Rwandan break-down adventure

Two posts in one day, eh?  But this is a story that was quite fun, so I thought I would post it before I forgot all about the excitement!  Today I ventured off to Zaza sector to visit the TTC (Teacher Training College) as another volunteer is based there.  I met Jen at midday and we spent an hour and a half doing exam supervision and talking very quietly at the front of the hall.  Once we were released from our duties, we headed to Jen’s for some lunch.  This was a lovely chick-pea curry made with many tasty ingredients from Jen’s garden.  We also bought some Fanta and Jen had some ice in her freezer compartment (I know – a freezer!  It’s probably the only one in Zaza) so it was a real treat.  Once this was over, we got down to some workshop planning for next week and discussed future plans for work I will do in the schools around the TTC so that there is some consistency for students when they go out on their teaching practice.

I had decided to wait with Jen for an evening lift back to Kibungo in order to spare my spine the very jolting 50min moto ride.  Denis and Stella were on their way with a car.  Yes – a car!  They had hired one for a couple of days to take their son to see some sights.  After a couple of extremely heavy downpours, the car arrived and we had soon piled in to it.  We started off down the bumpy road out of Zaza.  Unfortunately we hit a rock or something and we heard a noise that didn’t sound too healthy.  A few metres further up the road and the car sounded even less happy, so we pulled over to check it out.  Almost immediately, we were surrounded by people, even though we were not in a town or village.  It was dark and here was a car of 5 Mazungus.  Everyone joined in looking under the car and we had some interesting conversation about what to do.  Unfortunately no one was offering to call the AA, but one man knew someone in the next village who was a mechanic.  Denis asked if we could call him.  The man said he could call someone who lived near this man and they could tell him to come.  This sounded like it would not be our best option and Liam (who is an engineer) said that he felt it could be temporarily fixed if we had some wire.  The gathering crowd were asked if anyone had some.  There was a ripple of conversation and people were shaking their heads and then one man stepped forward and said he thought he knew someone who had some wire.  We decided to keep looking through our bags for potential wire fixings.  At one point I was ready to sacrifice my under-wiring, only it was deemed to be not enough.  Then a man appeared from the bushes with a length of electrical cable.  Not bad for a place that has no electricity!

What happened next was one of my all time favourite break-down scenarios.  It was reminiscent of that famous Levis add set in a laundrette...Liam decided that in order to carry out the repairs and still have clean jeans for his safari trip early tomorrow morning, he would have to strip down to his boxers.  Jen and I did not complain at all.  So, next thing off comes his shirt, and then his trousers.  The crowd of on-lookers looked bemused and could not seem to understand why the mazungu ladies were giggling.  So, after much rolling around in the mud and torch holding and general excitement (mostly me and Jen taking photos under the car), Liam managed to rig up a temporary fix to the falling exhaust.  It was with huge relief that we all piled back into the car and continued our journey to Kibungo with frequent lightning flashes guiding the way.