POLITE NOTICE: NO ALTERNATOR, NO MOVE

IN JULIA'S WORDS

A corner on our block in Nairobi

It’s a very cute thing about Kenyan public notices: they’re all headed “Polite Notice”, and probably would be if the message was “Take one step further and you’ll be beheaded, shrinking dick”. We’re getting very familiar with such polite notices here in Nairobi, stuck as we are up a pitted African road with a car without an alternator.

Our merry plan to conquer our necessary admin (getting Rehana’s meds, a dentist, a car service and new tyres) in Nairobi in less than a week fizzled to a halt, as did our alternator last Thursday. Boldly we had sought out two new tyres in the jammed heart of Nairobi, after a visit to a downtown dentist (Rehana’s teeth has turned orange thanks to her TB meds, she was looking too authentically Ethiopian for comfort). 

Of course, a mechanical issue came up at the tyre dealers when the dastardly device needed to release the spare tyre from beneath the car broke, and we had to go to another dealer in the kidneys of Nairobi to get it fixed. [I say “of course”, because it’s a fact that any given attempt to tick off all on any given list will generate a whole new list that was never originally considered. Like when you get someone in to clean your carpets and they manage to smash a garden lamp on the way in and leave magnificent scrape marks on your newly painted walls, fo’ zample.]

So off to the traffic-jammed industrial area we drove, to another branch of the tyre dealers. We gave the broken tool to a mechanic to fix and I decided to check the tyre pressure on our two, very handsome new BF Goodrich All-terrain carboots. This required a 10 metre drive to a pump. Simple as a pimple this seemed – but it turned out to be a bridge too far. Because, although the car started, it wouldn’t idle and cut out as soon as I took my foot off the gas.

The tyre people brought out their battery testing device and diagnosed a failing alternator.

It was hot and the week had been a mission, which is when such news tends to make the head fall and shoulders slump. Especially when it’s – A G A I N – the AAALTERNAAATOOORRRR! Because MAAAN have we D U U U U N the alternator. In fact, we’ve been under the threat of car power failures – or is that load shedding? – almost from the start of our trip.

Our own profound ignorance of everything about our battery system was definitely behind our stumbling appreciation of the limits of power storage when we just started out in Mabibi. Then in the second week of June in Ngara, northern Malawi, when our fridge declined to work, a dying battery was our conclusion.  A few days later in Mbeya, Tanzania, we seemed to resolve the problem by replacing the main battery.

We went on for about two months from there without any power failures, if a few brownouts, until that out-and-out failure on 16 August in the midst of the vast vistas of sandland called Sibiloi National Park, west-northern of Kenya. And then, the terrible limp we had in Mike’s batteries’ care all the way from there to Arba Minch, where Terror Lekota’s look-alike Mamush eventually found a stop-gap solution with an alternator (he called it the “dynamo”) that wasn’t exactly right but worked. Mostly. For the next 50 days.

So when our alternator once again ceased to be a dynamo in Nairobi, we were referred to a garage some blocks away from the tyre centre in the industrial area. We trudged off amidst the hot traffic’s growl to Alfa Motors. It looked credible enough; Mr Singh the Main Mechanic in Alfa’s workshop insisted we drive our halting car back to them, he’d take a look. 
We trudged back through the dust and fumes to where it had failed a few blocks away, and I gritted my teeth and worked the revs while taking any perhaps-gap in the unbroken clutter of traffic so that I wouldn’t have to stop and therefore stall. We only stalled once, and booked the BRC into Alfa Motors – 4x4 experts with a Toyota parts centre in the showroom. The portents looked good.

Who could ask for anything more than Mr Singh?

Right now, exactlyprecisely when we’re getting BRC back is not definite. Mr Singh confirms it needs a new alternator. But being 20 years old, a huge engine, and petrol, such alternators are not to be found behind every Acacia.
In fact, they’re almost nowhere in sub-Saharan Africa at all. Not at Toyota dealers in Kenya, Uganda, Botswana, Namibia, or Zambia, anyway. There was doubt that there was one in South Africa (and therefore we’d have to order one from Japan, and work out what to do with up to a month’s wait).
But Dear Prudence, the supersleuth from Outsurance who’s working on our claim (how smart was that to take out Out in Africa insurance?!?), hunted down what appears to be the alternator we need. It’s been a week of hit-and-miss getting it here, but as of Friday 19^th October, it’s apparently been with DHL.

