My Mercedes is Not for Sale by Jeroen Van Bergeijk

Author:Jeroen Van Bergeijk
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780767930222
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2008-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

“Ah, into the heart of darkness,” whispers Simon.

His eyes sparkle. A slight grin plays around his mouth.

We’re standing in front of a yellowed Michelin map of West Africa pinned to the wall in a hallway of the Auberge Sahara. I look at this map every day, pondering how to continue my trip. Simon has just asked me what my plans are, and I’ve pointed to the border town of Rosso. Rosso lies on the Senegal, a mighty big river, resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest on the border between Mauritania and Senegal, and its tail lost in the depths of Mali.

“That’s where I wanna cross,” I tell him.

I like Simon. He’s funny. He’s well-read. Simon is on his way to South Africa on his motorcycle. I wonder if he’ll ever get there. The first time he had to ride off road, in the sand between Nouadhibou and Nouakchott, he fell off his bike. A couple of passing tourists took him to the hospital in Nouakchott. The damage: a few ugly bruises and a broken collarbone. That was two months ago. Simon has been waiting for the doctors to say it’s okay for him to travel again. I admire him for not returning to London. That was the obvious thing to do: recuperate at home and continue his trip later. But Simon was afraid that if he waited too long, he’d never complete the journey, and he dreaded facing his friends, too: barely begun and already a failure. He started talking about it yesterday after a couple of shots of whiskey—Jean-Pierre had traded his camera for a bottle of Johnnie Walker and treated everyone. Simon’s ashamed, and every time a biker arrives at the Auberge Sahara full of enthusiastic tales about riding in the desert, he confronts that shame anew. He’s bored to death in Nouakchott. So last week—to hell with the doctors—he went for a little ride, a weekend trip to Saint-Louis, Senegal, about 190 miles south. He crossed the border at Rosso.

“And? What was it like there?” I ask impatiently. “Was it really so bad?”

“I don’t wanna spoil your fun,” says Simon. “You’ll have to experience it for yourself. But I can tell you this much: take plenty of cash.”

Rosso is known as the most notorious border crossing in West Africa, some say in all of Africa. The border is supposedly occupied not only by a small army of corrupt customs agents but also by dozens of hustlers who try every trick in the book to rob travelers blind. Stories of swindles that seem to happen there as if they were the most normal thing in the world circulate on the Internet. The message: whatever you do, avoid Rosso.

The most notorious border crossing in Africa? I’ve got to see that. The heart of darkness? Bring it on.

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