Necessity is the Mother of Invention

I was traveling in some of the most isolated places on the planet. Far from any form of help. My security was my motorcycle and my ability to solve problems. There wasn’t a back- up team to come to the rescue, or a plan B if I became ill or was injured, or if the motorcycle was disabled.

The Peace Corps recruited me for my mechanical skills, adaptability and resourcefulness, and I learned from my time as a volunteer in India, how to solve unexpected problems in unconventional ways. Often, what I lacked in equipment, I compensated for by having experience in using the resources at hand. But if there was a major problem with the motorcycle, there wasn’t even a remote chance that there were spare parts available to repair it in the Sahara or central Africa. 

At the oasis town of El Golea, a few hundred kilometers into the desert, the grand dream of an asphalt road linking North and Central Africa abruptly ended.  It was then that the real desert crossing began.  I had imagined most of my route through the Sahara as being drifting sand dunes but it turned out to be an unforgiving landscape not only of sand, but of stone and gravel that was hard-packed and corrugated from the heavy trucks that traveled the ancient caravan trails south. 

Our overloaded bike bounced and shook, my teeth clattered against each other, jerry cans filled with water and fuel leaked, and the gas tank supports were weakened from the strain and the continual vibrations.

We had already logged fifteen-thousand kilometers through the desert and central Africa and were travelling on jungle roads that were little more than foot paths.  I had changed the oil, fuel and air filters a couple of times, and replaced the back tire. A sand storm in the central Sahara had dulled the paint and the chrome, but the only real problem was the stress fractures on the tank. The cracks turned into a serious leak deep in the western Nigerian rainforest.

When fuel began dripping from the tank down onto my thigh, we stopped in the first village that we came to hoping that there might be a workshop of some kind. We unpacked the bike and put up the tent. I disconnected the fuel lines and then drained and removed the damaged tank.  Carrying it under my arm, I went looking among the shops and stalls for a tinsmith or a welder.

There was a group of men sitting on their haunches under the canopy of a tree whose intricate branches and thick glossy leaves gave them some relief from the sticky midday heat. Using sign language and a mixture of English and French, I asked them where I could get the tank fixed and they pointed me towards a hut at the far end of the lane.

I followed the dull thud of hammer striking metal.  The village blacksmith wore sandals and an armless, washed-out military style shirt and shorts with a camouflage pattern, a reminder for me that we were in a part of Nigeria that was once the separatist state of Biafra, and the scene of the brutal civil war that killed millions, and had ended two years earlier.

He was pounding out a length of red-hot iron salvaged from what looked like a piece of an automobile leaf spring and fashioning it into what might become a machete or some kind of digging tool. I couldn’t tell what.

I looked around at the pile of farm implements, broken wheels, and diverse scrap metal while I waited for him to acknowledge my presence. When he looked up, his pupils captured the stray rays of light that filtered into the room. They were surrounded by whites clear and unmarked, the same bleached color as his large teeth framed by thick lips that after a moment’s hesitation, turned up into a welcoming smile.

I showed him the crack in the tank and its loose mounting brackets. I hadn’t seen any electrical cables along the way or in the village and didn’t have any hopes of finding an electric arc welder, but when my eyes adjusted to the dark room, I saw that there was a gas welder half hidden in the shadows.

It had an oxygen cylinder, and instead of the normal pressurized cylinder of acetylene, there was a container to make the gas by pouring water over pebbles of calcium chloride. It was a technique that I had seen used and learned while working in India.

I asked him if I could borrow it. He agreed on the condition that I paid him for the material. Even if this wasn’t like the modern equipment I was used to, I was a fairly competent welder, and as long as I could heat the metal to the right temperature I could repair the tank with it.

The blacksmith dropped a few pebbles of the calcium carbide into the cannister to start the process of making the gas. He struck a match and I opened the valves on the handle of the torch. I fed in the acetylene to get the flame started and then little by little, I added the oxygen and watched the color of the flame turn from a sooty yellow to a clear blue.

He held a piece of thick, colored glass up to protect my eyes from the bright light of the torch. I had trouble adjusting the flame but eventually got it right and carefully melted my welding rod into the cracks, sealing them and at the same time attaching the loose support brackets.

When I was satisfied with my work and offered to pay him as we had agreed, he said it wasn’t necessary and took my right hand between the two slabs of granite that were his. In that shack in the Nigerian jungle, I had the same feelings of camaraderie that existed between workers that I had felt before, and would feel many times after.

The Biafran War

In the late 1960´s shocking scenes of starving children with swollen bellies and heads that seemed too large for their shrunken bodies were etched into the consciousness and consciences of the Western world. The Nigerian civil war lasted two years with a civilian death toll estimated at two million.  After we crossed the border from Cameroon, we saw the evidence of the war everywhere. As gruesome reminders, there were burned out military vehicles and fresh graves in every village.

This war was a testimonial to the failure of colonial rule where territories were divided and borders drawn where it was convenient. No consideration was taken of cultural and ethnic differences. In Nigeria these artificial borders pitted the Muslim north against the Christian south.

After the war, armed gangs many of them consisting of former soldiers, roamed the forests and attacked and robbed road crews and logging camps and any other place where there might be money.

The punishment for highway robbery was the death penalty and there were graphic signs depicting men hanging from gallows posted along the roads. But those signs also had an underlying message, “Traveler Beware!”  

Those warnings weren’t anything that helped us sleep easier when we camped.  We were always on the lookout for a felled tree blocking the road which was the bandit gangs method for stopping vehicles before they robbed the people in them and when possible we slept in places where there were guards.