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Bush garage
- Thread starter Philip A
- Start date
Easy. Standard procedure for obtaining parts deep in the bush, which may vary slightly from one time to another: Phone call to my parts supplier back in Kampala (650km and a couple of worlds away), tell him exactly what is needed, arrange payment via GSM or tell him when I'll be back to give him the cash, get my driver at home to collect the parts and stick them on the night bus to the nearest town, 150km from here.
Then, a few more phone calls to arrange with someone there to collect the parts and put them on the next available transport - which can be a tipper lorry carrying various goods and people through the pass in the mountains, a local motorbike taxi courageous enough to undertake the journey, or a friend who happens to come this way. 24 to 48 hours and you've got your parcel, not sure if it's that simple in your countryside!
When I'm lucky, I can even get them by air on the bushplane that brings or picks up one of my clients at the airstrip in the National Park nearby, 35km drive between buffalos and elephants...
Oh, and by the way: Africa generally has a much better GSM coverage than the US or most of Europe. This helps!
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Paddler Ed
Well-Known Member
Africa is really leading the way with the whole mobile phone payment stuff; the "West" is only just getting there with the NFC stuff that some of the banks are doing, along with the transfer by phone number stuff. It's been leading the world for about the last 4 or 5 yrs....
That transport sounds a bit like how I get bits in Australia sometimes, and how kayaks and canoes get sold in the UK on the forums I've been on in the past. Bits in Aus will go via the Bruce courier network, so for example I left a post on another forum asking if anyone was coming down from Brisbane to Sydney, and if so could they bring me a wheel down to Armidale, or when I picked up 4 rims in VIC that I needed to get to Sydney, so again I asked who was able to pick them up, who could then get them to another mate to then bring up to Sydney. Most of those transports cost nothing, just sharing knowledge and ideas with people.
I was surprised by the unofficially adopted means of transporting goods here, but it seems to work well. Someone in a village, for example, may want to deliver a bag of home produced meat to their relatives in the capital Bucharest. They simply bag it and take it to the railway station. A quiet word with the guard on the Bucharest train and a "drink' will see the bag successfully transported to Bucharest central station, where, after a phone call, the recipient will be waiting to collect the bag.
Everyone uses this method and I haven't heard of a bag going missing in the 12 years I've been here. The guard asks what's in the bag, so if it's meat or vegetables, he'll keep in a cool part of the train.
I remember my mother-in-law sending meat from her turkey farm to us, it was frozen when bagged. When we collected it 600km and 12 hours later, it was still frozen, and within minutes was safely packed in our freezer!
Everyone uses this method and I haven't heard of a bag going missing in the 12 years I've been here. The guard asks what's in the bag, so if it's meat or vegetables, he'll keep in a cool part of the train.
I remember my mother-in-law sending meat from her turkey farm to us, it was frozen when bagged. When we collected it 600km and 12 hours later, it was still frozen, and within minutes was safely packed in our freezer!
