It all began on a fine day in March. We wanted to go on a “good trip”, we had been wishing for it in a long time, we needed a journey that could teach us something new, not too expensive, but the kind of trip that allows you to bring back home a lot.

During the same days the sign up for the “Africa Rally” was taking place, a charity expedition from London to Limbe, in Cameroon, organized by The Adventurists, a well known English company which offers no-limit journeys. Many teams coming from China, Scotland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, England and Italy usually take part in this event.

That day, with Carlo Alberto Biscaretti di Ruffia and Paolo Rignon, that dream was about to become true. We signed up! The first and most important rule in order to participate to the rally is to use a car with a 1 litre engine. As proud as we could be, as we all come from Torino, after a few weeks, we finally had the chance to find an old 1987 Fiat Panda 4×4. The panda wasn't at her best, but she could still roar back at us. She was ready to go for another 9000 kms in Africa.

The "Taurinorum Travel Team" was created, sponsored and supported by the Taurinorum Club, an Italian private web-community that was born in 2008. The team has been created for exploring and discovering the world, with an important goal: combining great adventures with noble humanitarian and journalistic projects.

The departure was fixed on the 13th of December. In order to not be disqualified and leave for Cameroon every team was to raise and donate a minimum of £1000 to one or more of the official rally charities. Our team had chosen “Send a cow”, which runs sustainable agricultural programs in order to help small-scale farmers improve their livestock and food supply. We managed to raise the minimum amount quiet easily, even more, by creating a fund raising web page on a well known English website and by organising some barbecue evenings with friends. In the meantime we needed to fix the car: two complete check ups, a few damaged couplings to repair, a protection plate to install, different spare parts to set up, three temporary-use spare tires to find and we were ready to set off. We have to thank our few but great sponsors that believed in our project and who helped us a lot.

The route was not clear at all because of the political instability in different Saharan and West African countries. On the 10th of December we were packed and ready to go straight to London (were the Rally was supposed to officially begin) when we received an urgent communication from the organizers which said that the rally had been canceled from the Head Office of Counter Terrorism in the UK; it stated that there was a high and real risk that the cars participating at the expedition could become the object of terrorism acts from Al Qaeda's militants in Mauritania.

After a whole day spent waiting, anxious, they told us that the alternative was to ship the car to Dakar and skip all the dangerous areas. In two days and two nights we went through the same organizational and logistic work it had taken us six months to do. We calculated, reassessed our budget, drew a new route and updated our friends and acquaintances.

On the night of the 16th of December we left for Antwerp. After twelve hours spent driving, all wrapped up, we got to the harbor, where we had to deal with all the bureaucratic work in order to embark our car. Then we caught a bus to Brussels and got back to Italy by plane. On the 19th we were at Fiumicino Airport in Rome, waiting to board on the plane for Alger, where we would finally catch the connecting flight to Dakar.

At first sight West Africa seemed quiet challenging: 40 degrees Celsius with about 90% humidity, chaos, baggers, deafening noise, traffic jam and smog. We had probably underestimated the conditions of these countries, poor and messed up, but day after day they kept revealing how marvelous they really are.

While we were waiting for our luggages that hadn't yet arrived and our car that was sailing down somewhere about the West African coast, we spent some time in Renken, an association from Turin which deals with different demanding projects on education, health and responsible tourism in Dakar's outskirt. It took us four days to get back our car from the harbour jungle; customs, offices, officials, signatures, queues, arguments...on the 31st of December at about 9 pm the car was finally cleared through customs, even though all the offices were closed and all the employees were ready to greet the new year that was about to start. 9000 kilometers across West Africa were waiting for us.

We had planned to pass through Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin, up to the north Nigeria and finally down towards Cameroon. We started climbing up from the very start, with many checkpoints and some policemen who didn't want to give us back our documents. Lessons we will never forget about. At the end of the day, when it was about time to find a place where to stay for the night, we would usually go to the village next to where we were and ask the village chief his permission to camp on his land. Many smiles, some jokes when the language would allow us, a symbolic gift and some CFA francs (the most common West Africa currency) for contribution and we would feel safe. When we felt unsafe we would camp in front of a police station or next to a checkpoint. The policemen were happy to have us around and the morning we would give them a couple of Juventus pins, a little gift in exchange of protection. We have been stopped in front of spike barriers at least a dozen of times by policemen armed to the teeth but those moments gave us the opportunity to see the soldier’s curious look and to have a chat.

