Tires

On our second full day in Malawi Luzu had to get the spare tire on the van fixed. This was the day we drove from Lilongwe to Senga Bay with two visits in the Salima area. As we approached Salima I recall noticing a group of young men at the side of road repairing bicycle and automobile tires. A tire repair shop without walls, so to speak. Our first stop was in the town center of Salima for the ATM and a grocery store.. When we had finished our errands in town, Luzu announced that he needed to get the spare tire on the van fixed, that it would only take an hour. Luzu dropped us off at our first stop of the day, the Salima Aids Support Orginazation (SAS0) before driving off to get the tire taken care.

Well before we ready to leave SASO, Luzu reappeared with the van. When we were done, those of us who were riding in the van piled in. Don and his wife and his two passengers got into the car and we were off. Luzu stopped at the same “tire repair shop without walls that I had noticed on our approach to Salima, paid the young men, got the spare and reattached the spare to the back of the van,

I did not think about getting the spare tire fixed at the time. After all, no matter where you live keeping your spare in good repair is a common sense. After all, no one wants to be caught by the side of the road with a flat tire and an unusable spare.

It took a visit to my mechanic the other day to have him repair a flat tire to get me thinking about what it might be like to be caught in remote Malawi on an unpaved road with out a good spare. Not fun. Even with a good spare, it might be difficult to jack up the car on a badly rutted dirt road. Nothing like that happened.

To be honest, it was Ed’s – my mechanic – interest in Malawi that gave me the idea to write about getting the spare tire on the van fixed. Ed, if you are reading this, this is for you.