countries I’d never heard of or wanted to go to, and it was nowhere near Spain.

‘It’s not what I came here for.’

‘No, but you’ll have more fun,’ Craig said. ‘On the Spanish trip you’re completely spoon-fed and it’s full of coffin dodgers. The smell of mothballs and piss would drive you mad after a week. It was way more expensive too. With the discount this is cheap.’

‘How much of a discount?’ I asked, although I wasn’t considering it.

‘Fifty per cent. And this tour is under half the price of Cities of Spain. Compared to what you were going to pay it’s a bargain.’ He folded his arms. ‘We’ll be leaving in thirty minutes so have a quick think. You’re here now, and I guarantee you’ll have a better time with us than you would with the blue rinse brigade.’

I had a think and still wasn’t considering it.

Jesus. I had a hard enough job convincing Sofia letting me visit the country of her birth was a good idea. How would I explain needing to spend months seeing jungle and elephants?

I couldn’t wait another six months, either. And even though the discount made it über-cheap, it sounded like hard work. The great outdoors was something to be enjoyed from indoors, behind a hotel window, and not from a truck loaded with tents. That wasn’t what I signed up for.

No. This trip was not for me.

I stood behind the palm tree and rang Sofia to tell her I was coming home.

‘Hi. You’ll never guess what’s happened?’ I said. ‘Someone at Foreign Fun has stuffed up and they have no record of me signing up for my tour. The only options are coming home, or taking a twenty-two week trip through Africa.’

‘Africa?’

‘Yeah. Starts in Morocco and ends in Cape Town. Goes through Mali, the Congo, Bolivia, Angola, Laos and couple of other places I can’t remember the names of.’

‘How many flu capsules have you taken today?’

‘I’ve lost count. I don’t think they’re working though.’

I repeated what Craig told me about tents and trucks without making it sound exciting in any way, which I didn’t think was difficult.

I thought Sofia would just laugh. She didn’t.

‘You’re not equipped for that sort of trip.’

‘No, I’m not going to … er … what do you mean equipped?’

‘Let’s face it, Steve. You’d never last that long in a tent.’

‘Wouldn’t I?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘And you’d never last that long on a truck.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t?’

‘You wouldn’t. And Africa’s on your top 10 list of places to avoid, isn’t it?’

‘Since when?’

‘Since every time anyone mentions Africa and you say, No bloody way do I want to go there.’

‘I can’t remember ever saying that.’

‘You say it all the time,’ said Sofia. ‘But the point is you couldn’t deal with any of it. You’d never last.’

‘So, you’re saying I couldn’t hack it?’

‘That’s exactly what I’m saying.’

‘I was thinking of going,’ I said, although I wasn’t. ‘Expand my horizons and all that stuff. I’ve never been to Peru before. Could be interesting.’

Silence.

‘Hello? Can you hear me?’

Click.

I rang back.

Sofia answered immediately. ‘We never agreed on twenty-two weeks.’

‘No, we didn’t. I understand that. But I’m here now.’ I sounded sick and pathetic. It didn’t gain me any sympathy. ‘And I’m between jobs. So it’s not like I don’t have the time.’

There was a brief pause.

‘It’s your decision,’ said Sofia. Then she hung up on me.

When I rang back she had turned her phone off.

How rude.

I sent her a text message saying, I am going. I didn’t dare use a smiley face though.

Bloody hell. You love a girl and where does it get you?

It gets you on a truck bound for Africa – that’s where.

I can’t believe she has so little faith in me.

The last time we went to Jumbo’s Pizzas I ordered the Meat Feastus Maximus and she had a You’ll never do it attitude.

And did I do it?

Damn right I did. No 22 pieces of pizza would ever get the better of me.

How hard could Africa be?

One thing I was going to miss, though, was the planned marriage proposal. I had ask Sofia to marry me pencilled into my diary on the day I got back from Spain.

That would have to wait.

I hadn’t bought a ring, written a speech, or any of that stuff, but I was definitely going to do it.

Definitely.

‘People, listen up,’ shouted Craig. ‘I have an announcement to make. This is going to be my first west coast expedition. My longest African tour so far is four weeks and I’m not going to recognise a thing until we get to Namibia. So aren’t we going to have fun?’

Great. The driver didn’t even know where he was going.

I leant against my luggage feeling like the doormat at death’s door as a rough-looking Irish brute standing next to me introduced himself as Liam. A minute later a young guy with a cowboy hat jammed on to his head marched over and thrust out a hand. I intended to give him my standard manly shake but he gripped my hand and crushed all life from it.

‘Howdy. I’m Ronald. I’m American.’

