[9] things forgotten, part 1

(Pre-P.S. It is November again, and I, along with many cool people whose blogs can be found by clicking on the last word of this sentence, am writing something every day during NaBloPoMo.)

Many, many are the times that I wish I had a blog when I lived in Rwanda. There is so much that I have forgotten because I never wrote it down.

My friend S.'s car has no dashboard lights and last night, as I was designated-drivering her to her house and wondering aloud on the highway just how fast we were going since I could not see the speedometer, she told me that there is something wrong with the wiring, not the fuses, and I remembered how my Prado's electrical system went batty a couple of times. I was driving through Gitarama once, on my way to Kigali, when the fuel gauge suddenly plummeted. I had two tanks on the Prado, so I flipped the tanks, and the second one plummeted, too. I assumed that the car was leaking fuel (which, when I think about it, is silly - it's unlikely that BOTH tanks would start leaking at the same time on a perfectly smooth tar road), and turned around and went back to the nearest petrol station, where I added some diesel to the tank, which was not, in fact, empty.

By the time I got to Kigali, the entire truck had gone insane. Not only was the fuel gauge vacillating wildly between empty and full, the lights on the dashboard were not working, nor the radio. In addition, the blinkers did not work (the headlights did, fortunately), and the horn did not work. These dual losses were a near-disaster in a country where blinkers (they are called indicators in East Africa) and horns are the primary method of communicating with the cars, people, and animals with whom one shares the road. Car wants to pass you? Indicator, on the curb side if it's okay for them to pass; on the inside if not okay for them to pass. Person or animal darting in front of you? One little hoot of the horn will do it.

I generally drove with my right hand over the horn when it wasn't in use shifting gears. One or two little hoots to politely alert someone that I was coming, sustained hoots to warn that death was imminent. Without the horn, I felt totally vulnerable, especially driving in Kigali-ville. I took the back way out to a restaurant that night, 'round past the Ministries and up the back side of the central hill, hoping for fewer pedestrians who I could not warn of my passing.

The Toyota dealership (on speed-dial in my phone by the end of my two years) fixed things the next morning. Whew.