My fondest hope, as I now tap, is that this absolutelyright alternator is winging its efficient way to Alfa Motors, Industrial area, Nairobi, Kenya. And, one hour after he receives it, Mr Singh efficiently slips it in to BRC’s failed middle as effortlessly as a fool on a banana. [This will have to be on Tuesday, Monday being Mahujaa – or Heroes – day, marking 50 years of Kenya’s independence from Britain]. 

BRC’s engine roars BRC-like back into life as if it is impatient to be on its way on its spanking handsome new carboots, and Mr Singh calls us to collect it urgently less it uses its bullbar for uses other than fending off bulls. It’s raring to be off, just like we are. 
Then we whisk past the shops and stock up, before rolling with fine music in our ears and the earth unfolding behind our windows towards Uganda. And only ever think of an alternator again as a very beautiful piece of machinery with its gleaming copper coil innards and shapely thick-metal casing.

Until then, Rehana and I are hunkering down at Angaza guesthouse. It’s the same guesthouse we stayed in the first time around in Nairobi, mainly because it’s cheapish and centralish. And because the innkeeper is Ruth, and she’s very groovy.

We don’t have a car, and we don’t care to partake of the jerk-‘n-rattle sardine-can busses and taxis which pass as public transport (sound familiar?), so our last few days have been enforced inertia. In some ways, it’s very ok.
Our Waiting Room in Angaza guesthouse has a TV with DSTV which includes cricket coverage from everywhere. Our bed is quite comfortable on which we loll as indolent bedbugs and stare at India v Australia in T20 and ODI, the Cobras and the Knights in the local SA competition, SA being humbled by Pakistan in a test in Abu Dhabi. The loo works, as does the shower, the weather is fine.

Many things are reminiscent of Joburg here. The Jacaranda’s purple framed by thunder-brooding and puff clouds that hardly move in the hot, blue-rich sky; the plumes of traffic pollution and obscene driving from decrepit taxis; slick private hospitals with urban health specialists in droves while at the nearby state hospital the ill lie down under trees to await their turn; pamphlets from Nigerian traditional healers slapped onto lamp and other roadside posts offering “Love Portions”, and magic to reclaim Lost Things and Solve Politics; restaurants (some also in the remaining malls) offer the range of safe tasties so loved at home, from Italian to Indian to a fat ‘ol steak); English is mostly understood.

Enough to make me adore Nairobi, or feel crippingly homesick? Ja well fine, NO.

IN REHANA'S WORDS

We are stuck. With our car out of commission all our plans have come to naught. We should be in Uganda, inhaling Lake Victoria’s soft air. Instead, we’re in Nairobi, sucking in foul clouds of black diesel fumes. Some days we’re quite resigned to our fate, on others we rail against its cruelty.

Its not the worst time to be in Nairobi. Its purple jacaranda canopy makes it as familiar as home. As do the car alarms and the hadeda calls in the greyness of dawn.

We’re at Angaza Guest House again (we stayed here when we were in Nairobi two months ago). Our room is en suite with a not smelly toilet and a clean shower but has an awful arch of exposed concrete where wiring was installed and paint not bought to finish the job.

Check out those thumbs: twiddle dee, stuck are we

We’re on holiday, lying in bed all day is completely justified. Our recent travails – my health and Big Red Car’s – were tough on both of us. Travelling is hard work; we have an unexpected break. No tent to erect, no meals to concoct. Our dirty washing is handed in to Ruth at reception and collected a day later, ironed and all.

We have a television with DSTV at a time when South Africa is playing a test series against Pakistan; India’s taking on Australia and the local 50-over contest has begun (for the uninitiated, that’s cricket). For Julia, there’s also the climax of the Currie Cup and loads of international rugby. We have several movie channels to surf.

On some days, particularly when India is firing on all cylinders and there’s a good indie movie to watch, I can sink into our wide, soft bed with a soporific smile. But we’ve discovered – a mere week after perfecting the DSTV remote clutch – that some days there can be nothing to watch on many channels.

I haven’t continued the routine of afternoon naps, but I sink into sleep quite early and emerge 10 to 14 hours later. Both of us have not lost our late-morning sleepability, I’m glad to report. We’re putting in the hours before we revert to our camping habits of up at sun heats canvas, which can sometimes be very early.

