High Clearance is Essential
July 18
Our plans for the year in terms of transport?
Our plans for the year in terms of transport?
Minibuses are everywhere, and although they’re not the most reliable, we figured between these and walking we would cope. Maybe a bicycle or two to help out for longer distances. Either way, not having a car would not be a big issue. Perhaps we were a little scarred from having sold our last car in a pub on the side of the highway for $200 after it blew up earlier this year in rural Australia.
‘Now, you’ll need to buy a car,’ Liz finished with, after our tour of the hospital only one day in the country.
As if we weren’t shocked enough with the hospital we would be working in for the coming year, we were now told we would be spending somewhere around four thousand pounds (yes, the British variety) on a car – not what we had planned with the money we had brought over. However, we very quickly learnt that almost every expat has a vehicle here given how difficult, and often unsafe, it is to move around at night. Added to this, my on-call responsibilities mean that I have to be mobile any time, and QE isn’t exactly a stone’s throw from the city centre.
We quickly learnt that a four wheel drive, or at least a high clearance vehicle, is something of a necessity. Not so much for the driving outside town, but more for the cavernous potholes in Blantyre and its surrounds. That and avoiding an automatic, given the complete lack of any parts for servicing the car should you run into transmission problems. Oh, and make sure you have a mechanic check the car out before you buy it. Two days in we had bought one. By the following Wednesday, less than a week in the country, we were driving around in our new low clearance two wheel drive automatic with nothing more than an assurance from the guy who sold it to us that it was a good car.
‘Now, you’ll need to buy a car,’ Liz finished with, after our tour of the hospital only one day in the country.
As if we weren’t shocked enough with the hospital we would be working in for the coming year, we were now told we would be spending somewhere around four thousand pounds (yes, the British variety) on a car – not what we had planned with the money we had brought over. However, we very quickly learnt that almost every expat has a vehicle here given how difficult, and often unsafe, it is to move around at night. Added to this, my on-call responsibilities mean that I have to be mobile any time, and QE isn’t exactly a stone’s throw from the city centre.
We quickly learnt that a four wheel drive, or at least a high clearance vehicle, is something of a necessity. Not so much for the driving outside town, but more for the cavernous potholes in Blantyre and its surrounds. That and avoiding an automatic, given the complete lack of any parts for servicing the car should you run into transmission problems. Oh, and make sure you have a mechanic check the car out before you buy it. Two days in we had bought one. By the following Wednesday, less than a week in the country, we were driving around in our new low clearance two wheel drive automatic with nothing more than an assurance from the guy who sold it to us that it was a good car.
In saying that, the 'Silver Stallion', our rather sporty little Toyoto Marino, seems to get us everywhere. It was about half the price of a high clearance vehicle, guaranteed by the head of one of Malawi’s biggest NGOs for free repairs for any problems within three months, is very petrol economical (a rather expensive commodity here) and has only seen seventy thousand kilometers. Plus, any weekends that we’re heading out on terrible roads we can always borrow a 4WD from friends. Well, at least these were the thoughts we assuaged ourselves with as we scraped our way across Blantyre’s obscenely high speed bumps the day after we bought it!
Buying the car was, of course, the easy part – the real headache comes with registering it. Zoological, chaotic, disorganised, dysfunctional, inept, illogical. All words that were clearly designed to describe the otherwise indescribable mess that is the Malawian Road Traffic Authority in Blantyre. ‘Pack a picnic lunch,’ was the general advice on registering your car here… couldn’t have hit the nail on the head better. Let’s just say we’re not exactly looking forward to organising our annual Certificate of Fitness (car roadworthy) in January.