‘I’m Steve.’

Ronald then clenched Liam’s hand and they stood for too long with their hands welded together. They broke their grip before either could do any permanent damage.

‘Can I call you Cowboy?’ said Liam.

‘It’s Ronald.’

He strode off to towards a clump of passengers with softer-looking hands.

I turned to Liam. ‘That’s some grip he’s got.’

‘What it means is I have a small cock so I’ll compensate by trying to prove how strong I am,’ said Liam. ‘Never sleep with a man with a crippling handshake.’

‘Sound advice,’ I said. ‘I’ll try not to.’

Craig directed us to a sparkling modern coach, with air-conditioning and reclining seats.

‘We’re taking this through Africa?’ I said.

‘No, you idiot,’ said Craig. ‘We’re taking this to the ferry port.’

How was I supposed to know what we were travelling in? All I knew about this trip was it was cheap and took a long time.

Once off the coach we made our way towards the ferry, each dragging, pushing or carrying our own baggage.

I couldn’t smell mothballs at least.

I couldn’t smell anything. My sinuses were swollen and I could barely see.

‘Did anyone bring a guitar?’ shouted Craig.

I squinted at people’s luggage.

‘Doesn’t look like it,’ I said.

‘Good. That will save me the effort of accidentally jumping on it repeatedly,’ said Craig. ‘I have no intention of singing Kumbayah around a campfire for five months.’

That shut everybody up.

As soon as we got on board the boat taking us to Africa I found a seat wedged between two corpulent Spanish businessmen, and closed my eyes.

I was woken by Craig shaking me like a martini.

When I looked around in the dim light I could tell we weren’t on a ferry anymore. It looked like the inside of a shipping container someone had bolted a motley collection of second-hand coach seats into.

‘Where are we?’ I said.

‘We’re at our first campground. We went through the border and picked up the truck. Can you remember that?’

‘Border? What border?’

‘The Moroccan border,’ said Craig. ‘I didn’t think you were with us.’

‘What happened?’

‘You wouldn’t stop telling the customs official you really liked being in Torquay.’

That was unlikely. I’ve never been to Torquay.

When I stepped off the truck it was dark and I wanted to get to sleep. Before that could happen though we had to choose a tent and a tent buddy.

Tent buddy?

I found Craig.

‘We have to share tents. You didn’t mention that.’

Craig shrugged. ‘Sorry. I had a lot on my mind at the time.’

The words you’ll just never last echoed in my ears and I shut up.

Ronald and a bored-looking Asian guy Craig had called Jung had brought their own tents. They didn’t realise tents would be provided or they didn’t plan to share with anyone? At least it meant there was zero possibility of getting stuck with them. Neither looked like fun bedfellows.

I was standing too close to a Welsh guy when everyone was dividing up and we became a couple.

The Welshman didn’t offer any advice about the two types of tent on offer and I chose the new, tiny, flimsy one. It was easy to pop up and was a no-brainer. The other was old, palatial in size, but needed 36 pieces of tubing stuck together. It was a no-sleeper.

Craig gave me a spare sleeping bag and a box of doxycycline that was eight months out of date.

‘Start popping these,’ he said.

‘Why? What happens if I don't.’

‘You'll get malaria.’

‘Malaria?’

‘Yeah, this isn't Spain,’ he said. ‘We're in Africa.’

Yeah. Like I needed reminding of that.

I squeezed into the tent after swallowing six flu capsules and one doxycycline pill.

‘I’m Steve. Who are you again?’

‘Gareth.’

‘Pleased to meet you.’

‘You’re not going to give me the plague, are you?’ he asked.

‘Not if you’re lucky.’

He nodded, turned over, and started to snore.

Our first real conversation went okay. Only four months, twenty-nine days, twenty-three hours and fifty minutes to go.

Day 2, Wednesday – Big Ol’ Truck

In the daylight I examined my watch and imagined the coffin dodgers tucking into a massive breakfast of bacon, scrambled eggs and freshly squeezed orange juice.

Lucky bastards.

I self-medicated, then took a closer look at the truck that would be our transport and home for five months.

Five months. When would that sink in?

It just looked like a truck to me. It was big, square and had wheels.

And it was bright pink.

‘So Craig, why is it pink?’ I asked. ‘Is it so nobody loses it on crowded streets?’

Craig looked at the truck like he’d never noticed the colour before.

‘No. My boss is a tight-fisted bastard who bought 200 litres of pink paint cheap.’

I was hoping that was the last I’d see of Craig until the afternoon when he’d yell, Everybody out. There’s something really interesting to see. That hope lasted five minutes when he yelled, ‘Everybody out. We’re stuck in sand and going nowhere.’

