On Tuesday I had the opportunity to join a convoy of some of 9 of the Mercy Ships owned vehicles that would be driving to Togo to leave the vehicles there for when we arrive in Togo in February. Of course not having been to Togo yet and wanting to see where the ship would be next year I jumped at the chance to go. So we had everything ready to go we had 9 drivers who all had the right paperwork and visas to get across the boarder and back. We even had 2 mechanics and a bunch of spare parts just in case.
You may ask why would we drive these cars to Togo and just leave them there for a few months when we could fit them on the top of the ship and take them with us to Tenerife. Well you see the thing is the cars that we took at the oldest ones in the Mercy Ships fleet and are at the point of after been battered around in West Africa for long enough that there is no way we could get them to pass any inspection to be able to drive them in Tenerife so if we took them with us it would just be taking some extra weight.
So now that you know the condition of the vehicles we were driving is not the best, you can imagine the inevitable happened. about 1.5 hours into our trip we had our first break down. The Land Rover we call the Ambulance suddenly started making a high pitched squealing noise out of the front left wheel and we knew that the wheel bearing was gone. So the whole convoy pulled over as we didn't want to leave anyone behind along the way. So the Mechanics and a couple of others set about replacing the wheel bearing (luckily we had 4 spare with us). This took about 30-40 mins and then we were back on the road again. Not much more than 15 mins later though it happened again, same car, same wheel. We weren't really sure what happened to make it break so fast, but all we new was that what was a brand new wheel bearing 15mins earlier was now nothing but a small pile of scraps of metal been pulled out. So this time the mechanics set about pulling apart the entire wheel section of the Land Rover and cleaning it out and rebuilding it piece by piece. There were a couple of resourceful local guys to came to watch to helped us out by getting us a hammer and chisel we needed as well as a few small metal rods and some wire to replace the parts we didn't have (a real good African fix). I would say about another 45 mins we spent doing this and then we were back on the road again and all the cars were driving well.
We finally made it to the boarder much later than we had intended and proceeded to spend a bit over an hour there getting our passports stamped and the vehicles approved to go across. After getting through the boarder we were on the final stretch to Lome the capital of Togo. We arrived finally at 4.30 in the afternoon after leaving at 10am and made our way past the port and stopped in at a restaurant to grab some food as we had planned to be there for lunch we were all quiet hungry. While we were eating the advance team from the ship who have been living in Togo getting things ready for when we come, met up with us. They then took us about another 30 mins away to a AOG compound where we left the vehicles to be stored until the ship arrives. We then went to the hotel where the advance team is staying and picked up a Land Rover to drive home in and we keep one of the ones we took across. We had a good bit of fun on the way back as we had a radio in both cars and were about to talk to each other and keep ourselves entertained for a while.
The trip back was much less eventful as everything went smoothly even the boarder crossing. We made good time all the way and got back to the ship a bit after 11pm. So all in all it was a good fun day, but a long day.
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