Automobile club Luxembourg

He might live in Œtrange, but Max Wax's heart has actually been in Africa for several years now. At the end of the month, he will be travelling to Benin on his motorbike to help children suffering from serious heart disease. We went to meet him.

“I’ve always done a lot of humanitarian work in Africa, and I also run an association that helps orphans and disadvantaged children in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, but this time it’ll be a different adventure because I'm not going alone but with two other motorcyclists, in fact. That's going to be the real challenge!”, Max Wax immediately declares.

A solitary adventurer who likes to define himself as a supporter of others, this Luxembourg-based shop manager was won over by the ‘A heart for Africa’ project led Frenchmen Ludovic Chetail and Carlos Alves, whose goal was to travel 10,000km by motorcycle across West Africa from Luxembourg via Senegal and the Ivory Coast to Benin in barely a month.

“Ludovic and Carlos aren’t familiar with Africa, so they contacted me via social media so that I could give them some guidance and to take advantage of my experience of African routes", Max Wax explains.

"€12,000 to save a life”

Once there, the three adventurers will join the association’s medical teams in Cotounou. They’re the ones in Benin who determine whether a sick child is fit to fly to Auvergne, where they will be treated by Professor Jean-René Lusson and his cardiac surgical staff.

“The plane ticket, onsite diagnosis, post-operative care and stay with a host family cost around €12,000 per child. It costs €12,000 to save a life”, Max Wax concludes.

In the run-up to the event, the three bikers will be loading their motorcycles with as many school and medical supplies as they can manage before setting off for Africa.

The ACL supports the initiative and has provided them with the necessary Carnet de Passage documents to allow them to cross the borders of the 11 countries they will need to travel through along the way.