Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Built Ford Tough

Yes, that is a Ford F-250........in Tanzania. Actually the Tanzanian military purchased 14 of these trucks, which were built and customized in Brazil. They only took 12 of the fleet and our friend, Lance Whyle, found this one on a car lot. He had it "outfitted" to accommodate hauling pipes, pumps, tools, and all the stuff associated with the water work. The sad thing is there are no Ford parts in Tanzania. Occasionally, we have been able to secure parts from Kenya or South Africa, but for the most part, Lance has to bring parts when he comes to Tanzania. This includes parts needed for routine maintenance. I keep wondering what the Tanzanian military is doing for parts????????
With Lance's coming and going, he leaves the truck with us, so we can continue the water work in his absence.

If you look closely, you can see that the truck is further customized with a "Don't Mess With Texas" bumper sticker.
Tanzanians are fascinated with this monster truck and often have made the comment...."Oh yes, I hear that Texans like 'big cars'." (If they only knew....)

The bottom line is that this truck is "built FORD tough".
It has traveled roads which were nothing more than a path into remote villages, bringing life giving water to hundreds of people.
And it has carried nearly 2,000 Bibles, bringing the Word of God to those same people.
Posted by Picasa

1 comment:

Mr. B said...

I will vouch for the toughness of this truck, my wife, good friend Dereck and Ed were driving from Babati eastbound with Lance at the wheel, this was all pre asphalt between Babati and Arusha. While we were passing one of those kamakazi buses the driver decided to occupy the same space as us, on my side I might add, it seemed as though we narrowly missed each other so we continued on down the road. Upon stopping at the entrance to Tarangire NP I got out only to discover red paint down the side of the truck, just happened to be the color of the bus which was driving by us again as we were looking at the paint! I think we must have had an angel buffer since we never felt a thing and there we no body damage, just a new wide red stripe down the side of the bed.