Where do I start? I don’t know. Let’s ask. Hey, do you have
any idea how to buy a car in Kenya? Sure, I know a guy… you should talk to
“insert name here, almost always James or John”. Thus began my search for a
lil’ four-wheel drive to carry me across the rough dirt roads of Suba.
The first question is of course: Do you really need a car?
The answer: Yes. Yes. Yes.
The explanation: I live in a place called Suba which is a
pretty remote area (three hours of bus, then 1 hour by ferry from the nearest
city, Kisumu). The roads are almost all sprawling rugged dirt roads. I think
there are only about six cars in this place and about 100 motorcycles (I
exaggerate, but only slightly). My work sites are spread out all over this
area, several are about a 3-hour drive away. But the 3-hour drive isn’t so bad.
What is challenging is that those three hours take 8-hours. The project
vehicles have their routes each day and whoever needs to stop on that route
jumps aboard. Which means that we have to stop and wait all along the way for
everyone to finish their business - things like dropping off and picking up
labs & medicines, training staff, etc. So I leave my house at 7am and get
to my site for the day somewhere between 11am and 3pm. I get somewhere between
30 min to two hours at the site (usually after all the women have left), then
head back (stopping again), and reach home around 7pm. Twelve hours of
transport for 30min-2hrs of work at the site. Hmmmm. I’m pretty understanding
about waiting in Africa. That’s just part of working here. But there are limits
to my waiting abilities. So the choice arises: to buy a car or a motorcycle? At
first, I figured I’d just learn how to ride a motorcycle, put another team
member on the back, and head off to our rural clinics. Then I thought a little
bit longer about potential consequences of riding a motorcycle over bad roads,
6 hours a day, for 7 months. Hmmmm. I’m pretty adventurous, but again I have my
limits and I’ve seen the results of motorcycle accidents – not nice. Thus I am
left with the option of purchasing a car.
The next questions are: What do you want and what is your
budget?
The answer: I want something that will not leave me stranded
in the middle of the bush and will not break the bank.
The realization: It’s difficult to find both. See, cars here
tend to be about twice as expensive as cars in the U.S. because of importation
taxes (literally doubling the price of the car!). My initial budget literally
doubled after I spend several days looking at cars in my budget range… all of
which looked like they would either die suddenly in a burst of exhaust and duct
tape or slow to a crawl and simply refuse to move another inch.
So how do you buy a car in Africa? Well, I think I should
start by asking, “How do you buy a car anywhere?” I literally have no idea what
I’m doing. I’ve never bought a car anywhere… in the U.S., in Africa, on Mars.
And I know nothing – read NOTHING – about cars. I wonder how much I can fake
this one…
Fortunately, I was linked up with a great Kenyan mechanic
who knew how to find, insure, register, fix, etc a car. And then I turned to my
two favorite resources: my dad and the internet. Between the two, I figured out
a few of the things I’m supposed to look at and looked at them in earnest!
You should see the looks on these care salesmen’s faces when
this little white girl plops on the dirt to look under the car, opens up the
hood and questions the repairs (it’s hard to miss green metallic slime seeping
out of a radiator or duct take holding EVERY WIRE together). I can’t tell you
much, but I can rate the tire tred, feel the lack of any shocks, guess that the
suspension is off, and get worried that an engine is going to die going up a
hill. I can now tell you something about the engine based on the color smoke
spitting from the exhaust (granted it’s about a two word diagnosis for each
color, parroting what my father told me to look for over the phone), and can
tell you three different ways to raise the car a couple inches to get better
ground clearance. Probably just enough to throw a bit of vocabulary around and
look like I know nothing about what I’m talking about to anyone who knows
anything about cars. But I’m as proud as can be.
And I found a car. A 2002 Toyota Rav4 with 4WD that I’m
praying will get me to and from the bush for the next several months. His name
is Mbuzi. So I’ve been telling my friends back in Suba “Nilienda Nairobi
kununua Mbuzi” (“I went to Nairobi to buy a goat”) which baffles them all. He’s
my sleek, sliver, little goat.
Let the driving adventures begin!
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