a short story from
The Recollections of Sir Bastionov Dash-Tope
(The Mombastard Flash)
We had arrived at the
river crossing about ten days ago and could proceed no
further because the Ferry had broken down. It proudly
displayed a plaque proclaiming it to be a gift to the People
of Zaire from the People of the United States of America. We
found out that until recently it had been in operation,
although on only one of its two diesel engines, but now the
second engine had died through 'verri bud ruck'. This is a typically
African explanation and, roughly translated into English,
means a total lack of responsible maintenance and zero spare
parts availability. We were travelling in
convoy at the time with a German, Peter, and his Danish
companion, Orsa, who had previously joined him whilst we all
waited for an opportunity to cross the Congo River into
Zaire from Bangui in the Central African Republic. On that
occasion the Ferry crossing had been delayed because the
river level was too low to allow the fuel barges to come up
from Kinshasa. We had all had problems
obtaining the necessary Entry Visa from the Zairean
Consulate's Office in Bangui until Orsa had one day thumbed
a lift into town with a fairly well-to-do looking African
gent in a large black Mercedes. When he asked her what she
was doing in Bangui she told him she was just trying to get
across '...stupid bloody Zaire...' and had apparently
launched into a not very complimentary tirade about the
'...stupid bloody Zairean Consulate staff who would not
issue any of us with a stupid bloody visa just in case we
were Mercenaries planning another Coup d'Etat for Christ's
Sake!...' She even managed to squeeze out a few tears for
extra effect. When he got out of the car as well at the
Consulate she asked who he was. It turned out he was the
First Secretary of the Zairean Consulate. He must have been
touched by her performance because he told her to get all
her friends and he would give us our visas. Oh, the Power of the
Pissed-off Female! The country of Zaire is
more or less one huge rain forest criss-crossed by hundreds
of rivers. The driving experience consists of endless
corridors of customarily appalling African dirt roads
flanked by the towering trees of the dense forest, with the
monotony being broken frequently by roadside dwellings,
following the Government edict that all forest dwellers
relocate to the roadsides, and periodically by a river
crossing. In many cases these river
crossings will be a rudimentary bridge made from large tree
trunks laid lengthways. As tree trunks are never perfectly
straight an exotic feature of these bridges is the large
gaps just big enough for a tire to get jammed in. This all adds to the
excitement of the African Driving Experience. During the rainy season
this 'excitement' is further heightened by the addition of
the super slippery miracle mud ('Miracle Mud' is the clay
that is found everywhere on the African Continent that when
dry is as hard as concrete and when wet, as in the rainy
season, has the consistency of a bar of soap that has been
left in a puddle of water), guaranteeing that no matter how
carefully you drive, attempting to keep all wheels on the
crown of the logs, sooner or later gravity will take over
and one or more wheels will end up in a gap between the
logs. To get out of the hole and off the bridge invariably
entails jacking up the car as trying to drive out of the
hole only gets the wheel even more firmly wedged. You will rarely find an
Overlander who is not equipped with a 'High Lift Jack'.
