26th May - Zebrabar

David  blogging today.  A delightful lie-in this morning before it started to get hot, triggering me to get up.   As soon as you step out of the door here, you're plagued by hordes of flies.  They are put off a little by the insect repellent we use, but they're as persistent as we've seen so far.   After a while they're just a little irritating.

 

Nicki went and had a breakfast which she said was the best £1.50 she's ever spent:  bread and mango jam with real butter, a boiled egg and a mug of tea made her a very happy camper.  I stayed around and contemplated what needed doing to the truck.

 

The first task was to try to find this annoying rattle we've had when hitting bumps since we left Guinea.   I took the front right wheel off, but it wasn't the shock absorber or the anti-roll bar.  I noticed that one of the joints in the exhaust downpipe was loose:   this seems to be the culprit for the noise.  It's probably worked loose since one of the rubber exhaust hangers perished earlier in the trip (now tied up with wire).   I don't think it's really fixable here, as the nuts are already tight, so it'll have to be like that until we get back.  It shouldn't do any harm, but it will continue to annoy me.   I have some exhaust putty, but I think it will crack off as the joint flexes, and I don't really want to snap the studs off by undoing the nuts.

 

Then I tightened up the snail cams on all the drum brakes, tightened up all the bolts I could reach underneath, and checked our oil levels.   On the bright side, the gearboxes aren't leaking any oil to speak of any more, and the leaky hubs are also sorted.  The engine continues to leak oil, but only at a slowish rate, and it seems sensible just to keep whacking some oil in it every so often, rather than to change the valley gasket and risk making it worse.   The axles haven't leaked any oil at all.  It'd be nice to change the axle and gearbox oils, but oil is surprisingly expensive here, and I haven't seen EP90 at all, so I'd rather preserve what we have on-board in case we need it in an emergency.

 

I finished off by changing the engine oil, and whilst it was draining I took up a section of the cab floor so I could slow down the idling speed on the carburettors.   It was lucky I did, because one of the LPG pipes had come adrift, which would have sprayed gas everywhere as soon as we switched to LPG back in the UK.   The part that it mated with had disappeared into the air intake system, so I had to dismantle all the air hoses to find it.  That done, I refilled the engine oil, reset the idling speed and tidied everything back up again.   As I had sweat dripping off me, I had a shower – warm water, wahey!  I kept being invaded by wasps, who were angry that I was using their normal supply of water for something frivolous like a shower.

 

It now being lunchtime, we headed up to the main building for a well-earned sandwich.  We were a trifle disappointed that the sandwich of the day is tuna, having eaten tuna in large quantities over the last few days, but it was a nice sandwich.  Then we went for a walk down the beach, heading south along the spit of land Zebrabar marks the northern tip of.   The land round here is a series of peninsulas, shallow rivers and small deltas, all interwoven, and we never did find the southern tip of our spit, but we did get a good couple of hours walking done, and we also entertained ourselves endlessly by playing megalomaniac mind-games with the crabs that litter the beach.   Mwahahahahaha.

 

Back at the camp, Martin, the owner, was rigging up a new swing for his two children.  He's already built some really interesting playground toys, including a big swing, a climbing frame, a Senegalese Wendy-house, and a funny platform on springs which wobbles everywhere.  All the stuff is made on-site by their expert welder.  Today's project consisted of a metal ring, about 1.8m diameter, with canvas stretched across it like an un-springy trampoline, suspended by ropes from a protruding pole.   We roped the ring to the pole, which was already welded in place (actually, a piece of railway track, so it should be quite strong), and the children helped lace up the canvas.   When it was done, they sat and laid in it, and we pushed, so it swung side-to-side and span round, to the children's delight.  Martin then had a go, and so did I, and it was actually really great – you lose all sense of direction as you swing and spin round, but at the same time, the pendulum effect means you feel totally safe and can't fall out!   I was laughing like a drain by the time I got off.

 

In the process of doing this, I ripped the trousers I got in Mauritania, so had to sew them back up again.   It's now, surprisingly, overcast, but not exactly chilly, so it's quite pleasant to sit out in.