There were six of us, three American medical students, two journalists, and our Sierra Leonean fixer, and between us, we had three huge suitcases, a duffel bag big enough to stuff a body into and six oversized backpacks. All of us and our luggage were expected to fit into one taxi and on one motorcycle for the short ride to the bus station from our guesthouse, which was on the outskirts of Koidu City, Kono District, Sierra Leone.

In any other part of the world, the process of catching a bus to the capital city would have been a last-minute afterthought, but nothing in Sierra Leone is ever easy and it required day-before planning. Koidu is the largest town in eastern Sierra Leone, but it’s still small by any other standard, and finding a taxi willing to arrive at the guesthouse at 4:30 in the morning hadn’t been easy. Abu, our elderly driver, agreed only after we’d fronted him half the money the day before. He charged $35, which would have been unthinkable in any other situation, but after searching for two hours in a slaking downpour for competitive offers, he was the only one willing to do it.

Jango, the fixer, and I had secured the car the day before the bus trip to Freetown, while the others were busy. Even though it was only a kilometer to the bus station, I had my doubts whether we would make it. On first glance, the car was typical of every other taxi in the country, a white and yellow Toyota Corolla, circa 1980, held together with twine, rubber bands and wishful thinking. There were no shocks to keep us from feeling every rut and pothole in the rutted, pothole-ridden dirt road; the doors didn’t open from the inside; and the windows were sealed with opaque black “tinting” so dark that they were more like sheets of electrical tape.

None of that really raised alarms, however. Taxis across Sierra Leone are driven until they literally fall apart and refuse to move. And when that happens, they’re sold on the spot for scrap, pushed to the side of the road by a group of men, and systematically stripped to their frames for parts. On my first day here, I chuckled at the sight of a bare-chested man using a set of well-worn tools — including the African version of a Leatherman, the machete — to disassemble the skeletal frame of a car on the side of the road. My amusement turned to awe the following day when we passed again and saw that the entire thing was gone, reduced to a set of metal beams that no one would guess was once a car. He’d sold ever nut, rocker panel and fender, surely now being used in housing construction or some equally unlikely application.

Due to unending abuse on its unpaved roads, Sierra Leonean taxis often lack door handles, window cranks, ventilation, stereos, turn signals, stick shift knobs, unbroken glass, upholstery, shock absorbers, interior lights, seatbelts, and good brakes. Most of this has broken or jiggled off through the abnormal wear and tear of driving in Sierra Leone, but other components (such as the window cranks) have likely been stripped and sold so the driver can buy gas. Most carry a socket wrench that’s passed from hand to hand to raise or lower the windows in times of excessive heat or rain.

However, unbelievably, most of them run.

My fears about this particular taxi, the one in Koidu, was that it couldn’t fit all the gear and most of the people. But African ingenuity proved me wrong. Abu came equipped with another local fix-all, plastic rope, and the bags were crammed into the open trunk and piled into a precarious load that overhung then rear bumper by at least ten inches, all of it lashed tight to the frame. With three in the back and one in the front, with all of our backpacks in our laps, and two others piled on a motorcycle, we were ready to begin the short journey.

The first step involved the front seat passenger, Jango, pushing the car through a three-point turn with Abu, the driver; apparently, there was no reverse, and since the back doors didn’t open from the inside, it was easier for them to shove the whole load, passengers and all, than let us out to help. But then the key failed to start the engine, which emitted a pitiful noise I’d never heard from a car before, a wet sort of tubercular cough you’d expect in a hospice ward.

Luckily, we were on something of a downward incline and could get a rolling start so Abu could pop the clutch. Unluckily, he had it in fourth gear on the first attempt. Rolling without a driver or brakes toward a ditch and, if we somehow managed to clear that, a stout cotton tree, it occurred to all of us at once what a deathtrap we were in. There was no way to leap out if need be … should the car pick up too much speed before Abu could jump in to steer, we were doomed to die in a bone-splitting fireball.

But the car started on the second try—after Abu and Jango pushed it back uphill, again with three of us trapped in the back seat—the engine sputtering to a wheezing, backfiring sort of life. By now, the passengers were relying on the power of positive thinking, cheering on every success, inch by inch.

“Good job over that boulder!”

“Now we’re moving!”

“This puppy is humming now!”

Once Abu switched off the LED light that stood in for an interior car light, we were perfectly blind due to the thick tinting, looking at nothing but our knees and through the shattered windshield where we coached Abu through gear selection on the steep parts—“First gear! First gear! Too slow for fourth gear!” Those following on the motorcycle, however, said we trailed a nonstop wake of sparks as we ground over boulders and bottomed out in the ditches. Considering the heavy smell of fuel inside the car, I’m glad I didn’t know at the time that we were one wrong spark away from blowing up.

The kilometer to the bus station seemed to take a week, all of us in the back keenly aware that there was no escape unless the front passengers survived a wreck or explosion long enough to open the doors for us from the outside. We rounded a corner and saw the bus waiting for us, a cheer of success coming from everyone, including Abu, who himself wasn’t certain we’d make it. As the perfect coda to the journey, he pulled up alongside and killed the engine, which backfired with the force of a mortar round, causing a group of people standing around to cringe like the war had started again.

“Get me out of this fucking thing,” someone muttered, and we then went about untying the luggage. Abu strutted about like he’d won the championship title, having gotten us from point A to B without killing anyone and on time to boot. We paid him the remainder of the fee and, after a round of handshakes, we prepared to send him off. We assumed that would mean giving him a push start into the early dawn.

But he got behind the wheel and turned the key and the engine started on the first try, with a gentle purr. He drove off with no sparks flying, leaving us to assume he still had another four or five years of life in that wreck.

*About the photo: Another intrepid taxi driver took me and photojournalist Mike Seamans to Lakka beach for some R&R about a week ago. Generally, it’s a stress-free drive, but the driver took a wrong turn and had to forge a washed out bridge in the rain. That required Mike and I to get out and rebuild the bridge by hand.