Originally designed in Australia as a fencing tool, it
doubles very well as a Heavy Vehicle Jack, with its huge
leverage and consequent lifting power. However, if you have
ever had any practical experience with a High Lift Jack you
will know that, although they are capable of lifting the end
of your car swiftly and easily into the air, they are
inherently unstable devices and once the two wheels are off
the ground the whole car can topple sideways if it is not on
level ground or if the Jack is not operated exactly at the
vertical. As the log bridge that you have become wedged into
probably only has one or two logs' extra width either side
of the vehicle you can appreciate how much fun it is to
extricate the trapped wheel, as you grapple in the rain with
a couple of tons of car on a swaying high-lift jack, without
yourself and/or the car slipping off the miracle mud coated
bridge altogether. If the river crossing is not a log bridge
then it will be either a ford or a ferry, such as the one we
had now been camped beside for nearly two weeks. Peter came up one day and
suggested that, rather than wait for the other ferry that
was everyday promised to arrive tomorrow, we should make use
of all the equipment we were jointly carting around Africa
and get ourselves across the river. His plan was to use the
canoe strapped to the roof of his Mercedes Unimog to paddle
across the river with one end of the extremely long length
of tow rope that he had, to tie the rope to a suitably stout
looking tree on the other bank and to attach the other end
of the rope to the winch on the front of my Land Rover,
which we would place first on the Ferry with his Unimog
behind. Then, we would simply winch the whole Ferry, with
ourselves on board, across the river. On reflection it was
the maddest, most stupid and dangerous thing to have
attempted as we would more than likely have ended up being
washed down the river somewhere. Of course, neither did it
seem to bother our moral consciences that it wasn't really
our ferry to do with as we pleased. But at the time we were
all fed up with hanging around and doing nothing. Besides,
the idea smacked of adventure and so, with the fearless
confidence of youth and an Hollywood imbued sense of the
invincibility of the Big White Explorer in Darkest Africa,
we made our preparations. The first problem to
overcome was to get the two vehicles onto the broken-down
ferry which was lying too far off to the side of the
concrete loading ramp. That was simple. We would winch the
ferry sideways across the ramp until there was enough of it
on the concrete for us to drive on. I positioned my Land
Rover a short distance from the ferry, parallel to the river
and facing the ferry and, with Peter outside taking up the
slack rope from the capstan winch, I revved the engine and
started winching. My Land Rover was fairly well laden and
probably tipped the scales at getting on for a ton and a half. I
should imagine the Ferry came in at about sixty tons and we
were trying to drag it bodily across a concrete loading
ramp. . . . ?! Well, the ferry won. The
Land Rover just winched itself towards the ferry, which is
precisely what its winch had been designed to do. Meanwhile,
the ferry had not budged a centimetre. We returned to our
starting positions and tried again, but this time with
blocks in front of the Land Rover's wheels and two feet on
the brake pedal and controlling the winch speed with the
hand throttle. The ferry budged . . . Okay . . .! More revs
- this is real adventure, boys . . .the ferry budged a bit
more. . .even more revs. . .the Land Rover is shaking all
over with the effort . . . ferry's moving . . . BANG!! - The
Land Rover leapt backwards . . . screaming engine . . . rope
went slack . . . Ooops. . . ! After checking, everything
on the car appeared to still function correctly except for
the winch which just free-wheeled. The winch engaging
mechanism worked, the small prop shaft from the engine to
the winch turned when engaged, the underneath part of the
winch turned but the capstan above, around which the rope is
wound when winching, remained stationary. As we had by that time
successfully dragged the ferry far enough to allow us to
drive the cars on we decided to board the ferry before
finding out what the problem was with the winch. We boarded
the ferry and Peter brought his metal Toolbox around to the
front of the Land Rover where we took the capstan off and
found that the problem was just a small brass shear pin
which is designed to 'shear' before the whole engine is
destroyed, just in case some blithering idiot tries to
overload the winch or do something stupid . . . like drag
sixty tons of ferry across a concrete loading ramp!! It
started to rain. Typical. Whenever I'm really busy with
something I either have to go for a pee or it starts
raining! Peter suggested we all retire to the small 'cabin'
on the back of his Unimog for a cup of tea and to wait for
the rain to die down. When the rain had stopped
we piled around the front to continue with the Land Rover
winch only to discover that Peter's Toolbox had
disappeared. It had been
stolen. We had to get it
back! After a trip to the head
honcho in the village to explain what had happened and his
promise to investigate we received, the following day, a
message that a "Suszbegt" had been found and that a French
speaking member of our party should accompany the Suspect
and his arresting Officer to the "Rocawl Hatekqwartaz"
('local headquarters' for the benefit of those unfamiliar
with African dialect). The Army acts as Police in Central
Zaire and, as I was the only male 'French Speaker' in our
party, it was I who went as Peter's representative to the
local Army Headquarters, about five miles back up the
road. When our little gathering
was comfortably settled in one of the offices, with the
interrogating Army Officer behind his desk, myself standing
to the right of his desk by a filing cabinet where I had
been invited to stand, the 'suspect' facing the interrogator
from across the desk and various others who had wandered in,
obviously anticipating a little action and were eagerly
filling the remaining spaces, the session began. Well, it all seemed so
cordial and chatty as the Army Officer began and the
'suspect' responded to what appeared to be convivial
conversation, with others joining in from time to time. My
abilities to understand and communicate in French were
limited to what I could remember from school ten years
previous and although it had at least been dusted off by
four months in North Africa, I was by no means fluent.
