Misfortunes of a Fortuner

 The wrecker hauling away our Fortuner after it overheated 'in the middle of nowhere' in rural Rwanda on a trip to Kigali.

There are some days that are so difficult, that one of the small consolations of pushing through is the thought that it will make an interesting blog entry when I retell the story.  Today was just such a day, and although it is a Monday and technically part of next week’s accounting, I feel like I should begin here to put you in the state of mind I find myself right now.  Actually, my state of mind is probably not that interesting, I feel at this moment calm and somewhat resigned to deal with the challenge I am facing.

I was at least somewhat prepared for a challenging week this week, as I am once again on the road on a fairly ambitious trip.  I was driving to Kigali to pick up a visitor from MCC who is going to evaluate some of our education programs.  I was to leave early Monday morning (6am) and drive to Kigali in time to meet his plane at 1:30pm.  It started well enough, I was ready to leave by 6 and the kids were even up so I had a chance to say goodbye even.  The drive was easier as leaving this early meant I avoided much of the traffic going uphill at that hour.  The car seemed to be running fine and since I was alone it was not very heavily loaded.  

I was doing fine up to the border, where the engine light came on just before I stopped.  I was not sure what to do as the border is in a very remote spot far from any automobile repair facilities.  I did finish the customs and immigration procedures then tried to restrart.  The car did not want to stay started unless I held down the accelerator.  I decided to try to limp to Kigali without stopping so I could get it repaired and got about halfway there from the border.  (45mins)  Then the engine started making a noise, smoking and died completely. 

This was a very unfortunate event not just for the obvious reasons, but also because I was in a very remote part of Rwanda, not particularly near any town.  I was acutely aware that there is not AAA or Norstar system out here.  I was not sure how I would get help.  

Fortunately I did have my cell phone and I called Rebecca to let her know and then our service worker Ruth in Kigali.  Ruth gave me the number of a cabbie in Kigali I knew, Charles, so I called him and asked if he could find me a mechanic and drive him the hour south to where I was to evaluate the problem.  He said he would just as the minutes ran out on my cell phone.  

I did feel pretty stranded then and hoped Charles was good for his word.  I texted Ruth and Rebecca and asked them to send units.  Eventually they did but shortly after receiving them my phone battery died.

I did not remain in isolation long though, people were passing on the road and there was a nearby village and soon I had a group hovering around to stare.  There were a couple of guys that wanted to look in the engine (bicycle taxi drivers) so I opened the hood.  I have to say, despite the fact that I have not continued my Kirundi lessons, I was really grateful that I had enough to be able to communicate rudimentarily with them as no one spoke French or English.  (Kinyarwanda is essentially the same as Kirundi).

When we opened the hood I was stunned to find the engine was extremely hot and there appeared to be no water in the radiator.  What was shocking about this was that the temperature gauge in the car had not been indicating this and I had not suspected the problem, especially because it was a cool day and I was neither heavily loaded nor driving extremely fast.

My two helpers went and filled a bucket of water and we added water to the radiator, which seemed to disappear and I wondered if there was a leak somewhere.

The car would not start even with water in it but fortunately Charles was as good as his word and came with a mechanic who brought a couple wrenches with him and set to work removing the top of the engine block.  The problem was not obvious until he opened the oil pan at the bottom and found it full of water.  Apparently the overheating of the engine had burned through a joint in the engine and the oil and water had mixed.

At this point it was clear that he would not be able to repair it on the spot.  Fortunately there are a few wreckers in Kigali and he had the number for one.  It cost about $200 to have my car towed from there to Kigali and we waited another hour and a half for it to come.  

By the time we got to Kigali it was late afternoon.  Needless to say I had missed the arrival of our visitor (Lynn Longenecker from MCC’s Global Family project) but fortunately Ruth had made arrangements to pick him up.  The mechanic seemed to feel confident that he could fix the car the next day, but I have to admit I took that promise with a grain of salt as I have been in this culture long enough to know that there is no way to get a factual answer to a question like “how long will this take” when someone knows what you would be favorably disposed to hear.

I got more units and charged my phone at Ruth's house was able to commiserate with Rebecca a bit on mutual difficulties. She is trying to get Congolese visas for her and the kids this week as Felix is on vacation and has been having a mightily difficult time with logistics, (especially since David ran out of passport pages which adds another trip to the US embassy before she can even start the project.  She also had to wire me money as I found myself cash short as a result of the extra costs of car repair I had not anticipated.

dinner at Zaffon

So I am hoping the repair will take a day, as we were supposed to travel Tuesday and now will be a day late in continuing our journe by at least one day and have a very ambitious schedule of visiting at least 2 projects in rural Burundi.  Worst case scenario is that I leave the car here with our service workers and continue on by bus.  Not a pleasant prospect as we are continuing on to the Hope School and Gitega which are not routes frequented by public transportation.  It would be a very big challenge to continue without a car.

Despite the disappointment and challenges, the day did end on a good note with the Rwanda team and Lynn and I going out to dinner at Zaffron.  The food tasted especially good to me as Rebecca and I have been doing a fast of skipping breakfast and lunch during lent.  After the long day, it was great to have such a fabulous meal to break fast with in the evening.

I should back up a bit at this point and give a synopsis of the week leading up to the last day’s events.  We continued to have a fairly busy week as far as hospitality.  We continued to host our SALTers from Rwanda for several days after our team gathering from the week before.  They stayed the night on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.  On Wednesday we had an entirely different set of guests.  Two of our partners were in town for a planning meeting for a peace conference.  Antoine from Rwanda and Laurent from Congo were over for dinner and stayed the night with us before returning to their respective countries.

Emily's Birthday

Saturday afternoon we were able to be guests for a change, rather than hosts as we took Oren to the 5 year old Birthday party of his friend Emily.  It was a fun event attended by several of the little girls who take my ballet class, which made me somewhat of a celebrity there for them.

 On Saturday evening, Rebecca and I played host to John and Jonas, Scott and Danica’s kids so that they could have a date night.  This has been a nice exchange program that we have been doing monthly with them.

Despite all of this Rebecca and I were able to keep up our daily routines of swimming and prayer in the morning prior to work, and trading off childcare in the afternoons.  We continue to enjoy our family tea time at 5pm on the porch which is now considered to be an inviolable tradition by the kids and David will cry if we even suggest that it might be a bit late to have it.  It is actually a great addition to our daily routine that gives us a time to sit together, talk, and even play with the dogs a bit.  (Who are often starved for attention.)

family tea time

One change in routine this week was that I taught Sunday School in Rebecca’s stead so that she could hear the sermon.  (She is preaching next week and wanted to know what was going on.)  I did reasonably well, although the craft I had proposed, a kind of hanging mobile with the words Love, One, Another, hanging down was a fairly long an challenging project for the 3-6 year olds.

Sunday evening we continue to host our small group and it has been a real blessing.  We have in fact added another member, Felix our program officer who also attends our church.  We also play host to about 6 kids who are children of the families who attend, so we now have a child care worker while we meet. 

All together we had guests on 6 of the 7 evenings last week.

We did say goodbye to routine officially Sunday evening as the week of travel for me with Rebecca staying home with the kids and the following 2 weeks going to Kinshasa then Zanzibar after that, it will be a while before we enjoy our normal routine again.