Lutz Eiser and Fred Buckingham’s scooter mission to The Gambia Penzance Rotarian Lutz Eiser and his good friend Fred Buckingham are keen motor bike riders with an appetite for adventure. Lutz and Fred have become involved with Horizons Unlimited - a group formed to assist motorbike travellers with their visits in foreign lands. The group arranges talks and slide shows by members and provides useful tips for others prior to their travels. Another member of Horizons Unlimited had, on at least one other occasion, organised a group of bike riders to deliver motor scooters and equipment to a poorly resourced hospital in The Gambia. Anita Smith, also from England, visits The Gambia once or twice each year to establish the latest needs of the hospital at Bansang and to set up contacts between UK donors and senior hospital staff. The hospital is the second largest in the country after the one in the capital Banjul. It accommodates up to five hundred in patients at any one time, with twenty or more to a room and very little privacy. Patients are drawn from the surrounding area and includes many from neighbouring Senegal. A group of five bikers, some having previously made this journey, riding scooters and accompanied by a support vehicle were planning a similar trip earlier in 2017. Sadly, a leading member of the group passed away and others then dropped out. However, Lutz and Fred decided that, having already acquired scooters to donate, they would press ahead with a scaled down version of the project on their own with no support vehicle. The scooters that were acquired are relatively easily maintained and are an invaluable resource for hospital medics as they not only enable them to access more remote villages but they also provide transport that is economical.
October 1st 2017 - Sunday 10am - Kings Road, Penzance We’re ready to go. Our two twelve-year-old scooters, found via the internet, are now fully serviced and loaded with equipment, clothes and provisions.
Spare bike chains and sprockets, tools, fuel and tyres are strapped everywhere possible on the bikes and our family and friends have gathered to wave us off on what is a grey drizzly autumnal day.
First objective achieved - We reach Plymouth in time to catch the 3pm ferry over to Santander in Spain. The 20 hr ferry passage is smooth and on arrival it’s warmer but it’s still raining. Our plan is to get as far south as possible before dark, refuelling every 100 miles. The sun finally comes out and the temperature rises to 30° C. We find a village hotel for our first night in Spain. 3rd to 5th Oct.
We aim to set off each day at 8 am.
We head south aiming for Seville and the port at Algeciras on the south coast close to Gibraltar. Our typical day will involve spending 10 hrs on the saddle, covering around 300 miles on good roads. 6th October 1:30 pm - A two-hour ferry crossing from Europe into North Africa Algeciras to Tangier. On arrival we find the coast road that will take us initially to Rabat 155 miles to the south west. 7th & 8th October Travelling onwards to Rabat we find B & B each afternoon well before dark. Fortunately the Mauritanian Embassy In Rabat is where it is supposed to be according to the GPS coordinates that we had looked up before we set off - But it is Sunday and so the Embassy is closed.
9th October Rabat. We return to the Embassy in the morning to make our visa applications for entry into Mauritania. Now we must wait 24hrs to receive the visas, so we spend the rest of the day sightseeing in the ancient city, much of which has been rebuilt more than once following earthquakes. 10th October Our visas are ready for collection at 3pm and we use the remaining daylight to reach El Jadida. The visas are dated and we need to reach the border nearly 1,300 miles away and cross in 7 days time. 11th October 8am start and again we are heading south along the coast towards the border with Mauritania. The temperature is now 38° C , there is no shade. In one town near Casablanca we hit heavy traffic and we lost sight of each other. A very worrying situation, it was getting dark and my phone would not get a signal so I back-tracked to our last coffee stop. Eventually at 9 pm I make contact with Fred using WhatsApp, he is 60 miles ahead! We spend the night apart. To catch up I decide to travel in the dark not a good idea - The headlight on the scooter is not very bright, a bit like a candle, there are stray dogs and other animals on the road which makes life somewhat dangerous. We met up in the morning and stick more closely together from now on.
12th & 13th October Two days spent travelling along mile after mile of remote desert roads.
Salt beds along the coast.
14th October Police roadside checkpoints become more frequent during the 200 mile approach to the border with Western Sahara south of Tarfaya. Each checkpoint is manned by several policemen all of whom are friendly. Near Tarfaya we see the first of many wind farms on the coast, designed to harvest energy from the almost constant onshore wind.
15th to 17th October Travelling down the coast, high temperatures, clear skies and the Atlantic breeze mean that we are each getting through four to five litres of bottled drinking water every 24 hrs. We are back on the road, with 95 miles ahead of us still to reach Nouadhibou before dark. We make it. 18th October Crossing into Mauritania from Morocco. The border process goes smoothly although there is an unmade road through a half mile buffer zone with signs warning of mine fields to the left and right. The border check takes 2 or 3 hrs to get through and involves showing passports and visas, paying to have passports stamped and paying to insure our bikes in a new country. Here we see large numbers of abandoned vehicles, stripped of everything by nomads. 19th October At sunrise in Nouadhibou we see the iron-ore laden train from the mines in the north east of the country to load ore onto ships for export. The train can be up to 1.6 miles long with over 200 trucks, hauled by four locomotives, said to be the longest, heaviest train in the world. We continue towards Nouakchott 300 miles further south in the knowledge that there are no fuel stations
for the next 165 miles, so we must rely on full fuel tanks and full spare fuel cans - the fuel does hold out but the daylight doesn’t, so we stay the night at the National Park under canvas – as it turns out, our only night under canvas.
