Stranded Trucker Finally Heading Home After 4-Month Ordeal in French Parking Lot

"I was really starting to get fed up... Years like this one, I hope I won’t live through again," says Denis Ray to La Capitale. He managed to repair his truck that had broken down when he had left Morocco to return to Sedan, his hometown, on March 16. But this former truck driver no longer wants to drive his 1997 truck. "I put it up for sale on the Internet a month ago. I received 28 messages. I didn’t think I would sell it so quickly. This truck, I used it as a dormitory, but this year, it served me for everything," he says.

On Wednesday, July 15, he will go to his sister-in-law’s by car, bought three weeks ago at a car dealership. "I thought I would be more at peace than if I had gone to a private individual [...] I drove for a day and a half with it and again, the breakdown. There was the particulate filter to change, then the glow plugs. At first, we couldn’t even remove the glow plug covers and then, once the online order arrived, I realized they weren’t the right ones...," he recounts.

The septuagenarian will have to wait for the reopening of the Moroccan borders to reach Rabat where his wife Zhor, a Moroccan, is waiting for him. "We call each other on Whatsapp every day, she worries about what I’m doing," he says. "Fortunately we have that to communicate."