Camels of the road

It’s a cliché of African literature: the life of the trucker who must navigate the terrible roads, hostile customs men and bandits to bring his load home. The equivalent of the US road movie I suppose, with a bit of the wild west thrown in.

But until you have seen it first hand you don’t really appreciate the extraordinary life that these men lead. The DRC is not famous for its roads. Even though it is about one quarter of the size of the US, it has only about 2,000kms of engineered roads (not tarmac – the proportion of tarmac is tiny).

On a recent trip we were driving on one of those rare roads, a link between the big city and agricultural areas. Clearly a road where there’s money to be made if you can move the goods around.

Mind you, in parts it’s so bad that it can really be called nothing more than a track. But the problem for truck drivers is not so much the bad road but bad trucks. On a recent trip we passed 10 trucks in the space of less than 100 km which were broken down. Now if you were the driver of such a truck you would, if you have any sense, be a good scout and be prepared, so it’s not surprising that these trucks look more like a mobile camping site than a goods vehicle.

Picture this: if your truck breaks down, what do you do? You can’t leave it to go and get help – you must stay with the truck to protect your cargo. If you’re lucky you’ll have a co-driver, but most don’t. You may have a cell phone, but there’s no coverage along most of the road. When you do get a message to your boss, the chances are he’ll have to send someone to come and diagnose the problem, and then buy spares, and then . . . It could, and probably usually does, take days if not weeks.

So what does “be prepared” mean for this trucker? He needs extra fuel anyway, as he can’t be sure of getting it when he needs it; he needs lots of water, which is carried in yellow plastic jerry cans which hang off the rear of the load. He needs charcoal to make fire to cook his meals with, and of course he needs basic food supplies, at least maize or manioc flour, and probably some dried fish. Then of course he needs the basics to change a tyre and mend a puncture because they keep coming, and a set of tools. And . . . patience. You see the drivers sleeping under the truck with no idea of how long they’ll be there.

It’s not all so uneventful. One of the sidelines of truck drivers is picking up passengers. Charge them a moderate fare and everyone is happy. They climb on the load, which is often packed really high, and have a party on top. When you overtake the truck on which they are perched, they wave enthusiastically as they perilously balance on the shifting load. Some of the young men enjoy showing off by hanging on the back, holding on with only one hand or doing other tricks.