Mercy Trucks West Africa Project  Roy left Hexham on the 9th of January 2008. He then left Harpenden after packing the truck with equipment in the late afternoon of Thursday 10th. On this and further pages we will be publishing his accounts of his journey to Guinea-Bissau.
I broke down last night.
As I was underneath the police came and they were helpful and good workers. After a long time of cranking the engine over and pumping it manually from underneath, the battery was starting to go flat. By this time I am very hungry, cold and wet so things were starting to get me down a little. We decided that we would unload everything from above the cab to tip the cab forward so we could get to the engine to slacken off some injector pipes to get the remaining air out of the fuel system. We unloaded everything from above the cab onto the side of the motorway and we still couldn't get the cab forward. One policeman was pumping the cab jack while I was pushing it from the top while the other policeman was trying to force it up with a bar. I crawled upside down in behind the cab and body (very small gap) and was able to reach through and slacken off an injector pipe but then I became jammed. I had sort of slipped down too far. Because I was hungry and weak and cold and covered in diesel and wet and upside-down and a little bit fat, I was slipping further down and became very stuck. Anyway, to cut a long story short, God is good and I got out.
We kept on trying to start it and just as the battery was dying, it fired up. Halleluiah! The policeman started the engine and there was a bit of rejoicing. They had by now been working for many hours beyond their shift and they also were cold and wet so they left me in the hands of the Highways Agency. We couldn't reload everything back up above the cab so I tried to pull forward to load it all into the caravan. But I found my clutch had now broken. I couldn't get the clutch to disengage to get it into gear, so I tried to do it with no clutch, starting it in gear. With working for a while moving back and forth on the wet roadside, the wheels had sunk down and I was stuck in deep mud. It was a real miracle but the Highways guys pulled me out with their 4x4.
I was so cold, tired and hungry by this time I just wanted to go somewhere and pull into a lay-by to rest. But as I drove up a country road it got narrower and twistier and the clutch went completely. I was on a hill and on a corner and I couldn't change down a gear and I ended up in a very bad position. I started bleeding the clutch - this was very difficult as it is a two man job and because I couldn't tilt the cab forward I had to keep crawling into the gap between the gearbox and cab (the bit where you can get stuck). I had to keep pumping the pedal and then crawling in the tight gap to the bleed nipple and running around to fill up the fluid pot. I forgot that the front grill was up again and I smacked my head on it again. What I hadnŐt realised was that blood was coagulating and building up on my forehead and down my face. Then a car stopped and the driver said "Can I help you?" (It was the Good Samaritan). He was concerned about my head bleeding and I was concerned about bleeding the clutch. We had a good laugh. As he was pumping the pedal and I was bleeding the air nipple, I realised the problem - I had a cracked pipe. This was why I couldn't get any pressure on the clutch hydraulic system. This pipe must have got cracked earlier when I was stuck upside-down trying to bleed the diesel fuel system.
So we worked to try and seal it up with a jubilee clip and some cloth (the jubilee clips are in the back of the wagon. Now I've unloaded the back part of the wagon five times). This gave me a half a clutch and I was able to get moving again. We drove around looking for somewhere to park up a 60 foot long truck and caravan. We went to an industrial estate but on the way the clip and cloth couldn't hold the pressure so I was driving without a clutch again. I got it sort of parked up. It was now 4am and all I had to eat in 24 hours was two sandwiches. This guy, Lee, kindly took me to a 24 hr garage to get some food. Lee took me back to his place where we had a couple of hours sleep and then we started again this morning. Guess what? It was still raining and cold.
We went to a parts garage and were given a push fit connector, this was a blessing. Also the ladies in the burger van at B&Q felt sorry for us and gave us tea and a feed, which warmed us up a bit. The Good Samaritan guy called Lee who rescued me last night and gave me bed and breakfast was still helping even though he only had a couple of hours sleep. We got it fixed with the push fit connector and he led me to a garage to fill up with diesel. I said my thank-yous and goodbyes and set off on the road to Africa again. Halleluiah, God is good I am back on the road, dirty, wet and covered in hydraulic clutch fluid but I am on my way.
Then after about one mile just about to get back on the motorway to Dover to catch the ferry the clutch went again, the push-fit union couldn't take the pressure and it blew apart. My phone battery was dead and I was stuck on a roundabout. I was nearly starting to get a little bit down again, but never mind. I didn't want to ring Lee the Good Samaritan again because he was on his way home to get a couple of hours sleep because he was on nightshift. But praise the Lord, he came around the corner and stopped.
Anyway, tomorrow is another day. I have travelled 200 miles and so I now only have the last 4,400 to go. Watch this space!
If you would like more information about the Guinea Bissau project and/or Mercy Trucks' other projects, please email info-uk@mercytrucks.org or phone 0870 126 9120. Please consider partnering with us in this exciting project by sponsorship. A total of £1.00 per mile is needed to cover the costs for the 4,600 mile journey. If more funds are raised, this will help towards setting up the medical logistics project in West Africa. Donations can be made in a number of ways:
>Travelogue: Part 1
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