Joe, one of the Annie's
Lodge office staff, told me he would call a mechanic. First they said the guy was on his way. Then Joe found me and said the mechanic
doesn't have a car, we have to go to him.
So we got in the car and drove south from Zomba about three miles to the
next little trading center where Joe said to pull off because the mechanic
would meet us there. Sure enough, after
about 15 minutes Lester the mechanic and two of his "boys" (a general
term for assistants of all ages here) came walking down the road. They poked around under the hood for a little
bit while I turned the car on and off, and then Lester said he thought the
problem was the transmission fluid. But we would need to go back into town to
find transmission fluid. So they took
off their shirts, which were dirty from having worked on another car, and
turned them inside out to sit up so they wouldn't make the upholstery dirty
when they piled into the car with us.
So
then we headed back to Zomba and made a tour of at least three gas stations
before we found one that had automatic transmission fluid. We finally found one that sold us a gallon of
fluid for 18,000 MK - around $50. So
then we went to the mechanic's shop, which was 3 miles out the north side of
Zomba. When we got there they pulled the
car in over their grease pit, a brick-lined hole in the ground under a small
shade arbor covered with cardboard and loofah vines. While it cooled I bought cold drinks for
everyone because it was really hot that day.
Then they proceeded to get to work.
There was some excitement when they dropped the transmission drain plug
into the bottom of their grease pit. So
they had to dig around in all the trash down there, using their cell phones as
lights until they found it among all the snack wrappers. I think one of the helpers might have gotten
a little hot transmission fluid sprayed on him in the process, but they eventually
got all the transmission fluid drained out.
While they were doing this I admired the drinking cup which was sitting
on the cup beside the grease pit: it was the outer casing of a (presumably
used) oil filter with a loop welded on for a handle. I really wished I'd had a camera along.
It turned out that the transmission fluid
was pretty low and badly in need of changing.
But then the problem was how to put the new fluid in the transmission,
since the filler was located on top of the transmission which sites under the
engine. They started looking around on
the ground and in the back seats of all the cars parked in their little lot;
they said "We need a pipe."
Eventually they popped the hood on an old Citroen and started removing
hose from the engine, but one end was stuck.
One of the "boys" went off and returned with a scalpel blade,
but it quickly became apparent that it wasn't going to work. (No handle, no leverage.) So I passed them my Swiss army knife, and the
next thing you knew we had a length of black rubber hose. They then produced a short piece of
small-diameter plastic tubing which they cut in half, and they put one half in
each end of the hose for a spout.
Finally, they took the used plastic Coke bottle from under our front
seat, made a hole in the top, and attached one of the pieces of plastic tubing
to the lid of the Coke bottle. AFter
cutting the bottom off the Coke bottle, they had the funnel they needed to fill
the transmission. With cell phone in had
for a light, one of the helpers climbed down into the grease pit and navigated
the bottom end of the hose into the transmission, while another hovered over
the engine compartment holding the top end of the funnel, while the mechanic
slowly poured the transmission fluid through the custom-made funnel until the
transmission was filled. A certain
amount of transmission fluid was spilled in the process, although not as much
as you might expect. The mechanic
started the car up and drove it forwards and back across his small lot a few
times, and judged that the repair was complete.
For all this invention they charged me MK 10,000, about $25. I'm a little skeptical about the diagnosis
but the car has more or less behaved itself since then, and the transmission
fluid may well have needed changing anyway.
(A note about how people living and working in places off the
electrical grid can use cell phones.
Many businesses will charge phones for a small fee - we've seen a lot of
barber shops advertising phone charging.
Sometimes you see someone on a bicycle hauling a car battery. We understand that they're taking
the battery to the nearest place it can be charged, and then they can take it
back to the village and use it to charge phones.)
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