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Family camping & homeschooling adventure in Africa. Sahara Desert crossing with children in Jeep & tent trailer. Travel in Morocco, Algeria, Niger, Nigeria, Ghana, & west coast. Exploring, safari, backcountry, backroads, overlanders.
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The Blickley Family's
African Camping
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He suggested Tamanrasset for parts and before he left he invited us to go to his base camp where electricity was available. We were faced with the problem of traveling back north over rough terrain sixteen kilometers, pulling a trailer with only one wheel.
After some study I felt that we could skid the broken side using a special 6' long metal plate used to help when stuck in sand, "sand tracks", some rocks, and a piece of carpet all chained to the broken axle. I built the skid and chained it up. It required six hours to travel the sixteen kilometers
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The axle continually slid off the skid and we then jacked it up, repositioned the rocks and carpet, and moved the metal plate ahead a little. When the metal plate wore through we would have to reposition it. We completely wore out one 6' long metal plate and part of another before we arrived... long after dark. Our instructions were to turn left on the 300 kilometer marker post and go west 500 yards. About one half mile from the post some large trucks stopped us and for one half hour tried to persuade us to give up. They said there were no people camped for at least as one hundred miles. They urged us not to travel after dark and were amazed at our condition. They ordered us not to continue and warned us that we would be killed by a large truck if we stayed on the trail in the dark. But we were not going to quit so we thanked them for their concern and kept moving. We located the marker post and saw nothing that even slightly resembled any human presence nearby. Bill walked ahead searching carefully with a flashlight and behind a hill saw their campfires. When we finally pulled into camp, we literally collapsed asleep after eating a bowl of rice.
The next morning the men brought a welder and cable and within three hours the axle was welded together. But the other side was bent and the sand shield for the wheel bearing was inoperable. The more Bill thought about it, the more convinced he became that it was too risky to continue. We had two options: we could hire a truck to carry the trailer north back to the blacktop or we could find an axle there. Bill left the Jeep with LaVerne and the boys at the Algerian camp and sat on the edge of the trail to beg a ride. Later that morning a vehicle approached and an American couple agreed to take Bill 200 miles to
Tamanrasset. While
Bill was gone, an old Islamic man checked on the well-being of
LaVerne and the boys twice a day to see if they needed
anything. Each time the man would leave them saying, Ain
ch'Allah. (God's blessing to you)
After installing a Jeep axle on the trailer we headed south again. We spent a week in Tamanrasset recovering from exhaustion before we resumed our trek south in the company of two Italian couples who drove a Land Rover and a Toyota Land Cruiser. We slowly made our way to Guezzam, the Algerian frontier, and followed a very bad trail to Assamaka, the border post of Niger. The road from here to the French mining town of Arlit was really exciting. There is no trail to the village of Arlit, just tracks spread out across the desert. The way is marked by barrels every kilometer. Using field glasses, each successive barrel was spotted and careful choice of ground brought us through. From Arlit we traveled to
Agadez. In this picturesque town we met a peace corps worker from Boston who was helping dig wells in Niger.
We reached Kano, Nigeria several days later and found a camping spot adjacent to a racially integrated country club complete with a swimming pool and golf course.We stayed there for a week while I recovered from almost complete exhaustion.
While in Europe we made our pilgrimage to the Netherlands where we could almost feel the spirit of our ancestors. There we saw many of the customs practiced by our grandparents still being practiced.
One of the reasons for our trip to Africa was to visit the ancestrial homeland of our many friends. We saw many people and customs here that resembled those in the U.S.
When entering the continent of Africa from Morocco and Algeria through the Sarah Desert and into the area inhabited by people of dark skin, we were impressed with the personal cleanliness of the people. Even though the country is dusty and most of the homes are made of dried mud and other material that is difficult to clean, the people emerge spotlessly clean, many women in pure white dresses and brilliant colors on both men and women. The U.S. manufacturers of detergents would do well to film these people as testimonials to the effectiveness of laundry detergents in an unfavorable environment.
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| While traveling through the desert we were often met along the trail by people living in the area who were in need of water, matches, or medicine. We questioned whether the need was genuine after we had given what we could, and we were greatly impressed by the fact that in the Sahara Desert, the regular truck drivers carry supplies to give to these poor desert dwellers. We would have thought that only people who were unaccustomed to seeing people asking for things would stop. I've heard that Algerians are rather hard people but we've experienced how caring they are when we were in trouble, and we've also seen how they love one another and demonstrate that love by helping their people who are in need.
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