“Onwards, to the event they told us would never happen, the Africa Rally. They said the roads were impassable, they said everyone would be chopped up and eaten. But of course our noble pioneering teams spread their victory all over the faces of those who said nay. Let us take a moment to remember with fondness members of team Great Balls of Fur; deported from Tunisia at gunpoint for describing their jobs as Beekeeper/Children’s entertainer. No amount of pleading or pointing at their fine tweed suits would prevail. And together lets stand in awe at the pure genius of Alan from team Tazmanian Smurfari, arrested in Timbuktu for causing a public disturbance whilst dressed as a smurf.

Of the 42 cars that left London a whole 28 made it to the finish line in Cameroon and over £70, 000 was raised for charity. Sales of the cars alone have funded a whole new quarantine area for Cameroon Wildlife Aid Fund and paid for 32 children in an orphanage in Douala to go to school for a whole year. A jolly good show all round.

Keep an eye on mail-outs to swipe your place for the 2009 rally, set to launch on a wintery date in November next year. Bigger, better and just as stupid as ever… The Africa Rally will soon be back.”

A jolly good show, indeed!

It’s been almost a month now since our Adventure ended and I barely feel back in the groove of my Boston life. Graduate school is tough and life sure didn’t miss me while I was away, it just kept on flying by with all its responsibilities. As I struggle to get back into the swing of things, my nights filled with dreams of beautiful African vistas and my early mornings with human rights law readings, I somehow finally managed to find time to upload most of our photos. Check them out! http://www.flickr.com/photos/sandboxsavants/sets/

Yes, it is 1:30am in Boston. Sleep is overrated, right?

There are many photos, so I am trying to post a selection of those from Flickr on Facebook as well. WE MADE IT! Yay! All because of YOU!

Also, I wanted to take a moment to tell you that another team just surpassed us as Top Fundraiser for the rally by a tiny $120. YOU STILL HAVE TIME TO DONATE AND HELP US REMAIN NUMBER 1. Many of you have already given a great deal to our charity and to us, and we thank you! For those of you who expressed regret that you never remembered to donate, NOW IS THE TIME.  The team that just passed us had two cars and more people, and we are ONLY $120 behind. So, if you are interested in giving a little more to our fantastic charity Send A Cow as recognition to the awesomeness of us making it home alive, check out our donate page: http://sandboxsavants.com/donate/  Click on the PINK donate button.

Lastly, please note that because of YOU (between your donations and the auction of our car in Cameroon) our team raised roughly $7,500 for charity. Pretty damn cool.

You all rock my world!

More blog posts to come on www.sandboxsavants.com, so for those of you who have not lost faith keep an eye out. While you wait for more of our beautiful prose, check out our photos on Flickr!

In an attempt to keep you up-to-date on post-rally fundraising activity, below I have copied an exciting e-mail sent to us by Ants from the Adventurists about the charity car auction that took place in Cameroon.

As you can see, our car fetched over $2,100, which is more than we paid for it in London! A sincere thanks to everyone who helped us purchase the car; it not only got us to Cameroon but also helped raise more money for charity! Also worth noting, of the 41 teams who left London (there -were- originally 87 teams signed up for the rally), these seem to be the 25 cars that made it … !

Check out the first few albums that have been posted to our Flckr page. More to come soon, and thanks for sticking with us!

–
Dear teams

After much hoo-ha and procrastination by customs, and in the midst of a tropical rainstorm, the auction of the mighty Africa Rally steeds finally went ahead on Wednesday. The crowds gathered, tensions rose, the rain hammered down and the cars girded their loins for a new life in Africa. All that was missing was the auctioneer. As time ticked on and the crowds began to shuffle their feet impatiently, it became clear that the auctioneer had taken fright and was not going to turn up. Either that or she had been bound and gagged by customs.

More heated discussions ensued and twenty minutes later the first two cars had gone under the hammer of a replacement auctioneer for 460,000 CFA and 430, 000 CFA respectively. The replacement was none other than Ed Hawkins, of the Fairbridge Car, who did a truly marvellous impression of a seasoned professional and sold all but one of the 25 cars in less than three hours. The irony is that the one car not sold was his very own trusty VW.

