September 17 2009 - All is well!

We were not able to send our last e-mail on the 9th as planned. We had a bit more excitement than we planned on. One thing is for sure, don’t leave home without a meaningful sum of cash on hand, and don’t forget to have prayer. You’ll see…

Kumbo is about 40km / 24 miles from Lassin. This means that one should plan on taking between 2.5 and 3.5 hours to go and the same to return; 5 – 7 hours of your day will be spent traveling. Be sure that these hours are in the daylight. Charles and Felicia left us to return to their respective homes on the 8th. They nearly did not make it out of here. Why? Well, it had been raining generously and the big hill 1.5km from here was slick as … can be. The clay becomes so slick that even walking was tricky. We had been traveling together, but after watching them struggle heroically and somewhat dangerously up that hill, I decided to wait a day before making the trip in our little 4WD Toyota Tercel.

Why go to Kumbo? Well, Charles and I discovered more expenses for us than I had planned on and I was going to run out of money within one month or less. Lassin has NO modern conveniences like ATM machines or Western Union or MoneyGram. To get to the nearest ATM would require a 2 day trip (1 day each direction- daylight travel only, remember). To get to Western Union required a trip to Kumbo, climbing steep hills, crossing long mud puddles, negotiating long deep ruts in the dirt road, and enjoying hours of beautiful scenery (rugged green forested mountains, farm land on hill and valley, mud brick thatched homes, small villages with even smaller front porch ‘markets’, and many friendly folks on foot).

We needed a guide. In the 40 km there must be 2 sign posts. Drivers must know the way, and other ways in case ‘the way’ is out. Our new co-teacher at the school, Naphtali, agreed to guide us. He sat front right. We had prayer and headed out. I did not hear the radiator fan running constantly (or even intermittently) as it usually did. “Oh well, it’s a cool morning. It will be nice not to have that thing running.” (The fan had burned up, literally melted, the day before. Something about the engine and the fan colliding during a bad experience with a ‘pot hole’ or something- there were so many.) Murphy was sitting in the back seat. The radiator temp gauge began to rise determinedly. There was little that I could do except keep the speed high enough for the passing air to cool the little engine.

You know, those hydraulic clutches are really smooth. So smooth in-fact that there did not seem to be much pressure from the clutch. Yes, on top of cooling problems, my clutch was failing fast. Shifting down for hills, pot holes, curves or chickens was not an option because I had to keep my speed up, but I would eventually have stop for the police check point. Then what? It turns out that you can start one of these little cars in first gear, take the RPM up a ways, ease off the gas, shift into neutral, and as the engine continues to slow, ease it into second gear; all without a clutch. Ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

This was an amazing trip- whizzing along through winding hilly roads. Sure glad that we can at least honk the horn to notify other drivers that we’re coming. This horn button can’t be broken. Maybe the horn fell off at that rut that I hit amazingly hard! Whatever the case, there is no horn either.

I remember a long section of “single lane” road with 4 foot tall grass on either side, ruts, and rocks. No horn, 4000 RPM in 2nd gear, no way to pull over or start up after stopping should another car have come along and no other car did come by UNTIL there was a turn-out just big enough to use (the only turn out for a km), didn’t even have to change my speed.

We got to Kumbo in 2 hours. We bought hydraulic fluid and had a clutch again. Limped 100 meters down the road to an automotive electrical repair facility. Within 15 minutes of arriving, the front right tire was completely flat. The fellow sold me a used radiator fan, installed it in my old bracket, cleaned my radiator out, found a fellow to fix the flat (valve stem again- 2nd tire to experience this). I discovered a broken front motor mount (probably the reason the fan took the beating), he found a fellow to replace the motor mount (used mount of course- new are impossible to find). These repairs took the ‘whole day’; fortunately Naphtali watched the car while Carol and I walked ‘up town’ to find the Western Union office. After a fairly complete search of the town, we stopped in at MoneyGram. They informed us that there was ‘no W. U. in town’. Just then, I spied a customer of very fair skin. This fellow named Christopher was a nurse who was helping the Kumbo Catholic hospital make its cardiac unit ‘state of the art’. He happily gave us directions to the W.U. office, told us that they closed by 4 PM, where to find a taxi and how much to pay for the ride. The taxi took us to the office by 3 PM.

The man at the W.U. office was a bit gruff. No problem, we can deal with this. After about 15 minutes of questions and waiting, he warmed up and we began to visit. He asked the reason for our presence in Cameroon (privacy is a myth- just tonight, Carol and I were outside for a few minutes, returned inside to find the school uniform tailor sitting at our dining table waiting for us to come back). It turned out that the W.U. man REALLY appreciated missionaries! He facilitated our cash transfer (only took 60 minutes), he offered us FREE P.O. box service, and he encouraged us in our work here. After that day, I really appreciated the encouragement!