It's not old ... it's practically a classic

I hummed and hawed about whether to keep my 29-year-old Peugeot 504 and take it to Burkina.

After getting a quote of about $760 in parts to get it on the road, plus another sum for insurance etc. and being told I’d get a maximum of $3000 if sold in good shape, I decided to go ahead with it, thinking that even with customs duty in Burkina Faso it was better than the $10 000 price for a decent secondhand car there.

The mechanic kept saying “it’ll be ready tomorrow” but it was finally finished the morning we were supposed to leave. He was coming with me to ensure nothing happened on the long trip, so we ended up leaving at 3pm.

We didn’t cross the Burkina border until 7pm, and the customs guy on duty said the car needed to go through processing ‘with the chiefs’ during working hours, so we had to stay overnight at the border. Besides which, the next 100km or so of road was already closed for the night because of bandits.

After a bit of a search we found a very basic inn. The mechanic slept in the car with my more expensive and fragile goods, and I had a room with a bed and overhead fan - and nothing else. No ceiling, no screens, and the latrine and open room used for a bucket bath the other side of the courtyard. I didn’t sleep much anyway, so we were up in plenty of time to sit and wait for customs to open at 7am and see the customs agent that was ‘preparing our file’. There was a lot of smiling, polite conversation with people in uniforms, drinking water and drinks from wandering sellers to cope with the heat,an electricity cutoff for almost 2 hours delaying the computerize document ...

We finally left about 11.30am after paying about $30 for the appropriate customs document and about $80 to the agent and arrived in Ouaga at 4.30pm, 25.5 hours after leaving Parakou. The SIM office contacted another agent once we got to Ouagadougou and I haven’t seen the bill for that yet (do I want to?). I do know that he said there were problems, that the customs alone was over $1700, but one tank of petrol, one week, and oneside mirror later it became a Burkinabe car and ready to be bumped through the hard rocky back roads of Ouagadougou, deformed by the rainy season into obstacle courses.

On the road to ... Ouagadougou

On the return to Parakou our bus didn’t live up to its name (“Comfort”) with windows on my side sealed shut, no air con, repeated delays … but not all were their fault since midday we were among the hundreds of vehicles stationary for over 4 hours due to an uprising and road barricade at Dassa after the killing of a truck driver the night before.

Parakou saw me dirty and tired moving and sorting out furniture, selling what I could, and talking to all and sundry about moving possibilities. One quote for a million CFA had me speechless for a while. It was only at the last minute (a week after I’d planned on leaving) that my car was ready and the possibilities had reduced to putting the stuff on a regular bus out of Ouagadougou: it had the advantage on not only being the cheapest quote but providing some advantages since the customs and police were used to seeing it and there shouldn’t be the exhorbitant extra costs other missionaries had paid.

In fact, signed and stamped documents in hand we (the mechanic and I) proceeded the bus to all the customs points and paved the way. We were already in an interview with the customs chief at the Burkina border about the it and about the car when the bus arrived and in the end did not pay any customs for my household stuff (the rule but not always followed). And with the sale of my furniture covering about 90% of the moving costs it worked out terrific!

The car is another story ….