What Happened with the Car

It DOES exist!

I promised a follow-up about the car we bought here, and I’ve snuck a moment here to update you all on it.

The car was bought from a returning missionary Darrell who had since returned to the states and left the car in the care of his friend Paul. I’d had enough foresight to connect with Paul before the trip to ensure he would be there when we arrived, which was prescient because he let me know that he would be in Kenya instead. So we arranged to leave the keys with another fellow named Jonathan.

So, the day we arrived was a Friday night. We stayed in the capital city of Kigali that night with a plan of fetching the car I bought the next day. Saturday morning I reached out to Jonathan to get the keys, but our plans were spoiled when we learned that he wouldn’t be available until late afternoon with them. Our pivot was to then take Bekah and the kids up to Musanze (about a 2.5 hour drive) in the morning, I’d drive back with Matt to get the car and some other newly arriving folks, and then we’d return to Musanze later in the evening.

We finally connected with Jonathan around 4:30pm and received the keys and paperwork for the vehicle. At this point, I thought we were home free as I plugged Paul’s address into our GPS and we quickly arrived at his gate. Unfortunately, no one answered the gate and our best attempts at peeking over the compound wall did not reveal anything resembling a 1989 Toyota Land Cruiser in “acceptable to moderate” condition.

Darrell was quick to answer and direct us to another place where the car would be found. Matt knew the area well (I would have been absolutely lost without him) and we popped over to a compound with an open gate and tarp covered vehicle.

Once I lifted the car cover and saw that the truck actually existed, I was ready to pose like George Bush in front of the “Mission Accomplished” banner. And that would have been apropos because our fight was just beginning.

The insertion of the key quickly revealed there was no battery power. We popped the hood and saw that the battery had been disconnected, which was good given that it was sitting up but also bad because we had no tools to reconnect and tighten the terminal. Matt was able to find a Leatherman tool but the bolt was corroded enough to be unusable. We were able to get enough juice to start the engine by laying the wire on the battery terminal loosely.

Once the engine fired, Matt returned to his car and I summoned as much confidence as I could to prepare myself for the drive back to Musanze at night. It was about this time that I reached down to shift it into 1st gear that the gear shifter fell off in my hands. This was definitely not normal. This car was also definitely not going to be driven back tonight.

We picked up the other staff members arriving at the airport and drove home. Though quite deflated from the high-level of anticipation I had about attempting to drive it back, I was pretty relieved to hear that Matt has a contact who can be hired to drive cars to and from Kigali who could make the trek for me once the car was repaired.

The next day, I worked with Darrell to coordinate a local mechanic named Bob to take a look and fix the car. Another day later, Bob contacted me to let me know that the car was ready and functional. I immediately hired the driver, Viateur, who charged 20,000 Rwandan Francs (FRw) to do the job, plus a 3,000FRw for a bus ticket to Kigali. That’s about $23 for the job, which is at least 6 hours of work. This may give those of you in the State a sense of the cost differential in labor between the countries. Viateur made the trip without issue and delivered the car by 10pm the next evening.

By the next morning, we were experimenting with how to get our kids in and out of the third row seats. I took it for some driving around town, quickly realizing that what I was doing needed to be called something else. In America there are particular contexts back where your “hey, I should really pay close attention and be ready to dodge something” impulse elevate. Like, when you’re driving through a subdivision with lots of kids and passing parallel parked cars just waiting for that one kid to sprint out after a ball or something. Driving here is like the feeling of being that vigilant permanently. There are literally hundreds of people walking on the roadside, hundreds of bicycles carrying passengers, motorbikes passing indiscrimantly, huge diesel trucks, and THE BUSES.

There is a constant stream of buses carrying people to and from other cities. Most of the buses are minivan sized but there are a fair share of charter bus and you’ll see a few jumbo sized ones as well. I’m not sure what the incentive structure is for these bus drivers, but every experience I’ve had with them is that they are determined to get as many people as people moved throughout the country as fast as possible. They’ll blow through crosswalks, practically skid to a stop, jettison a few folks, then cram people on top of each other before peeling out directly in front of oncoming traffic.

It struck me as a miracle that there is not a steady stream of traffic fatalities every day here. There’s some kind of lesson in here about the adaptability of humans that despite all of these seemingly super-risky elements, the society functions just fine and people aren’t getting regularly taken to hospitals for road-related injuries.

I had maybe 8 total trips in my truck before volunteering to be a driver for our outing to “Bella’s Island” on the last day of orientation. Getting there was no problem at all and was quite a fun trip with a car full of new friends. I felt pretty confident in highway driving by the time we made the turn to go through the village and its rocky “roads” which were slightly more than what we’d call “milk lanes” or alleyways in the States. It was only once we were within sight of our destination that I had the realization that our ride was mostly downhill and how difficult the return trip would be.

The return didn’t disappoint. Thankfully, we were all in great spirits after the good time together. I turned on the song “Eye of the Tiger” as we set our face back towards Musanze. Just as the song ended, we were mid-ascent of a rocky hill that the truck refused to summit. The engine gave up and stopped. I cranked it again and tried to get up the hill in 1st gear, but my best efforts led to it rolling further backwards. After the car behind us saw our trouble and came to check on us, we decided it would be best if everyone got out and I tried to get a running start from the bottom of the hill. Thankfully that did the trick and everyone piled back in!

Each hill we encountered for then on was a gamble on whether we’d be able to make it up. Everyone was really encouraging though, and instead of complaining about it, each hill was met with all of us in the car giving our best “BUUUM, BUM, BUM, BUM” rendition of Eye of the Tiger to give the car the mojo it needed. I think that encouragement mixed with my increasing understanding of how to make good use of the clutch was just what we needed to safely get back to the highway without any further need for running starts.

That trip gave me the rapid increase of confidence that comes from sink-or-swim immersion. I’ve now driven it daily for about two weeks and feel more capable each and every day. The next big hurdle for us to jump is how to get Bekah able to do the same!

(Bekah: “Yeah, right! I’m still afraid the back door is going to fall off every time we go down a rocky road. And, yesterday the car almost stopped going up Matt’s road which Thom overcome by some combination of pushing the clutch, pulling the parking brake, and shifting all at the same time. ???????”)