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. 

Car Wash!

Well, yesterday I wrote about how muddy the car was after the trip to Moshi and the flooded and muddy roads of Monduli last night.  Well, several of the students have been dropping by my house to say hi or texting me regularly because they're bored and miss the social network that being in a boarding school provided.  I was chatting with one of my coworkers, Oscar, on Whatsapp this morning and I joked that the next student who bothered me was going to be put to work.  It didn't take long--I hadn't even finished my conversation with him before my phone rang.  I sent out a message to a Whatsapp group of local students, too, and quickly ended up with four boys.

I pulled the car outside the gate to the gravel area at the edge of the road.  Much to their disappointment, I moved the car myself and didn't let any of them touch the keys.  None of them have a license or have really learned to drive yet, but they are eager to try.  It's a bit of a narrow fit pulling out of my driveway, though, and it's not my car, so I said no. 

I sat out buckets, rags, brushes and laundry detergent to use as soap, and they got to work.  It didn't take long before the car was looking much, much better! Look, it really is silver!

The finished car, mud free!  The four boys are Salum's friend (Izaki I think, but I don't remember for sure), and my students Salum, Mathayo and Paulo.  

Road-tripping to Moshi

Well, today I went on a little road trip to Moshi (three hours' drive one way) with a car full of Tanzanian friends.  We all had some business there, and so we carpooled.  Moshi is a nice city; I've visited there a couple of times before.  It's the city closest to Kilimanjaro, right at its foot, really, but it was too cloudy to get any good views of the mountain today.  

We had a couple of stops for car issues: getting gas, checking the oil and adding more, fixing a puncture in a tire, etc.  Such is life on the roads here.  Fortunately, all the issues were easily fixed and didn't slow us down much at all.

  

We stopped for lunch at friendly-looking place on the edge of Moshi.  Here's another good look at typical Tanzanian food for you--the guys shared a platter of roast goat meat along with ugali.  I was really craving chapati (kind of like thick, fried tortillas), so I ordered some to eat with roast chicken and pilipili (handmade hot sauce).  Add coca-cola all around, and it's a great meal!  Also something nice about Tanzania--a good lunch for five cost about $15. 

Above: Beth and I had added air to the tire several times, but it kept going flat again.  Albert stopped at Lake Oil to have them fix the puncture once and for all. 

Driving back into Monduli, we realized we had just missed a major downpour.  We had very little rain on us on our trip, but dark clouds were just leaving Monduli and the ditched were full to overflowing.  Just outside of Monduli we came across a place where water was flowing over the road; the car got doused with quite a wave of muddy water as we passed through it.  

I was keeping the car (I have a lockable gate, so I've been keeping the Shorts' car that they haven't sold yet until Lewis is able to return to sell it), so we made the rounds of Monduli dropping everyone off.  It had just gotten dark by the time Jackson (who lives somewhere nearish) and I reached my neighborhood.  I was afraid my road would be a complete mess after the heavy rain, especially as they just did major work to move the road over several feet and straighten it out just a few days ago.  When we got there, a gravel truck was dumping a new load of rocky dirt onto the new road, and several guys were out shoveling it out on the road as it began to drizzle again.  The old road is still there just to the right of the new road; we tried driving along it so as not to disturb those working, but it quickly became so deep with mud that we backed out of it. I was going to turn around and go park the car at Beth's and walk home from there, but Jackson insisted that we could make it through as soon as they finished shoveling, and jumped out to help shovel.  Sure enough, after a few minutes the pile of rocks and dirt was smoothed enough that I made it through with the car.  

I think it might need washed, though.  

Arusha Errands

Another trip into Arusha on a day I don't teach any classes...Beth and I ran errands both for ourselves and the school, stopping by the bookstore for supplies and the eye doctor to pick up students' glasses that had been repaired before doing our own grocery shopping. 

Emmy and I hung out in the car during one of the errands when just Beth ran in.  

Mud.

You can tell by looking at the cars that it's been raining.