A challenging drive home (or why you should take time to look for explanations other than the seemingly obvious - even in the dark and rain)

After spending another weekend in Franceville so my mechanic friend could make another attempt at solving the high, constant whirring coming from the rear final drive assembly I set off for Léconi around 4 pm Sunday evening, happy I was going to make it home before nightfall. As I was leaving Franceville I spotted two men from the Léconi church waiting for a bush-taxi home so I stopped and picked them up. The first part of the journey went fine but then shortly after passing Bongoville (40 miles from Léconi) various lights on the dashboard came on, which seemed rather odd. Then I noticed the engine was overheating badly. I soon had to stop as the indicator went into the red and the water in the radiator was literally boiling! (it's quite interesting to see steam pouring from your engine when it's also pouring with rain). Once the gauge had dropped to halfway I set off again, crawling slowly up the hills and free-wheeling (i.e. with the engine off, or at least out of gear) down them. We still had to stop several times before reaching Souba, 20 miles short of Léconi. There we stopped for a longer cooling-off break and begged some water to replenish the engine (over 5 pints!). At the same time I realised my brakes had all but given out. That made free-wheeling down the remaining hills in the dark and rain an even more 'exciting' challenge! However, by doing that and driving very slowly up the hills we did make it to Léconi without further stops, but 10 km out the whole instrument panel stopped working (so now I had to guess how badly the engine was overheating) and 5km out the headlights and window screen wipers started to fail! We just about made it to Léconi but I decided it was less than prudent to try to make it up the sand track to my house in the dark and rain without lights or brakes so I left the truck at Noleen and Fulbert's and rounded off my evening with a very wet walk up the narrow, overgrown footpaths to my house. So, far from making it home before nightfall the 60 mile journey had taken over 4 hours (and that on a good tarmac road!) - And it all might have been avoided if I had been thinking more sharply. Stupidly I just assumed that the problems were somehow all connected with our failed attempts the previous day on the drive assembly and sticky brakes (e.g. something was dragging badly enough to overstrain the engine) and never even thought to check for problems directly with the engine. It turned out that it was simply the alternator belt that had snapped! If it hadn't been dark and wet I may have noticed when we replenished the water at Souba, but even without that I should have realised resistance in the final drive assembly and/or rear brakes couldn't have such a drastic effect on the engine. Mind you, whether we would have found anything to improvise an alternator belt with I'm not sure, but necessity would probably have made us come up with something. Oh well, you live and learn. Hopefully in future I'll think a bit more clearly. I'm just grateful the problems were so easily solved - I had a spare belt in stock and it's now safely in place. I'm now really hoping I can have several months problem-free driving but with a ten-year old vehicle in this climate and these roads/tracks that's never guaranteed. Actually, I already need to find time soon to flush the radiator so I can put the stone-guard back in place before making any trips onto the Plateaux.