To take public means of transport in Guinea
is an adventure, and it can happen to see drivers being
half way between a mechanic and a wizard.
I was on a crowdy minibus getting from Conakry to Freetown.
The travel had already had its surprises: request of bribes
at the check points, smashed chickens attempting to cross
the road (really!), but its best happened when I noticed
the driver was slowing down. He seemed worried about something
, so, instead to running like hell on the bumpy dusty road,
he was going like a normal sane driver: in Africa this is
impossible, that's why I was sure something was wrong. The
minibus stopped for a moment. A young guy lied down sliding
under it. He fumbled for ten minutes, but at the end he
didn't' seemed satisfied of the result. The minibus left
, then it stopped leaving again but just for few hundreds
meters. The problem seemed to be at the transmission of
the steering wheel, and consequently it couldn't follow
the sharp bends. The driver and few guys spoke a little
bit. They seemed to have found the solution. The minibus
speed up, till the first curve, then it slowed down something
like 10km/h, one of the guy got off running aside the vehicle
and with fast and repetitive knocks BY HAND he was turning
one of the wheels. Obviously he had to be very fast to avoid
the hand got crushed between the wheel and the road. Once
the bend was done, the guy got on again till the next one.
I was a little pissed off on the way from
Mamou to Conakry, since after having sweatly conquered the
front row of a shared taxi, I realised there were three
people (adults, not kids!!!) sharing the seat with me!!
It should have been a 5 hours journey but it took 8!!
Almost immediately after leaving Mamou I understood something
was wrong with the car. The driver was stopping frequently,
looking around for a house, asking for some water and filling
the overheated radiator. It was clear there was a leakage
in that shitty radiator.
Almost half way from Conakry we had to surrender it wasn't
possible to proceed in such conditions. The driver decided
he had to fix it, but I was wondering how??
The car stopped in front of a stall, and the guy bought
a 'super-attack glue'. Then he took the only two keys he
had: a screwdriver and a monkey wrench. I thought there
was no way to dismount the radiator (with the fan, all the
piping, and the front cover of the car) only by such tools,
but I was wrong and after 40min, the radiator, which all
the other parts, were on the ground. Amazingly he unscrewed
all the nuts, that didn't fit with the monkey wrench he
had (almost all!!), just hitting them with the screw driver!
"Now he his going to weld the radiator" one of
the passengers told me.
The driver took the glue and mixed it with the sand. Then
he 'welded' the damaged fins of the radiator just coating
them by such mixture.
He remounted everything again (I've no clue how he could
tighten the nuts) and after 2 hours the car was ready to
leave.
Great job man!!