We drove for kilometers and kilometers on dirt roads, isolated, in the middle of breathtaking landscapes; the people we encountered, every time they saw our car and how loaded it was, they would simply say we would never make it to the end. In the Dogon Country in Mali we passed through the well known escarpment toward Burkina Faso. It took us two days, on sandy tracks, between mud villages and extraordinary landscapes. We managed to reach, after hours of suffocating sandy tracks, a village in the middle of nowhere on the south of Bamako where we wanted to give a whole suitcase of medicines coming from Turin 10 kg of paracetamol, amuchina, mosquito nets, lint and plasters). We had the chance to do a spectacular safari in the W National Park in Burkina Faso, where we reached the Point Triple where Burkina Faso, Benin and Niger meet. The guide was surprised by the power of our little 4x4.

Nigeria surprised us more than once. We thought it would have taken us about three days to drive across the country, but instead it took us about 7 hours to get through the first 80 kilometers. Fords, real potholes created by years and years of pouring rain, checkpoints with gift hunters and local police collaborators. In these places lost in the middle of nowhere and so fascinating we met many persons who had never seen a white man. They would look at us, curious, touching our arms and hands; we would have just loved to know what was going through their minds. In Nigeria, because of the terrible condition of the streets we had to face the first car problems. One of the back leaf spring broke down, the differentials started leaking oil, and some pipe clamps of the gasoline hose started to get untied, the clutch was getting tired of climbing up all those dirt roads. What was incredible was how hard all the people we met tried to help us. With a hammer, some screws, an angle grinder and a welding machine the leaf spring was fixed. But an another lesson we learned was that everyone can easily get off any kind of mechanical part and yet not know how to reassemble it. Certainly because no one had never seen a Fiat, but also because some of the screws and gaskets that had been hammered at were permanently damaged. And trying to find a spare part is certainly an adventure.

Just before we left Nigeria, which turned out to be a wonderful country, although paralyzed by the permanent feeling of an imminent coup d’état, by the conflicts between Christians and Muslims (just during those days the riots in Jos had caused many hundreds of deaths), by the lack of gas supply and its resulting black market, we were forced to drink water from plastic bags that are sold on the stalls along the street. This water caused us a bad poisoning. We recovered quickly; we had all we needed from our first aid kit. When it's difficult to find bottles of drinking water, especially in those isolated areas we travelled through, you are forced to buy these plastic bags full of water which should be made drinkable from water purification companies working on site. A terrifying black market has grown up, and this water can be often contaminated just like the one we drank. Furthermore these plastic bags are the main reason why Africa is coping with waste invasion since many years. Waste disposal don't exist and its effects are devastating.

On the 17th of January we arrived in Cameroon, we had just 1500 kilometers ahead of us in order to reach Limbe, our final destination on the coast. It took us three days to drive 300 kilometers across the central part of the country. Red sandy tracks, often impassable during the rainy season or covered up with fifteen centimeters of dust. We arrived completely covered with dust, exhausted, quiet hungry but extremely proud of what we had accomplished. Our team and the “No Brain” team from Rome were the two first Italian teams to participate and make it to the finish line since the Rally's invention in 2008. This is certainly one of those joys we will remember for the rest of our life.

The Panda was then sold at a public auction the day after we arrived, and the total amount earned was entirely donated to different charities working on humanitarian projects in Cameroon. The Rally has raised more than £60,000, entirely donated to all the official charities the Rally teams had decided to help (Send a Cow, The Ape Action Africa, The Rainforest Foundation UK, Limbe Wildlife Centre and Global Music Exchange). We finished our trip climbing up the Mount Cameroon (4090 meters), the highest mountain in West Africa.

After twenty-two days spent driving, 9000 kilometers, 700 litres of gas and countless canned sardines we finally reached the volcanic coast of Limbe and realized we had successfully accomplished our mission. We brought back to Italy much more than we could imagine, having finally a “good trip”. For more information on the Taurinorum Travel Team visit the Facebook page.

Report and photos by Ludovico de Maistre