A border crossing reopened after nine months and the queue formed before dawn
Traders had kept the relationships alive by phone throughout. The trucks moved within hours.
By six in the morning the line ran a kilometre back from the gate, and most drivers had been there since the previous evening.
Why it recovered so fast
Nine months of closure did less damage than expected, largely because the arrangements were never formal enough to break. Orders had been placed by phone and settled on trust.
Volumes returned to roughly pre-closure levels inside six weeks.