Day 35 - 36 - 37
The souvenir guy came every day, a bit of haggling, a bit of talking. But we could not agree on a price.
We waited and generaly had an enjoyable stay in Kikwit... Paolo is one the most interesting persons we ever met. You should hear his stories!
Day 38
Guess who was there that morning? Yep! We talked about that nifty looking handmade chessgame, but we couldn't agree on a price...
The whole money transfer thing went pretty smoothly. It is quite amazing really. We just rang up a lady in Kinshasa we have never met and asked her if she could give us a 1000$US please. She obviously waited until the money was on her Belgian account but she then gave the money to some other guy in Kinshasa. Another person we had never met who was now walking around with 1000$US of our money in Kinshasa. Shopping around for spare parts based on a list with spare part numbers. (we had. the Toyota EPC on our laptop). He used our money to pay for the parts, pay for the airfreight into Kikwit and holds on to the rest of the money until we come and pick it up later. An amazing amount of trust was involved in these transactions! And all of that thanks to the contacts we created in Lubumbashi. Amazing! Great thanks to Paolo, Erwin, Thièrry & Valerie!
The airplane that flew our parts in was one of those two engined LET L-410's. They have a really bad reputation because of the many crashes they make. Everybody here tries to avoid them as much as possible. One of the latest crashes made the International news (the crocodile crash): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...rks-panic.html
It was now just a matter to get all the parts mounted. As usual, that did not really go as planned. We had ordered a new hub and new bolts to keep the sideshaft in place. But they shipped us the bolts (and the important conic washers) for the Landcruiser 79. Which are different in size from the 75. I was not going to drill my brand new hub to make them fit so we had set out again to find some second-hand bolts. We eventually found a few that fit, it would be good to get us to Kinshasa, but they would have to replaced again in Kinshasa. What a great prospect: even more time to be spent in a greasy workshop!
We still hadn't found decent quality oil. I had really tried my best to find diff oil where it was not explicitly stated "Not for use in cars". The local mechanic said they never change the diff or gearbox oil on new cars. The oil that's put in from the fabric is superior with the oil they can replace it with. They just top up, but never change. When a diff has to be openen, they recycle the original oil.
That brought us on the topic of cars the NGO's and the missions here use. The cars that are deployed in the jungle have a lifespan of no more then 15 to 20.000km. After that they are completely shot. Bodywork, drivetrain, everything. Not surprising really considering the state of the loads and the payloads. Paolo was quite fanatical in his choice for those vehicles: Landcruiser 7x only! The Landcruiser 10* are often used as well, but they don't last on the rough tracks (too much bodywork). He once worked on a project were they had sponsored Mitsubishi's. They were written off after just 2000km.
The teacher and his apprentice.
You know it's time to clean your car when...
Plants start growing on our sidesteps!
Tomorrow would be the big day. Kikwit to Kinshasa can be done in a day, a 6 to 8 hour drive, depending on the weather (and consequently the state of the road). We'd start early as the closer you get to Kinshasa, the dodgier it gets. Not that it's really dangerous, just the usual problem areas that accompany large cities. We just hoped that all the repairs would hold up.
We had already said our goodbyes to everybody we met in Kikwit.
