-[speaking foreign language] thomas morton: hey,it's thomas. we're in west africa. west africa, in the eyes of hugecorporate multinationals like proctor & gamble, nestle,and unilever, is the last of the great untapped markets. they see the region not for itspoverty and aids rate and civil wars involvinglegitimately insane guerrilla armies, but for the 245 millionpeople who could be
buying their soap. -are you ready? thomas morton: to get theirstuff from ports in ghana and nigeria to shelves across thewest african savannah, these companies rely, as we do,on long-haul truckers. we're in lagos, nigeria. and we're going to go catch atruck and drive that to ghana, which is 200 miles. so it should only take us likefive or six days, depending on
a lot of crap. so the first leg of ourtrip is from lagos to the border of benin. we're basically going straightto this little truck depot. this is the office. agdebola monsuru: yeah. thomas morton: theseare the old trucks. thomas morton: we're going togo see the new trucks now. yeah.
this is a fine, well-maintainedhighway. these are pretty goodlooking trucks. do you usually go in like--what do you call it? like a convoy? who would attack you, though? who attacks people? oh, ok. all right. engines are revving up.
and then we've got, like,a literal ton of soap. the truck-- a brand newchinese-made cab. the driver's named osama. i think everything'sgoing to be good. the road's paved. but there's a lot of potholesthat you have to stop and kind of roll through themcarefully. i'm about to fallasleep, though. we need to get some tunesgoing, or something.
i'm zonked, dude. less than an hour into our trip,we hit the backed up traffic for the nigeria-beninborder crossing, about three miles back from theborder itself. ok. that seems pretty far back. how long do you thinkit will take? trucking in west africatakes forever. despite the presence of ecowas,a trade organization
created in the '70s to promoteand streamline west african commerce, border regulationsand even hours vary widely between the 15 membercountries. it's not uncommon for a semitrying to exit nigeria with a full trailer of butter to spendseveral days waiting for their goods to be inspected bycustoms, then navigating the red tape and straight up briberyinvolved in clearing immigration. so what do they haveto do now?
they have to pay export taxes? osama: yes. thomas morton: these hold-upsturn 200-mile trips into multi-day, sometimes multi-weektracks, and ratchet up the price of the goods beingshipped with every stop. they also lead to informaleconomies wherever the trucks are parked-- not the kind of economies thatfurther the interests of nestle and unilever, but moreof the jt leroy variety.
so we're following these guysto the custom's office. this is seme, it's basicallya border town. this is like the el pasoof nigeria and benin. it's a little seedy. this is kind of the governmentarea, so it's a little nicer. the other side is basicallya shanty town. thomas morton: well, there'ssomething that's kind of light-colored and doughy, and itake that and i dip it into this thing, which is sort ofdark and granular with a tangy
sort of juice it's soaking. i want to say it's beef andsome sort of flour, but i can't be sure because there arenot lights on here, and it is nighttime. a lot of people at the boarder,but not entirely too much to do. the one thing there is plentyof to do is pick up hookers. as a truck stops in america,prostitution is the most profitable, if not visiblebusiness activity in the
gridlocked villages. and with the 20 to 25% hiv rateamong local lot lizards, truckers are not just thelifeblood of west african trade, but also thespread of aids. it's 10:30. and we just came backbehind the bar and met some new friends. we're just hanging out, talkingabout what it's like on the border.
what is it like on the border? on our way out of the brothel,some police grabbed us and detained us at their stationfor a few hours, giving us only two options of soda andseveral bottles of cashews to eat and drink. it was harrowing. -welcome to nigeria. thomas morton: so it's noon. we've been at the borderclose to 24 hours now.
they brought us into aconference room and gave us cookies and coffee, kind of allsmiles and apologies for basically detaining usfor three hours for no reason last night. things got a bit heated. suicide was threatened ina kind of weird way. and it's funny, because it sortof exemplifies exactly the kind of crap that thetruckers have to go through, too, to get their stuffthrough the boarder.
so we're in the borderright now. -show us your cards,please, sirs. osama: we've already done this. -i know. present your cards, please. osama: ok. thomas morton: i'm not surehow any of this works. and i'm kind of not sure theyreally know how it works on either side.
