Thursday, December 14, 2006

Our new car

We arrived in Lilongwe on September 18th, knowing full well that we would have to purchase a car. Lilongwe is a fairly spread out city, and public transport is in rickety, crammed (and often B.O. stinky) matolas. Minibusses, to you and me. The alternative is to take a taxi, which gets expensive.

We had a time limit of four months - when my duty-free status would run out.

So why has it taken so long for us to finally purchase a car? Don't ask. I will get a migraine. It's whole other post and I'm not going there.

Anyway, after months of tears and recriminations, my husband finally found a car. If I sound like I'm abdicating responsibility here it's only because:

1) I work very hard every day, in a high-pressure environment

2) He takes naps and reads books all day

So it was his job.

I haven't taken a picture of the car, but it looks a bit like this:


Now, the problem is that it is taking forever to clear customs. Once that is done, we still have to do a police clearance, get insurance, and register the vehicle. And we want all this to be done by Tuesday next week so that we can drive off around the country with my sister, who will be visiting from the U.S. So keep your fingers crossed that things will go well today, and that I can start sleeping at night again!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

So this is a brand new car that you have imported? Whence?
How much is petrol in Malawi, and do you have to remove the windshield wipers to stop them from being stolen? Are you able to drive it into other countries without much of a hassle?

Anonymous said...

I think it looks cute. I wouldn't want to be driving it between two semis on the icy roads of Montana in Winter, but hey, Malawi is different, right? Although I have heard that the mosquitos are the size of semis...

Gwyneth said...

About the car - we bought it from a dealer in Lilongwe who imports cars from Japan, so we were able to buy it duty-free.

Crime here isn't so bad - well, that's another day's post, really. But car theft is not common. Apparently our neighboring countries are not as nice - a friend recently had the bull-bar stolen off of his car as he popped into the immigration office passing over into Zambia!