SCRAM AFRICA 2022
A film by Fuel Motorcycles | Words by By Conrad Griffin
Life’s most memorable experiences are often challenging and unexpected. You usually stumble into them by accident: a stroke of misfortune puts you in a difficult and unusual position, over which you eventually triumph, creating a story worthy of crackling campfires for decades to come.
When I signed up for Scram Africa though, I was actively looking for trouble, the kind that turns into one of life’s great escapades.
I think Scram’s unparalleled charm is especially attributable to the sort of slightly unhinged but fundamentally handy and decent individual who signs up for a trip like this. Our group had Europeans (and one American, yours truly) from all across the continent ranging in age from 26 to 62. However in temperament and personality there was much more in common than language and appearance might have superficially suggested. As the tests and travails of the trip revealed, each of these Desert Rats possessed a strong sense of humor even in darker moments, a real knack for creative problem solving, and an innate grit rarely encountered in an age of airbrushed instagram beach holidays.
By the end of the trip, a powerful sense of camaraderie and mutual respect had developed, forged after constantly dragging each other out of sand dunes, stopping roadside after dark, hungry and tired, to help fix one another’s engines, and sharing multiple laughter-filled dinners recounting the day’s triumphs and calamities.
My thanks to the team at Fuel who organized the trip, planned the route and sorted logistics, and our wizard-like mechanics and medical team without whom neither the bikes nor the riders would have arrived home in one piece.
Scram Africa lived up to every high expectation I had of it. We left the main road as promised, and in so doing discovered friendships, great escapades, and boots filled with so much sand it’s a surprise the Sahara has any left.
