an End to the Columbus Era
January 25th, 2009
The story of our 4×4 named Columbus finally came to an end. When the company that was supposed to buy it back from us had disappeared, we left it in Cape Town with our new police woman friend, Carla, to deal with the situation upon our return from Madagascar. Since the company that owed us money had evaporated, we wanted to have a little polite talk with their business partners that run their website full of promises and guarantees. As life has it, talking politely to people who owe you money never works. Sure they were polite back, but claimed they have nothing to do with the people they directed us to for the buy-back deal, and whatever agreement we had with the fugitives – has evaporated just as they have.
Unfortunately for our impartial friends, we were not planning to give up that easily. Lucky for us, we had what other victims of the same scheme didn’t – time. We set up camp in Carla’s backpacker (hostels are called “backpackers” in southern Africa) and for a month played tag with the directors of the company, emailing back and forth, but to no avail. It was always the same old “terribly sympathetic, but nothing we can do” until… It looked like there was nothing left but to count our losses and do our best to warn the rest – so is our duty. In less than a day Shurik whipped up a very polite and strategically named website describing our experience and listing everyone involved. He even went the extra step and listed their interconnections, other internet properties, business relationships, personal and business ID numbers – just in case anybody needed a helping hand if they found themselves in a similar situation. I, in my turn, wrote it all up in travel forums.
It didn’t take long for the impartial to take notice. They are not internet dummies and found the website just two days after its launch. They called us for a meeting in their offices, but we were so frustrated with the whole ordeal by that time, that I didn’t feel like being too polite any longer. I told them to be so kind and come instead to our office – the backpacker’s bar.
We talked. I chain smoked. They fidgeted, but actually turned out to be rather nice guys and even kinda cute. They promised to buy back Columbus on the same terms we had with their good-for-nothing partners, and a few days later they put a notice on their website saying they will be honoring all the buy-back-deals-gone-wrong and are out of the buy-back biz all together.
Today we checked our bank statement and the money is in. We are free now to pack up the tent and continue our African expedition. Next stop is probably Nairobi. We’ll have just enough time to zoom through Kenya and meet Vova in Ethiopia in mid Feb.
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