20th October The National Park offers a change of scenery with the first real greenery for a long time and a few small villages. There are no tourists, no shops, but people are friendly - local French speaking tribes. Arrival in Nouakchott is marked with an impressive four lane highway, street lighting and pavements, this lasts for nine miles and ends as abruptly as it started, reverting to dust roads now strewn with huge amounts of rubbish on either side including thousands and thousands of plastic bottles. Our accommodation tonight in the Auberge is very good but having completed only 120 miles today we need to start early in the morning.
21st October Leaving town is difficult due to very poor road conditions – again potholes and rubbish everywhere. The unpaved road continues for many miles until, after about 20 miles, we find tarmac again. Our next destination should be Rosso on the Senegalese border, but instead our route book advises us to head 50 miles further west over unmade roads beside the River Senegal to the crossing at the 60 feet high Diama Dam. This is said to be safer and an easier place to cross the river. The surrounding wetlands bring us our first sighting of a crocodile. The border is closed by the time we reach it and so we have to spend another night in the Auberge.
22nd October We cross the border via the Diama Dam, an easy crossing but requiring around 2 ½ hours standing in the heat and more payments for importing and insuring the bikes. Travelling onwards to St. Louis we find a campsite with accommodation in the form of a small hut on the beach and a restaurant nearby.
23rd October We decide that today will be a wellearned day of rest with a swim in the sea and relaxation. This part of Senegal is largely green with palm trees and fields with crops. Large houses built at the time of the French colonisation are now abandoned, and in some cases lived in by locals. St. Louis was evidently once an impressive coastal town but sadly now dirty and unappealing. 24th October Resuming our journey we head south once more, towards Dakar 160 miles away. We see our first baobab tree and arrive in Dakar on considerably better roads. 25th & 26th October We arrive on the Gambian border at Karang. No problems here and no extra payments because we are carrying an official letter from the Permanent Secretary - Ministry of Health & Social Welfare Dr. Cherno Omar Barry and this gives us special access to the country.
Travelling onwards, we arrive in the capital Banjul by nightfall. We manage to find our hotel despite discovering that the GPS system doesn’t work here. We spend Wednesday and Thursday exploring Banjul. 27th October
Time to start our journey inland.
It is 300 miles to Bansang heading eastwards from Banjul alongside the River Gambie which is almost 5 miles wide as its approaches the Atlantic Ocean. The hospital at Bansang is to be our final destination. We pass through many villages on the way and there are almost always groups of children running along beside us, asking us for presents or asking us whether we can provide sponsorship for their education. Likewise, adults ask for sponsorship, they want help with their business ambitions, like farming or setting up small workshops and other local enterprises. Halfway to Bansang we cross the river using the ferry at Farafenni and spend the night there. 28th to 30th October
Farafenni is a large town and, needing supplies, we find what seems to be the only
supermarket - the supermarket is optimistically called ‘Paradise’. There is virtually nothing on the shelves to choose from, but there are tinned sardines - so that’s what we purchase. The river is too dirty to swim in, and as we head further east we are able to visit the Wassu Stone Circles - a UNESCO World Heritage Site - larger than those found in West Cornwall, and a reminder of home. There are more police check points along the route to Bansang, but after 4,200 miles we arrive somewhat earlier than originally anticipated at the hospital. The hospital management have been tipped off in advance from England by Anita and we are met by an eye surgeon. For visitors who, like us, are bringing aid from the UK, Anita Smith’s involvement has resulted in the hospital providing us with the use of a house. Bansang is a very poor town with and has few facilities by UK standards. Despite this, our accommodation has running water and air conditioning, however, the electricity that powers everything is only available between 8 am and 12 noon and then again between 6 pm and 10 pm. There is single diesel generator that supplies the power for the whole area and it regularly fails. When the power goes off in the evening so too does the water because the water pump is run on electricity. There is then also no light, so your best option is simply to go to bed. Fortunately, the hospital has a backup generator for the theatre and wards, etc. There is a restaurant nearby where we discover that diners must order their meal the day before. The menu includes ‘Chicken with Rice’ or ‘Rice with Chicken’ or alternatively you can have ‘Fish with Rice’ or ‘Rice with Fish’ – every day. If you didn’t pre-order your beer the day before, you won’t be getting one. We explore the town, visit the school and are given a tour of the hospital and all it’s departments, meeting the staff in the process. 31st October Returning again to the hospital we are shown an eye operation. The paramedic carrying out the cataract operation can complete up to fifty such procedures a day. In the evening we are guests at a welcome dinner held in our honour. The senior hospital staff are all present and we learn that with the help of Anita Smith the hospital is now raising funds to build accommodation blocks for staff.
We spend the next few days at leisure and servicing the bikes for a final time.
6th November We return to the hospital with the bikes to formally hand over the keys to the Director of the hospital.
We donate our remaining equipment at the same time as we have no further use for it.
We stay for a few days more, enjoying some rest and recuperation having booked our flights home via Birmingham.
9th November Having returned to the capital by ambulance provided by the Bansang Hospital, we head to Banjul International Airport for the plane home to England.
We take the train from Birmingham to Penzance.
Our wives, Ann and Pat are at the station to greet us and to our great surprise - our family and friends have all congregated at home to welcome us.