Driving a Lada to Banjul, The Gambia. Hmm...

This is a post adapted from a piece sent to us by Julian Nowill, all round banger and desert-crossing guru, and progenitor of the frankly loony Plymouth to Banjul Banger Challenge. Cheers to Julian for this and for anyone who fancies it, now is about the time to get your applications in for the 2009 challenge – leaving around Christmas this year.

Julian Nowill created the concept of the ‘Banger Challenge’ in 2002 to take the mickey out of the real Paris Dakar rally, showing that people on a limited budget can go where the big boys go. The aim is to drive a cheap car to Africa, enjoy yourself and at the end put something into your host country by leaving the car behind to be auctioned for good causes. The idea is now copied by a large number of people, some with charitable objectives and some not. The original 3-week Banjul Challenge continues to the finishing line in Banjul, The Gambia, where the LHD cars are auctioned for charity – in 2008 the car auctions raised £66,968 and the 2009 auctions in Banjul should raise a similar sum.

Cars are among the most coveted items in the Gambian order of priorities. At the top of the shopping list for any new NGO is at least one brand new 4×4 and even the most humble executive will be ready to bend the funding rules in order to get their mits on a motor. This comes about, not least, because vehicles are seen not as the possession of the owner or the organisation but as a public good available for use – any use – that the driver can get away with. Having a vehicle also often causes more problems than it solves. Affording petrol is a major and ever present problem and as the vehicle is ‘not my responsibility even though I commandeer it whenever possible’ not much care is taken of it, it is driven madly on quite awful roads and breakdowns keep vehicles off the road as much as they are on.

Driving a Lada to Banjul. Through the sea. Hmm...

The policy of arranging for cars to be auctioned and the proceeds given to charities makes absolute sense in the circumstances already described. At the heart of the Gambian end of the Challenge there are two organisations working very closely together. The first is the Association of Small-Scale Enterprises in Tourism (ASSET). The second is the Gambian National Olympic Committee (GNOC).

ASSET operates, as its name implies, in the tourism industry. But it is as far away from the activities of the big tour companies as can be imagined. ASSET was set up to help thousands of Gambians to scoop up more of the crumbs from the tourism table and, as one member said, to ‘give a voice to the voiceless’. So it lobbies government to do more for the juice pressers, the fruit sellers, the tourist taxi drivers, the official tourist guides and people with many similar jobs, all of whom struggle to gain access to the tourists who are managed by the tour operators and the bigger ground operating companies.

By contrast the GNOC is about making things work for the country’s sports persons. There is huge interest and participation in sport. Those of you who have not been to a country like The Gambia will be staggered by the huge numbers of ‘football pitches’ – patches of bare sand – at least one in every village. Very few people can afford the kit that gets bought for kids from the age of two or three in the UK – and is replaced every birthday with the latest variation. Football boots, footballs are in very short supply and to see a goal with a net is almost unknown. The GNOC struggles hard in these circumstances to offer a variety of sporting activities and to build stadia around the country. The National Stadium, where your car will be auctioned, is an impressive building but it is the only one of its kind in the country. The GNOC is building more facilities as and where it can but if you have a sporting interest and want to do a bit more make sure you have a chat with the officials at the stadium when you are here.

So to reiterate, if your intrigued enough to want to drive an old banger across the Sahara to Banjul in The Gambia then get in touch via the Plymouth-Banjul Challenge website. You’d be mad not to…

And lastly, if anyone wants to give us an en-route account of their trip perhaps, or has an account from years past, or has any photos to share then do get in touch via the comments or the usual address!