Car Trouble

My friends and fellow missionaries, the Shorts, left Tanzania in December, but they were not able to sell one of their cars before leaving.  The plan was for Lewis to use it and then hopefully sell it when he came to visit in April, but due to coronavirus he hasn't been able to make another trip to Tanzania.  Since I have a secure gate that I can safely park the car behind, I'm car-sitting in the meantime.  It's been really helpful for me, too, because I can easily drive out to the school to work even when it's raining (which of course has been frequently over the last couple of months, as it's rainy season).  

Unfortunately, today when I was on my way to the school, the car suddenly lost power and coasted to a stop.  Oh dear.  I am not much of a car person; the car had oil, gas, hadn't been making any noises and hadn't been overheating.  But it definitely was dead now; it wouldn't even turn over.  However, I had just passed through town and I had seen Baraka, a student who graduated last year, goofing around trying to fit too many people on a motorcycle with his friends, so I knew he wasn't busy.  He has a driver's license and has driven this car several times, and I knew he would have the phone number of a mechanic, so I called him.  

A couple of people stopped to ask if I needed any help or at least to commiserate; people are generally friendly and helpful in situations like this in Monduli, but I told them I already had a mechanic on the way. 

Baraka came out with the fundi (mechanic) to check it out.  They poked for a bit, and then Baraka's older brother drove by on his motorcycle and stopped to see what we were up to.  Baraka asked him to take me out to the school (it's only a few hundred feet around the corner past the road up to where they live, so it wasn't too out of the way), since it might be a while to fix the car and I wasn't actually any use there.  

By evening, Baraka brought the car out to the school.  It turned out a couple of wires that shouldn't be touching and fallen against each other, and had been rubbing against each other with the motion of the car for some time, and had finally worn through the rubber coating of the wires and metal touched metal and blew a fuse.  Fortunately, replacing a couple of wire and a fuse is pretty quick and easy to fix, so the car was back in order within only a few hours.