What a way to go

OLD Land Rovers carrying the deceased to their final resting place is becoming a bit of a ‘thing’. In January last year, the Sultan of Oman’s hearse was an old Land Rover fitted with a ‘canon-cart’ modified for coffin-carrying duties; now exhibited in Oman’s wonderful Armed Forces Museum. More recently, HRH Prince Philip, another famous Land Rover fan, shuffled off this mortal coil. Alongside the odd offensive quip about his well-publicised 2019 Land Rover accident, there have been loads of great historic photos circulating of Prince Philip and HRH Queen Elizabeth with old Series Land Rovers. The pièce de résistance, of course, was the customised Defender hearse Prince Philip had apparently spent 16 years helping to design. Not only royalty have been following this Land Rover trend. A dear friend Murray has just discovered that his late great friend Marc Jobin also had a Land Rover-escorted departure, albeit a rather more unconventional one. Marc was something of a pioneer in finding, quarrying and dealing in semi-precious stones, with a penchant for working where others were too scared to go. During more than 30 years of small-scale semi-precious gem “artisanal mining“, he worked almost exclusively with locals, negotiating with tribal chiefs for land rights before obtaining necessary governmental permissions, and then employing locals from the tribes for smallscale digging operations. Once shipped to the West, Marc’s 5-50kg rough stones were turned into jewellery and other attractive pieces. According to Murray, he was one of the last people in the world dealing in rough stones in such a fashion. Marc was a lively and personable man who I remember meeting in Murray’s London flat some 17 years ago, when I was a bumpkin from Devon living in the Big Smoke and he was just back from Madagascar. After a cheerful greeting, Marc pulled out a handful of black cloth and flicked it open to reveal an array of colourful shiny little stones. It was pretty unforgettable, and Murray always kept me updated about Marc’s many travels and adventures. Having lived and worked in mineral-rich Madagascar for some 30 years, marrying a local lady and having three children, in early February this year, Marc met an untimely end, aged 63. Several days after contracting dysentery in remote southern Madagascar, he reached the local hospital. Alas, his hospitalisation was either too late, or the clinic - understood to be a rural affair - too ill-equipped to support his medical needs, and he died. Murray called me, mourning that Marc was the third old friend he had lost in as many weeks. Meeting up with Murray now lockdown restrictions are easing, he describes a weird scenario that transpired after Marc’s death. “You can’t believe this, but Marc’s Land Rover was involved in some kind of armed ambush or kidnap attempt when his body was being taken to the capital,” he tells me. “A driver with permission to drive this guy’s body across Madagascar in a Land Rover gets ambushed by armed men” “I only found out when I was sent an article in French in a Madagascan newspaper.” Five days after his death, Marc’s driver and two companions were tasked with driving his body from the Ambosary Atsimo hospital to the capital Antananarivo, where he would be cremated in the customary local fashion. Once permission was granted for the deceased’s transportation, Marc’s body – in a tin trunk - was strapped to the roof-rack of his old Defender - a vehicle that had apparently been completely essential to his work. Carrying two of Marc’s hunting rifles, the three men set off for the capital. From his trip to Madagascar decades ago, Murray estimated the journey must be around 1,000km, probably taking a couple of days, on account of abysmal local road conditions. He wasn’t far wrong. Google puts it at a 1,040km stretch, taking over 20 hours in one hit. About a third of the way into the journey, at 8.30am, the Defender was stopped by five armed men who, according to the local press, opened fire, “spraying them with bullets.” The driver, despite being shot in his left arm, managed to turn around and drive to a checkpoint, where he alerted the authorities. “This scenario of a driver with permission to drive this British guy’s body across Madagascar in a Land Rover, which then gets ambushed by armed men is like something out of a Tom Sharpe novel,” muses Murray. “It’s maybe several days’ driving because road conditions are very tough – I remember when I was there, the president had spent around $1 billion from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on building a new road, which only ran about 20 miles outside the capital – and they have a drought and dust storms there now.” The article was accompanied by a photograph of Marc’s Defender, flying the Madagascan flag from the snorkel. Blood that had seeped under the driver’s doorsill, presumably from the injured driver, was strikingly noticeable against the pale sand-coloured mud that caked the vehicle. Marc’s coffin, lashed to the roof rack and covered with a tarpaulin, was not clearly visible. A call to Marc’s wife had confirmed the whole incident, Murray said. Beyond the newspaper article, the reason for the attack and what happened thereafter remains unclear beyond several arrests, although Marc’s body did indeed reach the capital, where he was cremated. “I’m sure he wasn’t expecting to die out there, or expecting to die,” says Murray, although his kids were apparently not exactly surprised, saying their dad had long ago used up all of his nine lives. “He was fairly healthy but he had had malaria, which was reoccurring, so he would occasionally get struck down with another bout of that, and maybe that’s why he got so ill with the dysentery.” But, I ask, does he think Marc would have appreciated his rather extraordinary final journey? Murray thinks for a minute and then says: “I think anyone would have to see the funny side of that, because life is a f***ing funny thing, isn’t it?”

Thom Westcott is a British freelance journalist who has written for the Times and Guardian, and now mostly spends her time reporting from Libya.