Day 27
We did not feel like getting out of our tent today. It was very unlikely that this would be a fun day. We had to arrange to get our car fixed here and I had no idea where to start. There was nobody we knew here that could help us.
When we opened our tent the crowd was there already. Approximately 100 man and children. They crawled in eachothers necks to get a better view inside our tent. That is not a pleasant way to start your day! Even before we are good and well out of our tent the truck driver we had a fight with last night approached us. He was shy now and friendly. He told us he was a very good mechanic and that he wanted us to hire him to fix our car. Sorry dude.. no way!
With all the onlookers still there we talked to the driver of the father of the mission (temporarily out of work due to lack of car). He was a mechanic too (everybody is a mechanic here) and wanted to help us. To us that looked like the best bet. In a city where there are no cars it is very hard to find a mechanic that has some experience with Landcruisers. At least we were sure this guy had seen one of these from closeby. with our experiences from last night fresh in our memory we first discussed about the price. It is quite common to pay 'per job' for these kind of things.
The idea is that we would try to get the rear axle fixed so we can drive to Kikwit, we would try to get the front axle fixed there or in Kinshasa. For this the mechanic asks 200$US. That is more then he would earn in a year. He explains that he would have to rent tools and it's not just for him, but for an entire team. Eventually we settle on 50$US for the labour. We are still grossly overpaying them, but we feel we have no choice.
After the negotiation I plainly ask them if they had asked so much money just because we are white. They felt uncomfortable with the question but confirmed.
I am not a mechanic. But neither were these guys. They had the skills to make everything work, but they did ugly things. They only knew two tools: a hamer and a screwdriver. And the screwdriver was mostly only used in combination with the hamer. The entire process I had to keep watching them to make sure they did not round any more bolts or hamer my axle to pieces. The moment I turned my back I could hear them banging away.
Once the hub on the rear axle was removed, they had to remove the broken bolts. There is no electricity in Dibaya-Lubwe. The generator of the mission was broken. They did not have an electrical drill anyway. But they did have a manual hand operated drill. It must have been quite the tool 100 years ago, but nowadays nobody would even consider to use this to drill into metal. Needless to say the the drill bits were not of the best quality either. They would drill out the holes and tap new wire into them (1 size bigger). Our hub was buggered anyway so I let them do it. It took them an entire day of turning that drill!
By the end of the day all bolts were cleared, new threads were tapped and fitting bolts (of horrible quality) were found. It had gotten too dark already to re-assemble everything. Tomorrow morning they would be able to fit them and by noon we would be ready to go again! Great!
