Where Trucks Go to Die

[Martin Hash]

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In Ghana, driving through Hohoe on the way to Ho, it occurred to me that

large, semi tractor-trailer rigs are the lifeblood of western Africa. I can’t think of a stronger way to put it: without the countless trucks that barrel through crowded mudbrick villages, across trackless wastelands of sand, and over excruciatingly rutted main roads, Africa would cease to even approach some kind of parity with Western conditions. But like all things in Africa, the trucking culture is shocking to civilized expectations. First off, many of the trucks are overloaded far beyond good sense, far beyond safety – into the realm I only remember from childhood when we would pile things on our toy cars until the wheels bent. Second, the trucks drive at speeds that defy explanation, that defy good judgment – like teenagers seeing how fast the family car will go. Thirdly, truck maintenance and repair is appallingly bad, or remarkably good depending on how you look at it – with the abuse those trucks receive it’s a wonder they operate at all.

As we traveled, it was clear that African is not miraculous: all those overloaded trucks traveling at unsafe speeds on bald tires and eroded brakelines do crash and burn, and people obviously die – in large numbers. The hulks of wrecked vehicles would be frightening if it wasn’t so ubiquitous, and rusted truck skeletons remain where they met their final fate – apparently forever. Tree branches spread across the roadway is the equivalent to flares. There are no police or tow trucks: you crash – you die alone. The crowds of locals around a recent accident aren’t good Samaritans, they’re scavengers: stealing the fuel, the cargo, the very seats the unfortunate victims were just sitting in.

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And now I know that the mythical “Elephant’s Graveyard” of Africa does exist – just not in the form our imaginations conjure. For those few elephantine vehicles that don’t end their lives in cataclysmic accidents during innumerable deadly-dangerous missions, they all seem to know to journey to a road junction just outside of Abuja, Nigeria, and expire in dignity. The number, kinds, and appearance of trucks that end their lives on the roadside there is stunning! Hundreds, possibly thousands of dead trucks line the little two-lane highway. Dozens of other trucks, not quite making it to their final resting place on the road’s shoulder, have stalled in the traffic lanes while other vehicles slowly maneuver between the stilled behemoths. It’s a serpentine dance that should halt all traffic completely but somehow seems to flow like blood through a clogged artery.

As we finally drove out of that Sargasso of Macadam, I could only stare back in awe and disbelief at what I’d saw and witnessed. How did all the trucks know to come here? Did they even have drivers? If so, did the drivers die with their old workhorses? No mystery of the universe is deeper or more profound.