First Adventure...

Not a very creative title, I know. But today was definitely the first of my South African adventures. My roommate (have I described him yet? Another medical student on a year off between 3^rd and 4^th year, here on a Fogarty fellowship) and I, plus a Harvard med student also here to do research for a year linked up with a cardiothoracic surgeon my roommate works with and his brother-in-law to go to an arts festival in Pietermaritzburg, a smaller city about an hour away from Durban. The surgeon had bought us tickets and refused to let us pay so how could we refuse?

Though we both now have cars, we decided my roommate would drive, especially since he’d finally gotten his car insurance squared away this very morning. (Note: This tiny detail will become very important very soon.) The adventure began when we tried to pull out from the parking lot of the hospital where we'd met up with the surgeon and his brother-in-law. We heard an awful grating sound and then, as we pulled out of the parking spot, we realized there was some piece of black plastic funnel pipe thingamajig lying on the ground that had definitely not been there when we'd first pulled into the parking spot. We quickly realized it probably was previously attached to my roommate’s car so I ran out of the car, picked it up, looked at quizzically for a second before my roommate called over to me: “Just chuck it in the backseat…we may need that.” Prophetic words.

As we drove away, we assured ourselves that the thing looked so…cheap, it was probably something pretty non-essential. Boy, were we wrong. It became clear, basically immediately, that something was wrong. The car struggled to transition from first to second gear, with a metallic gurgling sound made all the more ominous by a bad burning smell. That was the first sign we should have stopped. But we were following the other guys so we decided to just go with it and keep going, particularly because the car seemed determined to please us and eventually picked up speed.

The next bad sign was when we stopped to pay a toll and again, the poor car made the sounds and smells of a metallic animal in agony. Yet again, it persevered and we were coasting along when my roommate suddenly goes, “Ummm….the clutch is stuck to the ground…it’s not coming back up. I need to stop.” So we stopped and I kid you guys not, he literally reached down and yanked on the clutch pedal until it seemed to re-engage or something.

Now, I don’t know much (or anything) about cars, but THAT seemed like a really bad sign. I'm pretty sure at this point, all of us were silently wondering, how could that piece of plastic piping be that important and what on earth does it have to do with the clutch??? But, for the last time, we tried to keep going. Five kilometers down the road, smoke started to come out of the hood. That was the point at which all three of us medical students finally realized….this was not a good situation. Game over, please let me out of this thing.

So we pulled over and called the surgeon and his brother-in-law to double back for us, while my roommate tried to contact his insurance company. (See what I mean? Absolutely crucial timing for him finally getting insurance this very morning). After some false starts when two out of three of us ran out of airtime (aka minutes to talk on our cell phones), he managed to get in touch with the insurance company and organize for the car to be towed.

This turned out to be the best idea we had all day because by this time, not only was smoke and that terrible smell literally billowing out from the hood of the car, but a steady stream of some kind of fluid had started leaking out of the car as well. By then I had retreated a good 100 yards or so because I had lost all faith in the car’s ability to keep itself from combusting or something, so I couldn’t really tell whether the fluid was gasoline, water, antifreeze or (fill in the blank…are there other type of car fluids? Clearly not my area of expertise). Regardless, the point was it had fought the good fight and given up. I didn’t blame it. I was in fact, quite proud of it given that it had been trying to tell us to stop since….well, since the moment we started the trip.

In any case, we waited for the tow truck man who showed up an astonishingly short 30 minutes later. The guy was actually really nice so I decided to immortalize him in this blog. (Also, I wanted to take a picture of this whole business because once the hood had stopped smoking and my fear of the car literally blowing up had diminished, I suddenly decided the situation was hilarious. In retrospect, probably not my most sensitive moment given that my roommate was now sadly watching his car get towed away.)

Regardless, after that was sorted, we piled into the back of the surgeon’s sleek and brand-new (as opposed to the above-pictured 15 year old) BMW and off we were. We are clearly not the type to let a little car trouble like huge clouds of smoke, stuck clutches and burnt engine smell mess up a trip. And I'm glad we aren't because the festival itself was a lot of fun! There was live music and several plays going on throughout the night, with many food, craft and jewelry tents. And though we missed the first of the plays we had tickets to see, we did manage to make the second. It was an hour-long, one-man play about…well, that’s up to interpretation. I believe it was a play about the global economic recession and the effect on individuals’ lives. I know what you guys are thinking, "Sounds....thrilling..." But, actually the guy was brilliant. I’m very impressed with anyone who manages to keep a large audience rapt for an hour straight, but on top of that, this guy made us laugh, sometimes simply with the twitch of an eyebrow. As one of my new friends put it, the man has literally perfected every human emotion and action and conveyed it so clearly that all he needed was his own body. Clad in a set of red suspenders attached to dark pants and literally nothing else, he told an intricately symbolic yet somehow enthralling story without props, music, much lighting and sometimes without words. It was, as I said, brilliant.

Good day, I’d say all in all. My roommate might say differently since he’ll have to deal with the consequences of a broken-down car tomorrow…poor guy. Maybe I’ll bake him some pumpkin muffins when we move into the nice flat in a week.

Picture time!

The first is a picture of some of my new friends. From left to right: Adam (my roommate), Zubar (surgeon's brother-in-law) and Lindsey (the other med student on this trip).

The second picture is of a car we saw on the highway. Don't know if you can read the writing on its bumper, but it says, "URGENT BLOOD SAMPLES IN TRANSIT." What we found amusing was not only the fact that such important-sounding samples were being transported in a dinky little car, but that I was able to get this picture because the driver's idea of urgency was to go at oh, about 20 mph. On a highway with a speed limit of about 75 mph.