Our Truck Goes on an Adventure… Without Us.

And just like that the man responsible for getting our car to the Tanzania/Malawi border was gone.

Yes, you read that right. Gone. Our truck was going on quite the voyage with a man we’ve never met and suddenly we no longer heard from him. But you might be asking, why did a stranger have possession of your truck when you are back in the USA? Or perhaps you’re wondering, why are you even moving your truck? Oh that’s a story. Let me back up.

When COVID-19 shut down the world and squashed our Africa Big Year plans, Ross and I chose to go home to quarantine. At the time leaving was a difficult choice, but looking back we know it was the right one, especially with how severe and extensive the lockdowns have been.  Believe me, we are VERY happy that we came home, but we had to leave our beloved vehicle behind. (Read all about that here.) When your hands are tied because of circumstances out of your control, you sort of just have to make the best of a bad deal. We left our Toyota Hilux with a kind mechanic named Eckhart whom we had met after he agreed to do a few repairs while we were in Ghana earlier this year. We were paying him a storage fee and he agreed to renew our TIP while we were gone. (TIP = temporary import permit that allows all vehicles brought into the country only to stay for 30-90 days before needing to be renewed. Without this law, vehicles could be stolen, driven across a border to a new country, and sold.) Unfortunately Eckhart started running into problems getting our TIP. He managed to get one successfully but now the Tanzanian government knew about our truck at his place and the second time he attempted to get a TIP, they refused to issue him one. Eckhart began to worry that the government would come to take our truck. Apparently they threatened to do just that. And if the government got ahold of our truck we would either never see it again, or would have to pay a lot of money to get it back (knowing that there was a very good chance that all of our original Toyota parts would be replaced with knock offs because African government officials are notoriously corrupt.)

Eckhart felt we needed to get the truck out of Tanzania. And fast. It was a lot of back and forth across multiple time zones, but we agreed. If the man holding onto our truck said it was no longer safe to do so we needed to believe him. Eckhart employed a local man, Willie, to drive it 15+ hours south to the border of Malawi where a man named Bernard would pick it up and then drive it 4 hours to the town of Mzuzu and store it at his place.

We didn’t know Bernard but we met a trustworthy mechanic when we were in Malawi who verified that Bernard was a very good man. We knew nothing of Willie but he was from the border town and knew a few officials so if things went sideways he had some strings to pull. I personally didn’t like this idea of a long distance transfer with total strangers at the helm because far too many things could go wrong, but we didn’t seem to have a choice. Willie picked up our car and started on the journey south to Malawi. It was a long crossing and took him nearly a day to do so. When he reached the border he let Eckhart know that he would cross the next day. And then we never heard from him again.

Bernhard was waiting on the Malawi side to pick it up but Willie never showed. Eckhart hadn’t heard from Willie in over 12 hours. He phoned Ross to let him know the news. Do you know what it’s like to be 9,000 miles away completely helpless and with no real answers? Where did Willie go? Why was he suddenly not responding? We let it go for a bit but it had now been 24 hours since our last contact so we got in touch with Willie’s son and his son hadn’t heard from him either. Did something happen? Did he actually steal the truck or was he detained at the border? Was he arrested? If so, then who had our truck now? So many things could have gone wrong and all we knew was that the man with our truck was MIA.

Yes, it’s only a truck. But it was an investment. And behind that investment, a dream. We didn’t care so much about the money lost as we did the opportunity to travel Africa for months on end. So much was taken due to COVID-19 already that we simply couldn’t fathom the truck being taken too. The plan was always to go back. How could we do that if we didn’t have a truck to go back to?

We never told our friends or family about the internal struggles because no one would understand. There’s something inexplicable about a truck with no GPS system being driven by a Tanzanian that we’ve never met and losing all contact with him that people here probably wouldn’t understand. We decided to just mourn our loss together and figure out what kind of insurance claim we could make to recoup something like this.

And then on the morning of September 24, 2020 Ross woke up to a text message.

As it turns out, Willie’s phone battery died and instead of borrowing a phone from a friend to let everyone know he was okay, he just decided to spend another day hanging out in the village. It’s hard to stay mad at someone for causing undue stress when such good news is on the other end. We smiled and just thought, Africa.

I’m sure the transfer of the truck at the border had its hiccups, but Bernhard now had possession and our truck was safely on the other side. Thank God. Bernhard is the real MVP. Bernhard has never met us, but drove 4 hours to the Songwe border, had to get a hotel because Willie never showed, waited around the entire next day, eventually got our truck, processed the TIP, and started driving back to his home. But it’s a long drive so he drove until he couldn’t anymore, got another hotel, and completed his drive the following day. That’s a lot to do for a total stranger. Three days and countless hours all for two budget birders that he’s never met.

We we received confirmation that our truck made it to Mzuzu and was safely resting in Bernard’s compound we breathed a sigh of relief.

And for anyone wondering, our dear friend in South Africa, Rich Lindie, is en route to Mzuzu at this very moment! Thankfully South Africa has finally opened up its borders and Rich landed in Mzuzu on October 6th, 2020. Over the next week or two (or however long it takes) he plans to drive our Toyota Hilux back to his home in Durbin, ZA, stopping (hopefully) to encounter some wildlife along the way. Despite having a new baby at home, his gracious wife Kim let him leave the country to help out some friends. I swear, some of the nicest people I’ve ever met live in Africa.

Having our truck back in South Africa will benefit us immensely. Although it’s an expensive endeavor to move the truck, we will no longer be responsible for paying for TIP fees and we can now renew the registration in the country the truck is registered in (something that would surely have been a nightmare this November if the truck was out of the country.)

Once the truck makes it to South Africa we will just start this whole thing over again as soon as we can go back. And believe me, we will go back. STAY TUNED!