Friday, September 30, 2005
Accra, Ghana September 28, 2005
This may actually be my final blog from Accra. Our passports arrived yesterday. They contain all of the necessary stamps. This week is dedicated to ensuring that our vehicle is ready to handle the more altitudinous, muddy and notorious terrain that awaits us. This morning Sean and I spent four or five hours with an especially helpful, competent and hospitable Lebanese Ghanaian auto mechanic named Kamal.
His staff raised the back of our car an additional two and half inches by adding custom made thick rubber disks, cut from old truck tires, to the top of our rear shocks. When the trunk was loaded with eighty liters of our spare gasoline and drinking water, we tended to scrape the muffler and exhaust pipe on deeper potholes or uneven shelves of concrete. Hopefully, this will now be less of a problem. Given the way we pack the car, this new height should actually lift the front end as well, preventing the sickening noise of hard earth testing the strength of our skid plate.
We all began this trip completely ignorant of some very basic auto mechanical facts. We couldn't have told you why there were two dipsticks in our six cylinder engine, we couldn't change either of its belts and we didn't know where to pour our various clearly labeled bottles of car fluid. Kamal took the time to familiarize me and Sean with the basic maintenance of our own vehicle and he did this without making us feel like idiots. Under his guidance we removed and replaced the fan belt and the tighter, more essential and more inaccessible belt beneath it. He then gave us all of the tools that we will need to conduct this work in the future. His friend and co-worker, Alfred, assisted him in this patient and elementary instruction. It was wonderful. By and large, we are still car ignorant. But, slowly, we are learning to handle the machine and nobody has taken this much care to equip us for the technical trials that we are likely to endure.
Tomorrow we return to his shop to change the car's water pump which is as old as I am, to weld the trunk back together, to install a metal security weave over a pathetic plastic window installed by our inadequate Gambian help and to outfit the car with a new rim and two new tires. We've also finally got the right spark plugs, a functional right turn indicator and some internal lights. The car drives like it should. We like it. This is the first time I have enjoyed the prospect of going to the mechanics; formerly, our team quarreled viciously for the right to be the one person staying behind on days when the car needed fixing.
Like every auto mechanic we have met, Kamal expressed total confidence in our car's ability to make it to South Africa, reserving special praise for the strength of its engine. He also complimented Sean and I on our savvy decision to "dress like that". He was kind enough to assume that we had stored our nice clothing or perhaps our accessories, in order to avoid seeming worthwhile targets to serious thieves. In reality, we have never learned to groom ourselves or wear properly fitting or appropriate clothes and all of the accessories anyone has ever given us to wear, we have lost. All the same, it is as comforting to hear that nobody wants to steal our preposterous car or personal belongings as it is to hear that the vehicle has the ability to reach our half way point.
This may actually be my final blog from Accra. Our passports arrived yesterday. They contain all of the necessary stamps. This week is dedicated to ensuring that our vehicle is ready to handle the more altitudinous, muddy and notorious terrain that awaits us. This morning Sean and I spent four or five hours with an especially helpful, competent and hospitable Lebanese Ghanaian auto mechanic named Kamal.
His staff raised the back of our car an additional two and half inches by adding custom made thick rubber disks, cut from old truck tires, to the top of our rear shocks. When the trunk was loaded with eighty liters of our spare gasoline and drinking water, we tended to scrape the muffler and exhaust pipe on deeper potholes or uneven shelves of concrete. Hopefully, this will now be less of a problem. Given the way we pack the car, this new height should actually lift the front end as well, preventing the sickening noise of hard earth testing the strength of our skid plate.
We all began this trip completely ignorant of some very basic auto mechanical facts. We couldn't have told you why there were two dipsticks in our six cylinder engine, we couldn't change either of its belts and we didn't know where to pour our various clearly labeled bottles of car fluid. Kamal took the time to familiarize me and Sean with the basic maintenance of our own vehicle and he did this without making us feel like idiots. Under his guidance we removed and replaced the fan belt and the tighter, more essential and more inaccessible belt beneath it. He then gave us all of the tools that we will need to conduct this work in the future. His friend and co-worker, Alfred, assisted him in this patient and elementary instruction. It was wonderful. By and large, we are still car ignorant. But, slowly, we are learning to handle the machine and nobody has taken this much care to equip us for the technical trials that we are likely to endure.
Tomorrow we return to his shop to change the car's water pump which is as old as I am, to weld the trunk back together, to install a metal security weave over a pathetic plastic window installed by our inadequate Gambian help and to outfit the car with a new rim and two new tires. We've also finally got the right spark plugs, a functional right turn indicator and some internal lights. The car drives like it should. We like it. This is the first time I have enjoyed the prospect of going to the mechanics; formerly, our team quarreled viciously for the right to be the one person staying behind on days when the car needed fixing.
Like every auto mechanic we have met, Kamal expressed total confidence in our car's ability to make it to South Africa, reserving special praise for the strength of its engine. He also complimented Sean and I on our savvy decision to "dress like that". He was kind enough to assume that we had stored our nice clothing or perhaps our accessories, in order to avoid seeming worthwhile targets to serious thieves. In reality, we have never learned to groom ourselves or wear properly fitting or appropriate clothes and all of the accessories anyone has ever given us to wear, we have lost. All the same, it is as comforting to hear that nobody wants to steal our preposterous car or personal belongings as it is to hear that the vehicle has the ability to reach our half way point.
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