Whatever they were all talking about sailed straight past
me. Then, after another
seemingly innocuous question from the Army Officer, the
suspect held out his two hands in front of him, palms
together and with his fingers splayed open. One of the
'onlookers' then placed three stout, straight wooden bars,
each about a foot long, between the suspects fingers and
grasped one end of the bars while another 'helper' grasped
the other end and then, upon a nod from the Army Officer,
they both squeezed. The suspect SCREAMED in pain. The Army
Officer gave me a sidelong glance, as if seeking my approval
of his methods, with a sort of conspiratorial little smirk
and a nod that seemed to say "We're pretty good at this . .
won't be long now!". This carried on for a
while, with alternating screams and sidelong glances and
with the suspect now writhing around on the packed mud
floor, until another Army Officer poked his head around the
door to throw some papers on the desk. He must have asked
what was going on in here and, upon being briefed, evidently
decided to lend his expertise to the task. He took two of
the wooden bars and placed one on either side of the howling
suspect's left ear and then, grasping each end of the bars
proceeded to twist the ear round in circles. This new, and obviously
advanced, form of information retrieval brought appreciative
nods and grunts from the assembly, new levels of agony to
the victim and a correspondingly higher volume to his
screaming. As I was merely a spectator to all this and had
not in any way been asked to contribute to the proceedings,
I was at a loss as to why I was there at all, other than to
witness the expertise present and to acknowledge the
sidelong glances of the interrogating Army Officer with
knowing expressions of approval and
encouragement. Then, with apparently
nothing achieved, and as if they had all suddenly lost
interest in the whole proceedings, everyone started
filtering out of the office, leaving the unfortunate suspect
still lying whimpering on the floor. I was told I may return
to my colleagues by the river. Transport was provided in
the form of a fully loaded lorry that was flagged down so
that I could clamber on to the top of the load and we then
hurtled back to the Ferry crossing. Vehicles in Africa are
operated on a simple principle - they either go or they
don't. If they don't, they are left to eventually dissolve
into the ground. If they do, they are driven as fast as the
pedal on the floor will allow them, with utter disregard for
road conditions or self preservation on the part of the
'dliyver', until they don't work anymore at which point they
too are left to dissolve into the ground. Back at the ferry-camp
everyone wanted to know what had happened and all I could do
was relate what I just have. No conclusion had been reached
and no mention had been made to me of the Toolbox. I had
just been told to go. The following morning
brought a great flurry of excitement to the river bank
because another ferry had turned up from down the river to
tow 'our' broken one across. Peter was loath to leave and to
attempt to continue across Africa with no toolkit but we
decided to get the two cars across the river and to then
camp there for a while in the hope that something might turn
up. It was the next day that a
messenger arrived from across the river summoning us to the
chief's house. By the time we arrived everyone who was
anyone in the village was packed tightly into the chief's
house and there, sitting on the floor like the last Holy
Rose, surrounded by this reverent circle of local
dignitaries and spectators, was Peter's Toolbox. Peter, obviously delighted
that his toolbox had been recovered and sensing the
expectant mood in the room, played wholeheartedly to his
audience. Ceremoniously and with great deliberation he
methodically inspected the contents of the toolbox. Then,
with a well received air of solemn disappointment, he
gravely announced that one adjustable spanner was missing.
The room erupted into excited babble. After a few moments of
general discussion, during which the possibility of
returning to the "Hatekqwartaz" interrogation room was
raised, it was decided that Peter would accept the loss as
an admonishment for having left the toolbox unguarded in the
first place. And so, after a lengthy farewell to the
assembled elders and a small donation from Peter to the
'Village Treasury', the gathering dispersed and we returned
to our camp across the river. As I happened to have two
adjustable spanners of a similar size to the one stolen, I
donated one of mine. Peter's Toolbox was
complete.