Our current address is very convenient. We’re on the cusp of the CBD, an easy walk downhill but a distance back home in the afternoon heat. The Yaya mall, a mere 2km or so away, offers all we might need, including the Saffron restaurant whose long menu is a joy to behold. 

The pavements on the way to the mall are hot and holey and blasted with a black fug of bus, taxi and car fumes. We’re offsetting our travel carbon footprint by swallowing a good portion of pollution daily, no need to plant a tree when we get home.

Swallowing smog 

Sometimes I forget that I am sick and I’m puzzled by my sudden weakness. I now recognise the symptoms of over-exertion, it took hold while we were walking through the Bale Forest and along the slopes of Mt Kenya.
A flutter arrives in my chest. I feel a hatch slamming down to seal my constricting throat. My shallow breaths quicken. Each inhalation is taken with a noisy gasp that disappears only when I establish a fresh rhythm of measured breaths.

I haven’t experienced that for a while, not once since our fortnight in Nairobi. Our daily constitutional to the mall and back is short enough and always punctuated by a rest while we have a meal or a drink at a restaurant. 

The Nairobi Hospital is our immediate neighbour, there's only a low fence separating it from Angaza. With so much free time on our hands, Jules and I spent most of a day there while I got examined from head to toe: blood tests, X-rays and more.
Strange bulgy lumps were travelling down my veins on one arm. Jules and I were both puzzled, then worried. So we took ourselves off to our neighbourhood private hospital and went to casualty. The young, superprofessional doctor was puzzled. He had no idea what was causing the lumps so he sent me to the lab for a battery of tests.
I have my X-rays and an eight-page report from the lab. There's nothing else wrong, I only have TB. The doctor, and I, think the lumps are caused by my veins still protesting the drips that tore into them two months ago.
There’s no need for any fretting, everything’s fine and getting better.

Best neighbour for a sickie

We couldn’t have chosen a better place than Nairobi for a breakdown. We’re quite comfortable in a middle class part of town and our car is at a Toyota specialist. Best of all, we’ve got a policy with Outsurance that covers mechanical breakdowns. 

Why am I not enjoying a time out in bed when that was guaranteed to make me happy in Joburg? Why do I often catch Julia literally twiddling her thumbs in the twitchiest way possible?

We are both itching to be on our way. Our Ugandan visas, hard-won from a very stroppy woman months ago in Pretoria, are expiring in our passports. Nairobi’s lovely enough but we’ve had enough. We’ve seen all we can within walking distance and metered taxi rides are extortionate.

We spent most of a day at the art museum

We are both blessed and cursed with mostly-reliable broadband. When we’re not staring at the television we’re glued to the smaller screen of our laptops. We’ve been reading newspapers every day – online and in print – and we’re appalled at how badly they’re written and how poorly conceived many stories are. 

The Westgate mall coverage is close to pathetic. The politicians either talk drivel or are evasive and the reporters are getting nowhere close to the truth. Reading Kenya’s columnists make South Africa’s worst appear erudite and intellectual. Their attempts to take positions on the International Criminal Court’s prosecution of President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto are a garbled mess.

For an hour or two we were gripped by the race row at City Press newspaper, but then we were horrified. I can’t see how the relationship between editor and staff is going to be rebuilt and I still fail to see the charms of letting it all hang out on Twitter. 

Kenya’s celebrating its 50^th year of independence today, and is completely tangled in race politics. People attempt to defend voting for politicians indicted on charges of crimes against humanity on the grounds that they had to support “their” men. 
They point out that this year they didn’t hack their neighbours to death with machetes on the way home from the polls, why does the ICC want to dwell on the past? Most Kenyans tell us what tribe they were born into within minutes of meeting them, and what makes them superior to others. They all only vote for "their" politicians. Almost makes our politics seem mature.

The feathers and the beads are charming. The Samburu and Turkana raiding each other with AK47s to amass livestock for lobola is frightening and deathly. The Maasai expecting a lion to be killed before manhood is attained is dangerous and will damage Kenya's high-end tourism industry. Mzungu pay a lot of money to see lion. The fact that people of different tribes seldom contemplate intermarriage in this day and age is pathetic.

It is time to move on. After 50 years of politicians favouring only their tribal communities, Kenya needs to work towards a post-racial future (as Ferial Haffajee would coyly name it). And we need to move west.
I'm on holiday, dammit! I shouldn't be reading the news. Look how irritated I am! I've been reading the news every day for 21 days straight and I'm frazzled. It's time to go stare at a lake.