Rocky

Before moving to Rwanda, I purchased a truck who affectionately obtained the name Rocky. Here in Rwanda, Toyotas are the most common cars. Besides the multitude of busses, the most common personal cars you’ll see are Land Cruiser variations and and Rav4’s. Toyotas have a pretty strong grip on the market here. Rocky is a 1990 white Land Cruiser II who struggles to keep up in his old age.

I’ve told you all some travails regarding the car when we first picked it up in Kigali and the gear shifter completely broke off. Well, we fixed that issue by replacing a custom-fabricated metal bracket that a local mechanic had rigged with an original Toyota part. This was the beginning of a series of tales I owe you.

In September, we traveled to Kigali in Rocky with our friend and financial administrator at the school, Fred. After the 2 and a half hour drive down over many hills, we arrived on the outskirts of the busy city at rush hour. You know you’re getting into the city when the moto swarm starts to thicken up around you. Just then, in heavy traffic, Rocky gave up the ghost and drove no more. I hadn’t been paying attention to the heat gauge on my dashboard, so I’d missed its screams as the temperature of the car had risen to a critical level.

Some locals appears from seemingly nowhere to push us to the side as we popped the hood to the steaming sounds of a boiling radiator. Thankful for the blessing of Fred’s presence, he communicated with them in Kinyarwanda and was able to control the growing crowd. After a few minutes and one man was running back and forth to the creek to fetch muddy water to pour into our radiator as the car had cooled enough to refill the empty radiator. That allowed us to get unstuck and complete our journey.

This led to the second repair necessary on Rocky, a patching and cleaning of the radiator. We discovered through this repair that Rocky’s radiator as so many of his parts are not original to the vehicle. You see, Rocky’s a story of continued “making do” that’s so common here. You pull-a-part here, maybe have an owner that can afford original parts there, and the car vacillates between stages of disrepair to stages of “runnin’ pretty ok”. He’s basically a retelling of the Ship of Theseus (“Like, is it even really the same car he was in 1990, dude?” “Whoa, that’s like, far out.”).

When we returned in January from the states, Rocky did not do well on the way back to Musanze. Rwanda is known as the land of 1000 hills - and there are a LOT of them between Kigali and Musanze - mostly up. We had to pull over a few times to let him cool down, add water to the radiator, etc. We all held our breath and said a lot of prayers with every hill, as we watched the temperature gauge. Our friend Albert K. drove us home that day and for the past few weeks and months, he has been amazing to keep helping us continue to fix Rocky’s problems.

Because it is not common to have a car (or truck) in Rwanda, those with them tend to travel with many people. In the mornings, for example, people in our neighborhood carpool to school with us. After school, many times we are trying to see how many people can fit inside the car to give people rides here and there. Even more-so when it’s raining as it does so regularly in the current months. So, when we take trips to the Lake, we typically take a carload of people along.

As we told you previously, Rocky was named on the first of the trips out to Lake Burera. Since that trip, he’s been two additional times and every one of those trips included some form of Rocky drama. You’d think we would have learned at some point. But it seems every time we went, we’d just completed one of the above repairs and had the thought “oh, it’s all good now! We fixed X, so it’s as good as new!” This turns out to be a bad way of thinking.

The most recent of these trips was Rocky’s final stand. We drove to the lake to celebrate an engagement of two friends here, Maria and Pinto. On the way back, we were worried Rocky would not make it up the hills again. He started out doing so well…until he didn’t. After dominating on a few hills, we were so happy, until all of a sudden he just refused to move forward. We broke down, again, this time just next to the market on the busiest day of the week. Imagine us in a caravan of 3 cars, packed full of people including our three kids, stuck on a dirt road next to a truck full of sheep, a lot of cows, and just downhill from a bustling market in the village.

Slowly, people started to get interested and gather round. There is nothing quite as interesting as a bunch of Muzungu’s (white people) who are bringing 3 cars through a small rural village, one of which isn’t working. First, the younger kids start to gather and ask for money. After they realize we aren’t giving them money and some of us are from Rwanda, they stop asking for money and just start watching us. Then, the adults also gather. Slowly, it feels like 100 people surrounding the area just to watch us. Thankfully a few of our friends spoke the language and was able to ask people to kindly back up from the cars.

As we continued to troubleshoot solutions (including attempting a makeshift tow with a rusted cable that popped twice), it became clear that we needed to redistribute folks to get them back to Musanze. We would have to leave Rocky sitting on the side of the Burera road. So, Bek went to the small car to get in the trunk (she fit perfectly) and I get into another car. As I became more and more overwhelmed by the situation, I noted that Bekah was buying roasted corn from a lady who’d approached their car. Our friend Fabiola bartered the price down to about 10 cents per ear. Slowly people in the car perked up one at a time - “Well, I’ll take one. Sure, me too.” They all loaded up with big ears of corn. Then, someone walked up to the car and said that the plans had changed. Bekah got out of the trunk and walked back to the other car with her corn in-hand.

At the same time, and at the pinnacle of my frustration with the situation, a man walked up to me (as I was dripping sweat and looking probably as mad as I ever look) and attempted to sell me a live chicken. He really went for the sale with a long stream of Kinyarwanda I could not understand. I looked the man straight in the face so very at the end of my rope and said in plain English, “No, I do not want a chicken!” The man seemed to take it well, smiled and turned to the crowd and mimicked a funny “No!”

Now, as you zoom out from this scenario, it had to have seemed the most hilarious situation. A bunch of white people (and a few Rwandans) in 3 cars trying to fix a broken car, walking to and fro with roasted corn and chickens being thrown into the mix. While it seems so funny, it was quite frustrating and overwhelming at the time. John Valor was in the front seat, then middle seat, then front seat - talking and growling like a dinosaur at all the village kids. It truly did help me through the situation that our school’s habit of mind at the time was “Finding Humor”.

We ended up leaving Rocky there on the side of the road in Burera, hoping that a man who agreed to watch the car would keep it safe until we were able to fetch it days later.

Albert was able to fetch it and tow it back to Musanze a few days later. He discovered that the clutch and flywheel were both ruined and needed to be replaced. This was the final straw for poor Rocky.

Now, let me tell you an amazing thing that happened when we were back in the States. I was having a coffee and talking about Jesus with a Christian brother, when he asked me the question “What’s the one thing you really need over there?” As the conversation had shifted to this question, we had just finished talking through some of these very stories about the challenges we’d had with Rocky in the fall, so I said “it’d be so great if we had a different car”. His response was to immediately start praying for that to happen.

The following day at church, it happened. Through the work of generous anonymous donors, I was told that the money had been raised to facilitate the purchase of a newer vehicle for our family to use in Rwanda. I didn’t know how to react to that news, and still don’t know the right way to react to it. I was so very deeply grateful for the generosity and simultaneously heart-pricked by the way the same amount of money could be used for such good here. Attempting to navigate those tensions with wisdom and discernment led us to the decision to use the money to buy a vehicle that our family can use while we are here and then donate as a school vehicle if/when we are called back home.

Last weekend, I took a trip to Kigali with Steve and we negotiated the purchase of a 2015 model Land Cruiser to replace Rocky. We have the truck now and have begun the process of getting Rocky sold to another caretaker. Happy trails, friend!