F.O.B. Africa

Monty—perpetual pauper, horologist’s nemesis, pawn-shop Sisyphus—barters his last minutes for nickels, then parlays a sleazy Detroit lot into a one-way ticket to Puskudnick, a fever-dream monarchy where the jungle exhales diesel and drumbeats. Charged with ferrying a virginal Model T to corpulent King Obogeegee, he splutters into lion-shadowed savannas, colonial hubris strapped to the jalopy like a spare tire. Court intrigues sizzle: missionaries brandishing hymnals as shields, a debutante whose gaze could melt brass, and warriors who regard combustion engines as iron ghosts. The car morphs from status bauble to life-boat as Monty, the socialite father, and the wide-eyed daughter tear through elephant-grass, pursued by maned death and the king’s displeasure. Their escape is a Rabelaisian chase—fenders bent by claws, carburetors choking on tribal dust, and the horizon stitched with flaming torches—until the Ford, half-wrecked but unbowed, ferries them to a freighter’s gangway and a future still tethered to the hum of pistons.