It was our first day of proper truck travel and we couldn’t even get out of the campground.

‘We need people digging and pushing,’ shouted Craig.

I didn’t do any actual digging or pushing. I’d firmly established myself in the letting other people do stuff group. Some had planted their flag in the getting involved camp with a few content being in the I’ll choose what to do when it happens crowd.

Gareth and Liam dug out a pit in front of a back wheel, while two girls used their own initiative and piled sand beside a back wheel on the other side of the truck.

I was admiring people’s handiwork when the truck lurched forward, and ran over my foot.

Craig jumped out of the cab once I stopped screaming.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘You ran over my foot with a truck.’

‘Is it broken?’

‘Do I look like a doctor?’

‘Is there any pain?’

I had a think. ‘Actually, no. There isn’t,’ I said.

‘So, no harm done then.’

‘There’s no pain because I had a fistful of different-coloured pills for breakfast. I’m numb from the neck down.’

‘You don’t look too clever from the neck up, either.’

‘What?’

‘You’re looking a bit green,’ said Craig. ‘Sit down and try not to puke.’

I sat down. I didn’t puke.

While I watched the others work, I decided to become the truck’s unofficial photographer who would document the strenuous events.

Freed from the camp’s quicksand we chugged out of the gates and headed up the road. After two minutes Craig stopped, turned the truck around, and we headed down the road.

It is going to be a long trip.

I planned to enjoy a day of non-Spanish scenery, but I closed my eyes and was unconscious until Craig stirred me awake by kicking my boots.

‘You’re not going to sleep through the whole tour, are you?’ he said.

‘I’m on medication.’

‘Yeah, well don’t overdose on me.’

I looked out of the truck’s window and saw a line of dark green tents and a sprinkling of tall, twisted pine trees.

‘Where are we now?’ I asked.

‘We’re in Chefchaouen. It’s in the Rif Mountains.’

I explored the campsite until I came across a modern truck with African Mirage written in bold, black letters down its cream flanks. I stood staring at its sleek clean lines when a man who looked like a younger, podgier version of Craig ambled up to me.

‘You with Foreign Fun?’ he asked, in a thick Aussie accent.

I nodded.

‘So you picked the budget option then?’

‘I didn’t pick anything. I was supposed to be on a Cities of Spain tour.’

‘That’s a really good trip,’ he said.

I didn’t know if he was saying it just to wind me up.

‘Who’s African Mirage?’ I asked, pointing to the truck.

‘The only other company that does the western Africa tour. But ours is better and has way more fun coz I’m the driver.’

I took a dislike to him and sneezed down the front of his t-shirt.

Craig joined us. ‘Hi, Ken.’

‘Hi, Craig. Still driving clapped-out pieces of shit, I see.’

‘At least it’s a truck. Yours is more like a bloody bus.’

‘Are we both doing the same route?’ I asked.

‘Roughly,’ said Craig. ‘Don’t worry though. We’re not going to travel with these dickheads all the way to Cape Town.’

‘Good.’

‘Hey, I’m still standing here,’ said Ken.

After dinner we were sitting around the campfire coughing and spluttering as glutinous grey smoke bubbled from the flames.

I checked for messages on my phone and for the twenty-seventh time there was nothing from Sofia. She wasn’t expecting me to contact her first, was she?

Craig stood up. ‘Right. Let’s get this over with. I can’t remember your names and you have no idea who each other are so: name and nationality.’ He pointed at me. ‘You start.’

I stopped staring at a blank phone screen and heaved myself up. ‘I’m Steve. I’m from New Zealand.’

Liam stayed firmly planted on a camp stool. ‘Liam. Ireland.’

‘I’m Hannah, and I’m from Australia,’ said Hannah, from Australia.

When it came to Jung he gave no signal he had heard anything anyone had said. He remained seated, concentrating on cleaning a pair of black chopsticks.

Craig pointed at him. ‘That’s Jung. He’s from Korea, I think.’

Next to Jung, an attractive brunette waved her hand in the air. ‘Neave. I’m Irish and I’m married to Liam.’ She pointed to her husband.

A girl wearing too much make-up and unfeasibly high heels stood up. ‘I’m Canadian and my name is Maddison.’

Garth got to his feet. ‘Gareth here. I was born and bred in Cardiff. In Wales.’

He looked bulky when fully erect. How were we both managing to squeeze into the same tent?

A young woman stood. ‘You can call me Bridget. I’m Australian.’

Her bleached blond hair looked familiar, although I couldn’t place her.

The cowboy raised his hand. ‘I’m from the US of A and my name’s Ronald. But everyone keeps calling me Cowboy?’