jake burghart: no one'swearing uniforms. jason mojica: uniformsor anything. jake burghart: i don'tknow who you are. jason mojica: were thosedudes officials? or were those dudes just angrybecause of all of us riding? -each one of thoseis a checkpoint. thomas morton: so we're here onbenin side of the border. and we're basically in the samesituation we were in on the nigerian side, whichis like 500 yards
that way, but in french. it's mind-numbing bureaucracy. and it's also extraordinarilyjust frustrating and boring. you're just waitingconstantly. and basically we'd be doinga better job on a horse, i feel like. after being kicked out of theborder area by cops and a bunch of guys in shorts, wedecided to hit the beach to wait for our truckers.
i don't know where thistrip goes from here. so it's 8:30, going on 9:00. we are still right here at thebenin-nigerian border. we're waiting on our trucks. so over the course of two fulldays, we've crossed one border and made it a whopping 60 milesto our destination-- basically an hour's drive inamerica, provided you drive like a nerd. and our trucks won't even beready to leave until morning
because beninese customs keepsfrench hours, in tribute to their former colonial master. in other words, everyone fucksoff early and sleeps in. hi. and we're in togo. cool. whew. it's 10:30 again. we gained an hour by cominginto togo, which is good,
because we lost an hour in beninbecause they thought we were spies. we lost our trucks. we've got to go find themsomewhere up their road. maybe some of these motorcycletaxi kids can take us there. that'd be a little more excitingthan riding in a truck for a second. so having lost our truckers,been 86ed from almost every hotel in togo, becomeapocalyptically sick from
either food poisoning or washingour hands in tap water, we decided to wait withsome of the stalled trucks lined up in front of the ghanaborder and try to rethink our plans and lives. that's where we metthe motoboys. if the backbone of the westafrican economy is the independent trucker, then theintrovertible discs that keep its spine articulate are theirapprentices, the motoboys. where the contemporary westafrican trucker leads a fairly
cushy lifestyle and has thereputation of an itinerant lothario, motoboys are basicallydickensian urchin children who do odd jobs, helpkeep the truck clean and running, and watch over theparked goods while the driver goes off to get drunkand laid-- and sometimes aids. so how long have you beenat this border? -is this normal? like, a week?
-jesus christ. so what do you do you? thomas morton: while the driversat least have money to partake in the diversions theseborder towns have to offer, their motoboys are leftto fend off days of boredom the old fashioned way,by goofing around. these dudes are so bored. so we're done withhit stick now. we're playing orange soccer.
what kind of fun dodrivers have? thomas morton: do the girls evercome down here for the motoboys, or-- thomas morton: oh, no. no, she isn't. thomas morton: how didyou become a motoboy? like why did you decided tostart working on trucks? thomas morton: motoboys rely ontheir driver's beneficence, not just for food andthe occasional--
very occasional-- beer, but to teach them theropes and help them eventually get their own rig. becoming a driver doesn'tjust take time and learning, though. getting your license and ecowasbrown-card cost money, which can take years to saveup from driver's handouts. and that's provided they don'tjust ditch you for a younger and cheaper motoboy, whichhappens a lot.
thomas morton: after dinner,we got a call from our truckers, who'd made better timewithout us through the ghana border and werealready in accra-- which is great for people whoneed to buy soap, but not so hot for us gettinga lift home. while our truckers work for amultinational company with enough clout and money to makeit through 288 miles of borders, police checkpoints, andrandom stops in a bustling four days, their success meansvery little to the motoboys
we'd been hanging out with--most of whom had been at that border longer than our entiretrip and were still there when we left. it means even less to furtheringtrade in west africa, at least for anybodywho isn't a billion dollar corporation. the old line free marketeerslike to use that flooding an economy with money means therising tide lifts all boats. in the '80s, this got temperedinto the trickle-down effect.
but in a system marked by 50years of completely unchecked corruption, money doesn'teven trickle. it simply goes straight into thehand of whoever's clever enough to grab it first, allof which leaves the kids at the very bottom of pipeline,our motoboys, as likely to make a living from trucking asamerican kids are from playing professional sports-- provided they don't just joinsome guerrilla army first.
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