A typical day on the truck…

A typical day on the truck

5 am: Mash, our finest Kenyan cook is waking up and filling the cattle with water. A full tea pot for 18 passengers takes almost an hour to boil, especially when it is windy…

5.05 am: Mash goes back to sleep for another ten minutes.

5.30 am: The guys who are on cook group are unzipping their tents, crawling out in the dark with their head lamps on, trying to find their way to the toilets and showers.

5.45 am: The cook group and Mash are preparing breakfast while everybody else is packing up, yarning and taking down their tents.

5.58 am: Already awake from all that noise finally I stick my head down the truck (still wrapped in my sleeping bag on the roof) and watch breakfast preparations, finally get out of my sleeping liner and my sleeping bag and climb down from the truck roof…

6.00 am: Breakfast time. Sometimes only toast, cereals and tea. Lots of times eggs in all variations and if there is time and the budget is not to tight even bacon or sausages!

6.30 am: Packing away tents, mattresses go on top of the truck, kitchen equipment in the side lockers and everybody’s bags in the back locker (or the primary storage facility).

6.45 am: I am checking oil, water and clutch fluid, conditions of tyres and springs…

7.00 am: Cranking the engine, hoping that our Helena starts and off we go on the road again.

9.00 am: After two hours sleeping on the truck (except the driver) first bush pee stop.

10.30 am: We arrive at a little town and stop for shopping. Mash gets food for the next two days, I am running around to find an ATM to get money and then hopefully also hit a hardware store and see what’s in stock. Duct tape or any type of fluid, oil or grease is always needed. And then of course something cold to drink…

12.30: Already on the road again for an hour we stop somewhere in the countryside under a tree for our lunch. Chairs are coming out, tables, kitchen equipment, water for washing up. After a few days everybody knows what to do and joins in.

13:30: After salad, sandwiches and water melon, packing up again, on the road to go and see the Bushmen. The last six kilometres are a very sandy track. With a non four wheel drive 16 t truck this is a challenge… Several times loosing momentum, almost bogged, but in the end we have made it. Everybody goes for a walk with the Bushmen and see how they live in their villages while Dragoman crew is either doing accounts or sleeping…

17:00: We rock up at our today’s campsite. All our bags, tents and equipment are coming out again. Setting up tents, time for a beer or a cold (if you are lucky warm) shower. Mash and the cook group are preparing dinner. Today it will be Lasagne made on the camp fire!!

19.00: Dinner time, talking about the day and what’s on the schedule for tomorrow.

20.30: African desert (hot chocolate) or another beer around the camp fire or at the bar…

22.00: Tired… I am already up on the truck roof, cuddled into my two layers of sleeping bags and gazing at the stars before I fall asleep.

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