Love That Car

This aging, oft-welded 1972 Volvo “never died except in capital cities”—and during a drive across the Sahara, frequently axle-deep in sand, such vehicular devotion is rare. As Charles Wetherill says, “Every time the car died in an urban center, close to services, I knelt down and gratefully kissed its tarnished hubcaps.” Purchased from its original owner in Ghana with 10 hundred-dollar bills, Little Car took Wetherill north across the desert through Mauritania, then Morocco, and on to the Spanish coast at Malaga, where it fumed its last. Wetherill had decided to hit the road and the off-road after he finished filming a documentary about a Ghanaian fishing village. He snapped this photo, using his camera’s timer, when an elderly hitchhiker he had picked up asked to stop so that he could complete one of his daily prayers. Wetherill now lives in Finland, teaching English and trying to market Yesterday Is Tomorrow at film festivals. His barkless basenji companion Akos, whose name means Friday-born, runs through snow as happily as she used to run through sand.