Adventure of Buying Car Parts

The Adventure of Buying Car Parts

Making even simple purchases in this part of Africa are often a near death experience. What we mean by this is that after going from place to place to place you are dying to find the item, yet it often remains so elusively you will age immeasurably before you find it, if you find it. To ever go into the first store that seems it would have your item and actually find the item is improbable or often impossible. If your list is too long you may actually grow old and die before you find the shop that carries that particular item. Even if you want to buy things that are used all the time by the local people, the experience can still be a harrowing encounter. Take the trip we recently made so we could purchase an oil filer, air filter, some motor oil, and springs for a very popular vehicle in this part of the world. Experience has taught us that these trips usually take much longer than expected, much longer! The stores are often out of the very item you are greatest in need of purchasing. In recent weeks we have found the stores out of prepaid telephone cards, diet coke, diesel fuel, sugar, milk, and various other commodities that a person from the west cannot imagine a major city running out of. One has to wonder who the purchasing person is that is asleep at the wheel so often as to allow this to happen repeatedly.  

Concern Causes Us To Leave Early 

Because of our concern over the possibility of having trouble finding one or more of the items we decide to go to town early, so we can be there the minute the stores open. It is Saturday, and the stores close at noon, so we do not have a minute to waste. We have very little fear about finding the popular oil filter, the air filter, or the oil. It is the rear springs that we have some concern that we might have to check with more than one location before we find them. And so, with some trepidation we gird ourselves for the expedition and head out on another of our travels in the “warm heart of Africa”. In this case we are on the way into the capital city of Lilongwe, population 700,000, so we ca make a few simple car maintenance purchases. What can be so hard with this?

       The dashboard clock indicates it is 8:20 AM. Remember, the purchase list only includes an oil filter, air filter, several quarts of oil, and a set of springs for the rear of a very popular model in this part of the world. Lilongwe is the biggest city of the nation and the capital. If we were home in America this would be about a 20-minute project at a single car parts store, or car dealership.

A Traditional African Trading Center

       By 9 AM we are inching our way through the bumper-to-bumper, person-to-person, traffic in the oldest portion of Lilongwe. Our first stop is “the most reliable shop” in the oldest portion of Old Town. Before we get out of the car let me tell you about Old Town. This is the part of the city that was here before Lilongwe became the capital of Malawi. In fact Old Town was here before Malawi became a country. 

     For many years Lilongwe was Malawi’s second largest city, always trailing the commercial center of Blantyre in the southern part of the nation. But in the past 40 years the population of the capital city has literally “exploded”. In 1977 it was at 98,718, by 1987 it reached 223,318. In 1998 it had nearly doubled to 435,964. In 2008 the figure had nearly doubled again to 866,272, and a year later, in 2009 it was up to 902,388.

Old Town is Really Old

          Today, in Old Town, a sea of street vendors outnumber the stores, and the store fronts are nearly hidden by mop venders, guys carrying car parts (including bumpers) and various other items they are sure you want to buy. All are moving beside and in the street trying to find a buyer (maybe before the owner finds them. There are hub-cap vendors, tomato and carrot vendors, and all other types of commodities including cell phones, cell phone chargers, and a large number hacking cell phone cars that may or may not work when you try to put the time in your unit. Just to be on the safe side I snap the lock on the door and smile back at a guy standing very close to the window smiling in at me. After traveling through the virtual sea of humanity that is milling about the street we reach the most reliable shop, Ngoni Shop # 2. With that name, and since the Ngoni tribe has traditionally been the warrior nation, I wonder if there is a group of warriors inside waiting for the first unsuspecting arrival of the morning. Our mechanic disappears inside to explain our needs; one oil filter, one air filter, several quarts of oil, and the springs for the back of the vehicle. He is gone for some time, and when he exits the store, instead of coming back to the vehicle; he turns to the right and disappears from view toward a second set of shops. It either means he is deserting me, or he has not found what he is looking for in the first shop. I decide in my mind to vote for the later. Probably it is the springs that he cannot find, I decide. In a little while he comes back with success … he has found the air filter. We move our vehicle down the crowded street to a second set of stores. Again, the mechanic disappears inside a dingy looking storefront. I check the lock on the driver side of the vehicle. Secure. Good. We are in the center of the open-air market area, and somehow the crowds have intensified. That is hard to imagine since there were already packed in so tight no one could move faster than the pace of the crowd. Opening the door of a vehicle is now a more pronounced challenge, and to drive through the area will put every door that is opening on both sides of you in serious jeopardy of being torn off in the far too narrow street. 

         While waiting for the driver to return from his scouting trip I scan the crowd. Gaining the eye of a street vendor I extend a request for a copy of “The Nation” newspaper. I carefully hand sixty Kwacha out the slightly cracked window. The exchange is made. Now I can settle in to get a handle on the news. Since I have only looked over three newspapers in the past three months it is strange the way the news still seems so familiar. Politicians are fighting over the budget. The highway department is closing two more roads for road repair. A trial is scheduled of a politician who is being accused of corruption. The local sports team has lost a recent international soccer contest. A water shortage has occurred in two of the trading centers north of us. On the international scene the Middle East is still in turmoil. North Korea is threatened to shoot off more test missiles. Two North African nations are suffering a several famine. The news is the news, is the news. I finish the newspaper from front to back, and then lean back in my seat to watch the various pedestrians moving soundlessly past the front of the car. An occasional horn reminds me of the vast traffic jam that is clambering past the vehicle behind me, while trying to find its way out of the maze called a street.

Mechanic Going from Store to Store

        Behind me and to the left our mechanic is going from store to store looking for the parts. He returns to the car to announce the need for a new location. We are up to 20 stores, and to almost no avail. However, I have caught up with all of the news of the world, and I can also tell anyone where this guy was born, as well as the name of his prospective wife, and a host of other details about him and the part of town we are traveling through.

Try the Expensive Side of Town

          By this time we give up and head back over to the “most expensive” side of town in order to get the parts. Back on the “expensive” side, the place our mechanic avoids like the plague because of its prices we start a systematic search for the parts. No luck. 

          The time is now up to 12:05 and it is too late to attempt to find another store that might have our parts. We have been successful in the purchase of an oil filter. No success on any of the other items. Before leaving this part of town we are able to stop at a Petro station and obtain the oil, but nothing else. 

           We head back. We’ve spent the entire morning and have found just one oil filter and several quarts of oil. All in all though, it has been a rather good time. We did find one of the items we need. We’ll go back on Monday morning and canvass some more of the stores. We’ve said it before, and we will probably say it time and again, “That’s Malawi.”