Tale of Two Cities

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was an afternoon to drink beers, play cards, and read magazines in the comfort of a shaded, guest home oasis, it was an afternoon to haggle with a jumble of amateur and professional mechanics in an exposed dirt yard over a disassembled mess of automobile that no one could manage to start."

I'm not sure who wrote that, but I've always liked it.

It was now about 3:00 p.m. and Dan still wasn't back. It was clear the car was irremediably broken and that we'd be spending another night in Rumphi. It was also clear that we needed to change course because we had to get back to Lilongwe to catch our flights the following morning.

So we struck up a conversation with one of the directors of the NGO to see if we could borrow her cell to call Dan. She told us that it wasn't safe to have our car worked on by mechanics in town because they don't have the diagnostic equipment to recognize the problem, they don't have the parts necessary to fix a problem if they do recognize it, and they aren't particularly well trained to fix the problem in the first place. She opined that we were likely to find our car in worse shape than when we left it. For that reason, she said, they don't trust their own vehicles with the mechanics down the hill. They have all of their vehicles serviced on the premises.

Part of the NGO's occupational training program included a mechanic's yard. As luck would have it, the Dutch mechanic they use to train their students was in town for the month. She suggested that maybe he could go down to town with us and assess the situation with our car.

About fifteen minutes later, the other director of the NGO, the Dutch mechanic, and a local student offered to drive us down to check out what was going on with the car. Mellissa and I jumped in the car with them while Jon and Katy stayed behind.



When we reached the mechanic's yard where our car was sitting in shambles, we spotted Dan with his face in his hands sitting by the side of the road. This had not been a good day for him.

We walked up to the car to witness quite a scene. It wasn't just the two mechanics we saw the night before working on the vehicle. There were probably eight to ten guys huddled around the car pointing and arguing and taking things apart. I believe that three were actually affiliated with that mechanics yard and the others, as far as I could tell, were passersby who had taken an interest in our vehicle and stuck around to offer their own opinion on the matter.

We all got out and walked up to the front of the car to talk to the mechanics. The front bumper was completely removed, the radiator was on the ground as were a few other engine components that I didn't recognize.

The guys from the NGO had a look at the engine and walked around the car to talk to everyone there. I walked around to the passenger's side of the car (left-hand side in this case) where a mechanic (I think) was sitting in the front seat taking apart some electrical device.

The Dutch mechanic turned to me and said, "look at what this guy is doing right here. What he's doing there has nothing to do with what's mechanically wrong with the engine. I don't know what he's doing. Maybe he's swapping out pieces from your car for resale. I don't know."

My stomach dropped. I started to view our situation in an entirely different light. We had trusted these mechanics to help us out. We believed that Moya would find us someone to be honest and fair with us. Now, I felt like we were being had for the clumsy, rich, and stupid Americans that we were in that moment.



So I walked up to Dan and told him that we needed to get the hell out of there. We had to call the owner of the car and tell him there was nothing we could do to get the thing running and that we were going to have to leave it in Rumphi for him to retrieve. The folks at the NGO were kind enough to let us leave the car at their facility, so we could tell the owner he had his choice of leaving the car with the mechanics or leaving it at the NGO. Dan agreed. The poor guy was so worn down he probably would have agreed to anything.

Dan called the owner and made the arrangements. Mellissa and I were to return to the NGO to pick up a towing bar to bring the Hilux up the hill. Dan would stay behind, settle up with the mechanics, and then walk over to the minibus depot to inquire with a minibus driver about the cost of renting out an entire minibus to take us all the way back to Lilongwe the next day.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch . . . .



JP: Katy and Jon are enjoying tea and afternoon snacks over a game of gin rummy.