Nick Hewer's African Apprentice

The Farm Fixer, Nick Hewer, leaves his comfort zone to attempt a near-impossible adventure, taking on punishing heat, potholed dirt tracks, basic mechanics and corruption. He's towing a one-and-a-half-tonne industrial saw and generator 5000 miles to Sierra Leone. He wants to present the saw to James, a street kid he met three years earlier on a visit to Freetown with his charity Hope and Homes for Children. James was trained as a carpenter by the charity and Nick was taken with his creativity and entrepreneurial spirit. Now Nick wants to give James the saw and generator to kick-start a fledgling business. It's an adventure that lurches from one crisis to another: the vandalism of Nick's donated Land Cruiser in Morocco; the threat of kidnapping in the Western Sahara; the near-destruction of the trailer axles on sand roads in Guinea. When he finally reaches James, the 19-year-old is touched by Nick's charitable act. But the reality of owning a set of massive machines in one of the world's poorest