Despite the rain and the hold-ups the auction was a big success. The top price was fetched by Wrong Way Down’s Daihatsu Mira, which went for a whopping 1510000 CFA (£1819.23), the lowest by the Adam’s Brothers’ Nova Merit, which went for 180,000 CFA (£216.86). The total given to CWAF, our chosen beneficiary of the sales, was 7964689 CFA (£9596). They are going to use the money to build a much needed new quarantine at their forest site in Mefou, near Yaounde. So a very big thank you to all of you for not only doing the rally but for giving your cars to such a good cause.

Auction Breakdown

Hope life is treating you all well and see you at the reunion on December.

Thanks

Ants
–

Anyhow, today I come to you with a story of the awesomeness of Mom. I’m sorry to say it seems that half of the “excitement” we’ve found time to blog about is the poor behavior of others and I hope to rectify that soon by blogging some more interesting and happy tales from the road. For now though, a quick story of Mom’s un-fun market moment will have to do.

So, Douala is known for petty crime and and is certainly not the prettiest or most lively African city I have visited. It isn’t really known for site seeing either, but Mom, Kiran and I decided to make the best of it and go for a wander around Douala’s main market. The market is really bustly and we enjoyed watching people haggle over the price of meat, fish, produce and household items. The smells and colors at the market, like most open air markets I’ve visited in Africa, will linger in my brain forever.

So, we were walking along the main road by the market and a truck was blocking the road. We were standing there with a bunch of people, waiting to cross, when a man in a red baseball cap ran up to mom and tried to grab her purse. Luckily, she had a firm grip on it and because it was over and across her shoulder he didn’t manage to steal it. Instead, he tumbled into a muddy puddle, splashing us all and knocking over a motorcycle, then ran off. Mom was really proud he didn’t get it, as were the ladies in the market. Unfortunatly, the purse string was pulled so hard when the man fell that it bruised up her arm. Aside from the little bruises, Mom is doing great and with a modified purse set-up even ventured out again to another market today!

Apparently locals get their purses and glasses snatched here often, as do the white folk, and our experience was sadly not unique. The only reason I really wanted to tell this story was to say “GO MOM, way to show that guy how strong an old white lady can be!”

It is important to say that although Douala is a rough city, the people we have actually spent time with here are very nice and we have really enjoyed their company. Special thanks to all the staff at the Foyer du Marin where our cars are being auctioned, they have been really awesome!

Best wishes from the final stop on our adventure! More pictures and blogs to come shortly …

Our last few days on the road, the Cameroonian sky opened up and the rainy season decided to show us who’s boss. Dancing in the rain is one thing, but driving in the muddy jungle up against the slightly unstable Central African Republic border in the rain is another story.

Thankfully both Doug and I have driven in snow and ice, because that is exactly what this slippery red stuff felt like. Aparna, who was sitting in the back, somehow managed to get sprayed with more mud than Doug and I combined. Slipping and sliding around for hours, struggling especially on the hills, we managed to make it back to the paved portion of the road. The best part is that a team who traversed the same route two days before us said driving on the DRY red clay was a breeze. Ha!

Although the red clay was challenging, the consensus in our car is that we easily prefer sliding around on mud over the brain damage caused by bumping over  the painful, ”paved”, pot-hole ridden roads.

Internet is being impossibly slow today (goes without saying, right?) but we will post pictures of our beautifully red stained Suzuki soon.

Steve, if you are reading this, your car had a really good time on the Cameroonian roads and wishes you were here!

Sorry we have not updated the site until now, the town’s power was knocked out due to storms and we were unable to access internet until just now.

We have so much to share with you and so many photos. Please stay tuned over the next few days as we work hard to update the site. This, of course, is electricity dependent but please keep visiting the site because we have more reflections and photos to share!

