num_pages: 210
description: Oh Lord wont you buy me a Mercedes Benz?Janis JoplinA journalists intrepid endeavor to sell his used car abroad results in a high-spirited and revealing look at West Africa.Look theres my car I say pointing at my Mercedes in the parking lot.Where? a fellow desert traveler asks.There that Mercedes I say.He looks at me questioning. You want to drive that through the Sahara? Jeroen van Bergeijk came up with what seemed like a great scheme for making a quick buy a clunker of a car in his native Amsterdam and resell it in the Third World where a market even for jalopies still thrives. His chariot of choice is a rusted-out 1988 Mercedes 190D with 220000 kilometers on its odometer; his route will take him from Holland through Morocco across the Sahara and into some of the least trodden parts of Africa.My Mercedes Is Not for Sale is a rollicking tale of an innocent abroad. The author finds himself facing a driving challenge akin to the Dakar Rally but encounters obstacles never dreamed of by race-car active minefields occasional banditrymostly by the border guardsand a teenage chain-smoking desert guide with a fondness for Tupac lyrics. Food and water are scarce sandstorms are frequent and all he has to patch up his many car breakdowns thousands of miles from civilization is a bar of soap some duct tape and a pair of womens nylons. Then theres the coup he survived.My Mercedes Is Not for Sale captures more than the adventureit vividly portrays the impact of globalization on Africa through a surprise-filled journey into its thriving car culture while asking the is the white mans burden really a used car?
language: English
title: My Mercedes is Not for Sale: From Amsterdam to Ouagadougou...An Auto-Misadventure Across the Sahara
publisher: Crown