December 24, 2011

by Stephen Jan in Marrakech, Morocco

On the morning of December 24, 2011, Christmas eve, 30 km from Marrakesh, the ambulance broke down. That morning had started like many others, spending the night at a highway rest stop wedged between a truck and a bus, waking up to the sound of diesel engines and the smell of car exhaust. We noticed an unusual whirring sound the moment we got on the road, but thought nothing of it because as we all know, there is no problem until you acknowledge it. Well, the whirring noise got louder until we completely lost the ability to accelerate. We stopped to take a peak under the car – didn’t take a mechanic to notice that something was completely broken. 

The differential housing for the gear box completely broke.

We slowly made our way over to the nearest rest stop which happened to be on the other side of the highway. Naturally, we made a completely illegal uturn through a patch of grass dividing the highway. But in africa, laws are more like suggestions. After discussing the problem with the gas station people. our options were to tow the car to a mechanic in either Marrakesh or Casablanca.  We picked Marrakesh.

So there we were, loaded on a flatbed truck speeding down the Moroccan freeway. Not exactly the way I had planned to arrive in Marrakesh. The truck driver was a really skilled driver. I was amazed at how carefully he drove over every bump and even more amazed at this crazy U-turn he made on two lane highway through a 3 meter divider gap. Well, we eventually arrived in this industrial looking district with auto shops everywhere, not to different from certain areas in the Bronx except for the donkey karts roaming around. This dude in a white outfit who I dubbed “the Doc” came over to take a look. He went back and forth with some other people in Arabic. We waited around for a bit. There was a bunch of commotion again. We waited some more.

In the end the Doc told the truck driver to take us to Kahlid who apparently holds the title of  the best mechanic in Marrakesh. So off we went again. Dunno what he had to do to get that title.

We were taken to this district called “Sidi Ghanam” There, the truck drivers dropped off the car. Khalid arrived on the scene moments later. He was a big fellow, probably in his mid thirties, didn’t speak a lick of English. Through a lot of gesturing and repetition, he communicated to us that he needed to find a new differential housing block and that part can only be found in Casablanca. So much for the “you can find everything in Marrakesh” that the locals keep telling me.

So nothing is open on Sunday, he said  he’ll make calls on Monday, get the part on Tuesday and make the repair on Wednesday. This presented a huge problem. First of all, finding the part is not a certainty. If they don’t find it, then we’re done. But in the event that the repairs actually happen on schedule,  they fix the car on Wednesday, we’d miss the rendezvous point at Daklha with the other teams. Normally, meeting other teams is not a big deal but this meeting point is important solely because the organizers had arranged a military escort to handle the border crossing and all the bribing that we’d encounter in Mauritania. If we miss that rendezvous, we’d be completely on our own to deal with Mauritania. Team Last Responders was in serious trouble.