‘Liam told us that’s what your name was,’ said Maddison.

Hannah pointed to Ronald’s head. ‘Yeah. Because of the hat.’

‘And you’re American,’ said Gareth.

Cowboy looked blank. ‘My name is Ronald.’

‘Nah. Cowboy’s a better name,’ said Craig.

With the introductions over, people opened cans of beer and several disappeared to bed. I turned to Craig, who had a beverage in his hand.

‘Have you been driving for long?’ I asked.

‘I spent three years in India and I’ve been in Africa for nine months.’

‘So,’ said Liam, ‘how are your language skills?’

‘I can speak passable Hindi.’

‘Do they speak Hindi where we’re going?’ I asked.

‘No.’

Liam looked like a middle-aged biker who drank beer from his boots and owned a sawn-off shotgun. I hadn’t seen him drink beer, so didn’t know his preferred receptacle, and I really hoped he hadn’t brought a gun.

‘Liam, what do you do for a crust?’ asked Craig.

‘I’m a hairdresser.’

Craig tugged on a gold stud in his ear. ‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really. And before you ask, I’m here because my salon in Cork burnt down, so we’re on holiday here while the insurance is being taken care of.’

‘Tough luck,’ said Craig.

‘Steve, why are you here?’ asked Liam, which stopped me from asking about arson and insurance jobs.

I didn’t want to rant about the ineptitude of Foreign Fun and explain why I should be in Spain so I said, ‘Because Africa is an interesting place.’ I was going to tell him I came because Sofia thought I couldn’t hack it, but African Adventurer sounded better than Doubting Girlfriend.

Day 3, Thursday – Flying Carpet

I sweated in the sleeping bag but had an adequate night in spite of the grunting and moaning emanating from one of the tents. It made me realise I wasn’t going to be getting any sex for five months. It meant Sofia wasn’t going to be getting any, either.

That would make her grumpy.

As we were going to hand-wash our clothes, Bridget volunteered to find two large wash bowls in the market, and Craig volunteered me to carry them.

I remembered who Bridget was. She was the girl staring at me at the airport. She must have thought I was strange as she avoided talking and all I got from her was, we’ll buy these, and, let’s go straight back to the truck.

It was just as well. I’d downed my remaining flu medication at breakfast and, while my body was in Morocco, my head was in 1976 at the Spectrum Arena, Philadelphia, rocking to the Thin White Duke.

Hand-washing clothes was another aspect of this overland trip I hadn’t thought through before agreeing to it.

Why didn’t Sofia just say, come home? That’s all it would have taken.

Surely she would have known that’s all it would have taken?

Chefchaouen had cute little lanes cut through blue-washed, red-tiled buildings, all eventually leading to an open plaza offering the opportunity to drink coffee, buy a carpet, or both. You could also use the town’s superb phone coverage to discover your girlfriend hadn’t sent you any messages or left a voicemail telling you she loved you.

While I didn’t come on the trip to stuff my luggage with trinkets, I spotted a dazzling rug for £10 that Sofia would have loved. It was the colour of a Spanish sunset and felt like my brother’s dog.

I doubted I could buy Sofia off, but it couldn’t hurt to try. So, after dawdling through the lanes reflecting on its price and beauty, I decided to buy it.

I couldn’t find the shop again.

And I hunted up and down every tiny, twisting, cute little dead-end street.

During the search my foot started to hurt a little, then it hurt a lot. The last of whatever wonderful chemicals were in my flu medication had worn off and my foot remembered it had been run over by the truck.

When I was reduced to a limp I visited a chemist and cleared out their stock of painkillers.

I left Chefchaouen in a state of numbness and ruglessness.

[Note to self: any future rug has to be as high-quality and cheap, or I’m not getting it.]

Cowboy must have thought the gelatinous brown sludge we had for dinner was rubbish or he wouldn’t have spent the evening chewing on his fingernails.

Three days in and Cowboy had done nothing to convince me he was particularly bright, although he had plenty of money to burn. Neave told me in one of those sing-song Irish accents she suspected he was a drug dealer who was on the tour because a deal went wrong and he needed to lie low for a while.

I doubted Cowboy would be involved in anything that exciting.

Important Travel Tip:

Never buy the first one you see, as you will always find it cheaper around the corner; but always buy the first one you see, as you’ll never see it again.

Day 4, Friday – Magical Mystery Tour

While we were parked outside the city walls of Fès a man on a motorbike pulled over to inform us he provided walking tours. Craig immediately engaged his services (as you do?) and sent us on a guided tour through the city. The tour included a visit to a carpet