ZIMBABWE 2010 - Trip Across Africa DAY #18

Bulawayo, Zimbabwe
Thursday, July 15, 2010
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Trip Across Africa DAY #18
Car problems went from bad to worse this morning as we ventured toward the Zimbabwe border. We crawled at around 65 km/hour all the way to the border, with it floored and a trail of white smoke blowing from our Nissan Terrano. At this point, I figured that our injectors were probably jammed up due to the bad fuel, which we presume was most likely some gasoline that was put into our tank back in Namibia. I started wondering if we would even make it into Zimbabwe.
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We pulled over just before the border and turned off the motor. When we started it again, it had a little more horsepower and enabled us to make it through the Zimbabwe border (which took the longest of any we’ve been through in Africa as of yet) and another 120 km to the city of Bulawayo, which is a big city and we figured we could find a mechanic there.

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As we came into Bulawayo, we spotted a small mechanic’s shop claiming to specialize in diesel motors, injectors and pumps. We ventured in and asked how much it would cost. It was an outrageous amount compared to other African countries at $540.00 U.S. to get all we needed done. They no longer use the Zimbabwe dollar here anymore, but use the U.S. dollar or South African Rand. I bartered with the mechanics with our second GPS as we didn’t have the cash to pay for the repairs and ended up only paying $240.00 U.S. in cash (that GPS was supposed to go to Jesse and Tanya to continue to use in Africa and beyond…sorry guys, I’ll have to try to score another one sometime).
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I ended up wrenching on our car with the mechanics all day long, as the others mainly hung out in the car waiting. I really don’t ever trust the mechanics here in Africa, as what I have found most of the time is that they will beat things with hammers when they can’t get something off, and I usually know auto-mechanics better than they do. They didn’t mind me working with them, and they actually knew what they were doing. They have old, ancient pump and injector test benches, and wired our injectors and pump up to them. All of the injectors were clogged and the pump was as well. They rebuilt the pump and put new nozzles in the injectors. I made another 5 new friends with these mechanics and we were all chums by the end of the day.

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We put the whole thing back together, started it up and had a smooth running diesel motor. Praise God! I still want to go over everything tomorrow morning to make sure everything has been tightened correctly. SO…Lord willing, we’ll be off to Great Zimbabwe ruins tomorrow and then head back to Mozambique. We don’t want to spend much time in Zimbabwe as prices for everything here are plain ridiculous! Thank you for all your prayers. I know that the Lord has truly answered them.
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Christian Young