Oh Lord won't you buy me...

...a Mercedes Benz? Not one like Pam’s...you’d be better off with a horse and cart! On Tuesday I was finally feeling better (apart from the cough) and we had to go to Kigali to get the car fixed so we decided it was about time I did some driving. So, (remembering that they drive on the right hand side of the road over here) I had been driving for about 15mins and was just getting used to taking my right hand off the steering wheel to change gear when Pam decided it was a good idea to throw her phone at me as it was ringing and she thought it might be for me...with one hand on the phone, and one hand on the steering wheel I was incapable of dealing with the sensory overload...and I drove a bit too fast into a rather large pothole that had loomed without warning! The Ruhengeri to Kigali road has got much worse since we were here before and there are now some killer potholes which are extremely difficult to get around or through with a low-down Mercedes. Well, there was a big crash as we hit it...but it seemed that I’d got away with it. However, a few minutes down the road, I said to Pam that the car didn’t feel right and that I thought we had a puncture. She got out and looked, and said no everything was fine. So we carried on...and ten seconds later the front of the car collapsed over the right wheel with an almighty crunch. Immediately people came to help, and someone jacked the car up and took the wheel off...exposing sheared off metal...something was no longer attached to the rest of the car...and it became clear that we weren’t going anywhere! Of course by this time there was a huge crowd of people come to watch, and we just had to phone Nathan and get him and his brother to come to us – thank goodness we were no further from Ruhengeri than 15mins! We stood and waited for what seemed like hours, we were even joined by an entire school load of children who came running across the fields in their school break! They soon ran back again when the man who had taken the wheel off waved a long stick at them menacingly! We’d given him some money and he had decided he was going to stay and protect us, even though he didn’t speak a word of English. Actually there were quite a number of people who stopped to help – people who knew Pam, or one group with a blue truck who offered to put the car on the back of the truck...heaven knows how they would have managed that given the back of the truck wasn’t even as long as the car! So we were quite well looked after. Eventually Nathan arrived and sent us back to town with Eben, his brother. He had brought a mechanic with him who took one look and then came back with us to fetch a soldering iron while Nathan stayed with the car. Nathan ended up staying with the car on the road until 6pm that evening when it was finally fixed and could be driven back to Ruhengeri! I felt pretty guilty about the whole thing, but at least it only cost £20 to fix plus £10 for the Eben who drove backwards and forwards all day.

So, yesterday we set off to Kigali again, and actually made it this time. The car needed a metal plate attached to the bottom of it to cover the oil tank – about a month ago the oil leaked out because the bottom of the car hit the ground. So we picked up a very smelly mechanic and took him to his workshop where he showed us this rusty old piece of metal that he wanted to charge us £100 for! We got him down to £56, and took him and his lump of metal to a road where everyone seemed to be selling car parts. The car was driven up onto two very precarious ramps – one for each wheel – and wedged up there with stones as the hand-break is broken. We’d been told it was a 15min job...that would be 15 African minutes...we stood in the searing heat for nearly an hour! We had to stay with the car, to make sure that no other parts were taken out of the engine so we stood outside in the heat of the day and watched them bash this metal into shape to make it fit under the car. We had an interesting conversation with a local lady while we were waiting – she said we were the wrong colour to be standing in the sun...she herself was a Muslim and it is Ramadan at the moment, so she was standing in the sun, with her head covered with a black wrap, not having eaten or drunk anything all day...I’m amazed they can cope without water in that heat – it really is so much hotter in Kigali. Well, the metal plate hasn’t fallen off yet, which is just as well as we didn’t get back til 10.50pm last night after we had achieved all our errands. Going to Kigali is always an adventure!!

I’m just sitting in Pam’s office typing this and talking to Nathan, and about ten of the children have come in to say hello, and pick up books and move things round the office and bang on the drum in the corner! Nathan has gone to play football with them, and I’ve shooed the last few out!! There is one little orphan called Amille and she attached herself to me on the first day. She is quite a cute girl...but she also has a rather naughty side...and she doesn’t do what she is told very often! She doesn’t talk to me much (I’m not sure how good her English is), but she definitely likes hugs. I told her, and Kashia (a little white girl from Tanzania) the story of Jack and the beanstalk yesterday, because they had picked up some “magic beans” off the floor. I was just trying to remember what happened at the end...when thankfully the bell went and they ran off for snacks!

Now I must go and email Emirates...I still haven’t sorted out my return flight and went to three different places to see if they could change it for me yesterday, but there is no representative for Emirates here and Rwandair wouldn’t sort it for me. It seems I will have to get up at 3am, spend all day sitting in Nairobi airport, travel for five hours and then spend all night sitting in Dubai airport...arriving home at 13.00 the following day...what a nightmare!