LOTS OF LOVE AND GRATITUDE,

APARNA, DOUG AND JESSIE

You may have noticed that we have been posting a lot today, and those of you who have been diligently following our route page have noticed that we have not gone anywhere in quite some time. Well.  Let me open the curtain to that mystery for you.

Do we ford the river? – We crossed into Cameroon at the village of Kerawa on August 9.  The road to Kerawa from the Nigerian village of Pulki was 16 kilometers of mud and craters.  It was a lovely and pleasant hour of being bumped around and almost losing everything from the top of the car.  We crossed the border without issue.  THEN.  We drove, just after dark, to the city of Mora, which involved some more potholes and bumpiness…and also a bridge that has been submerged by a FLASH FLOOD. The bridge was only about a foot under water but the water was rising fast and we knew we had to cross immediately if we were going to cross at all that night. Luckily, some village boys agreed to walk in front of the car so we could follow them over the invisible bridge.  Amazingly, we made it into Mora that night.

Why don’t you girls get out and push? – The morning of August 10, we were so ready to get as far south in Cameroon as possible.  We were feeling great and ahead of schedule, even after a morning of being bounced around from town to town by customs officials to get our car paperwork completed, requiring us to cross the only slightly less submerged bridge twice more. 

So we’re driving along in our automobile, about halfway between Maroua and Garoua, making great time, when the car started jerking, almost like it’s running out of gas, except we had half a tank left.  We weren’t really sure what was going on, but the car contined to drive fine as long as we stayed under 40 miles per hour. So we decided to slowly head on to Garoua, where we could visit a mechanic.

OH. IT. WAS. SO. SLOW.

The speed our car was willing to tolerate continually decreased, until we were topping out at about 10 miles per hour on a flat road, 20 miles per hour going downhill, and a number that was not registrable going uphill.  At one point, as we were driving uphill past a small village, the car slowed to a halt and stalled out. 

So Jessie and I jumped out, Little Miss Sunshine style, pushed until Doug could get the car started again, and then ran up and jumped in. 

Luckily there was no danger of us not keeping up with the car after it started moving again. 

When we finally rolled into Garoua a full 6 hours and approximately 211 kilometers after leaving Maroua, we were lucky enough to find a hotel to crash for the night — after pushing the car into the parking lot, of course.  For once, camping was not an option for us.

But all is well again.

As has been our amazing luck, we met some great people on arriving here, including a British expat and his Cameroonian coworkers, who helped us find some great and honest mechanics to fix our car.  As it turns out, the problem was a plastic bag that some hilarious soul decided to shove into our gas tank. 

Also, while we had the mechanic looking at our car, we also had him remove the plastic jerrycan nozzle that got stuck in the neck of our gas tank when we were refilling the tank a few days earlier.  It hadn’t been causing any problems, but we thought it was best to get it out of there.

We will be on our way south again tomorrow, hopefully getting a lot closer to the finish line. 

In the meantime, thanks for all your support and keep thinking good thoughts!!

On August 7th, 2008 Doug celebrated his 24th birthday. 

Happy, Happy Birthday Doug!!

We celebrated the day of Doug’s delivery to this earth munching on “Laughing Cow” processed cheese and baguette, driving over 300 miles through Niger.

So sad, right?

Don’t shed too many tears for our red bearded friend: we knew we’d be traveling hard on his actual birthday so we celebrated two nights beforehand by throwing him a birthday bash in a field in Burkina Faso before breaking away from our convoy with Kiran, Anthony and Kevin. The bash included makeshift cornbread/nutella cake with match candles, local beer and awesome presents we bought on the street in Ouaga. The next night, Aparna and I bought him a delicious Chinese food feast, followed by ice cream in Niamey.

All in all, we were lucky to be able to celebrate this awesome guy in a beautiful country, surrounded by good people, yummy food, a gorgeous sunset and lots of cows.

ME: “Man, I’m so glad you brought the dry sack. Putting all our sleeping gear on the roof would have been impossible otherwise. It’s nice to climb into a dry sleeping bag.”

DOUG: *sigh* “I wish we could climb into a dry sack.”