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Roaming Kiwi

Bush Mechanics in Lesotho and Namibia

Whilst being laid up here in Walvis Bay I have time to catch up on Man vs Land Rover. We have had a few issues of late, requiring professional intervention (shiny new head) as well as some of my traditional “just get it working again” medicine.

Viscous fan – in a nutshell, this stopped working efficiently, causing overheating on the mountain passes in Lesotho. I hadn’t considered this as a cause (the fan had only about 30k on it), so thanks to Paul at The Centre in Durban for the idea. Chatting/swearing about how to lock the fan mechanism in the campground (sorry mate, I didn’t get your name!) let to the revelation that people in a Jeep had tried to use epoxy, but the heat killed it pretty quickly. “Aha!” thought I, i’ll drill some channels and slap in a few self tappers. It worked flawlessly, problem solved until he fan was replaced back in Durban with a shiny new one.

Roofrack leg – back in Europe, the captive nut in one roofrack leg failed, necessitating a quick bodge with a nut and bolt. Not ideal, so I bought a new leg in Joburg and fitted it. Naturally I didn’t torque it correctly, so it vibrated loose here in Namibia (new rattle detected and identified, problem sorted in Solitaire whilst hopping around on one leg waiting for my knee to start working again (see previous post).

Light relay – whilst driving back in the dark from Dune 45 to the campground, we lost our high beam headlights. Inconvenient (as there was game around) but not the end of the world as we have VisionX lamps on the bumper (with fog covers, but better than nothing). I have identified the fault as a failed relay in our Boomslang light harness, an easy fix once I can get on the roof to my spares box (or talk Margaret into fossicking around).

Lost suspension bolt – this one was a bit more serious. Whilst juddering along the most corrugated road on earth, one of the rear shock absorber mounting bolts vibrated out, and we didn’t immediately notice (the juddering was that bad). A few km later we stopped for a breather, and something made me check the shocks… the shock mount on the chassis had been bent off at nearly a right angle to where it should be, the shock was dented and its dust cover ripped off, and there is a gig shiny dent in the floor where the shock had been hammering it. In true bush mechanic fashion much swearing was deployed, buying time for a solution to be dreamed up before family meltdown occurred.

Margaret was sent down the road with a walkie talkie to search for the bolt (handy having a runner available) while I attacked the chassis mount with my trusty landy-hammer (copper mallet, good for hitting sensitive things really hard and not worrying too much about denting them). With the bracket now roughly back in shape I dug into the roof boxes and found a bolt of the right length, diameter and thread – albeit not high tensile – called Margaret back and remounted the shock. A few bits of Gorilla Tape and the dust shield was also back in place… rolling again! A new shock is arriving on Monday, and we will also source a proper suspension bolt to replace my #8 wire solution.

April 27, 2019 1

Busted knee!

One of the things that parents repeatedly tell their kids is “do up your shoelaces, or you will trip on them and hurt yourself”. Well… on Thursday morning we got up bright and early in order to catch the sunrise on Dune 45, and I stupidly popped my boots on for the shuffle across the car park to the toilets, neglecting to do up my laces. The laces on my right boot caught in the hooks on the left boot, and I hit the ground hard – VERY hard, point of impact being my right knee. I am not light, and the carpark was rocky.

After a few minutes of exchanging verbal pleasantries with the carpark, I managed to get back onto my feet and hobble around – no major damage done as I was mobile. We packed up camp and drove to the Dune, Margaret climbed up to get the photos as I was still very sore.

Fast forward a few hours of (extremely) rough driving and we got to the bakery at Solitaire (excellent Apple Pie, btw) – I climbed out of the car, and within a few seconds my knee had tripled in size and really started hurting. By harnessing the powers of foul language I got back into the truck and drove on to Walvis Bay (driving is actually OK – its the climbing in and out, and bending the leg into position to use the pedals that is the problem).

At the campground in Walvis Bay I thought things were improving – camp set up (mostly by Margaret) and beer consumed – when all of a sudden it flared up again. Off to Welwitschia Hospital I went in a taxi (The people here are fantastic – reception, nurses, radiographer and doc – apparently most tourists are sensible enough to have better reasons for a visit, like quad bike crashes). After a few hours we had a diagnosis of an enormous haematoma, plus bleeding in the joint itself – hopefully no damage to meniscus etc, but time will tell. The good news, no break, chips or cracks which was initially feared pre X-ray.

So… to wrap up, it’s now the next day, swelling has gone down a bit and the bruising is coming out nicely, I am on crutches, bandaged up and we are chilling out in Walvis Bay for a few days before proceeding north.

morning after

The campsite has an excellent playground, and is close to the beach (featuring both flamingos and pelicans). The beer is still cold.

April 27, 2019 2

Beautiful Gate Lesotho

If you are ever going to share a post of ours, share this one.

Lesotho surprised us. We knew it was mountainous, but we didn’t expect how mountainous. We went up and down, and up and down, all generally between 1,000m and 3,400m above sea level. The cosmos flowers bloomed pink and white, men wrapped in blankets and wearing gumboots and balaclavas waved at us, kids asked for sweets on their walk to school, (right next to a major road – no parents in sight) and it was simply beautiful.

However what surprised us most was visiting Beautiful Gate Lesotho. We were dirty, dusty and tired after much (stressful, old landy related) time on the road, and Lindiwe and Peter welcomed us like old friends. They gave us accomodation with comfortable beds and amazing showers.

Beautiful Gate is an orphanage, currently looking after approximately 70 children. It is unique, most countries don’t run orphanages, as kids are put straight into foster care. However Lesotho does not have this infrastructure. A third of the kids have HIV, and many fall behind their developmental milestones.

They are divided into three houses: Khotso, meaning peace. Pula meaning rain, and Nala meaning prosperity. Lindiwe gave us a tour and we were blown away by the size, the soft play rooms, the competent medical facility, the outside playground and the sympathetic memorial to children who have passed away.

Most touching of all,was the children singing to us, then coming for high fives. My children were shocked that they didn’t own their own clothes, and had no toys to call their own. But yet the children were the happiest kids we had ever met.

We were inspired by all of the people that we met there. Eleanor interviewed two of the long term volunteers, Jennie and Marissa. She was so inspired that she wrote a letter to Prince Harry.

We don’t normally ask for donations for charitable causes, but should you have any spare cash Beautiful Gate is completely worthy. We personally saw that the money is put to good use, no hint of sparkly new Land Cruisers being badly driven over mountain passes (ahem, Red Cross and World Vision…). So as you get stuck into your Easter eggs, click the link below. Every pound/dollar/rand/whatever really does help.