A tale of two mechanics

Motor mechanics have come a long way since that day in 1956 when the engine of my car stopped involuntarily as I was driving along the then brand new Lagos to Ikorodu road. I was on my way to Ibadan.

It is now decades since I last passed that way, so I know nothing about its present rate of flow of traffic. At the time I am writing about, traffic was thin - so much so that some crocodiles that had taken up residence in the rain-filled ditches in the area felt it safe to stroll across the road, giving lonely motorists heart attack.

On that particular day, I had just driven across the Majidun River, using a four-metre wide steel bridge that at that time was regarded as a marvel of civil engineering, when my car developed engine trouble and stopped. If ever there was a middle of nowhere, that was it. Worse still, it was not the best day for that sort of thing to happen to anyone. A downpour that had arrived as a squall was now lingering on as a steady beat of rain, spreading misery all around. As a twenty-four year old journalist who knew absolutely nothing about fixing motor cars, the only thing I could do was to get out and walk back a hundred metres, to confirm whether the lonely man I had seen sitting under a makeshift shelter was, as I hoped, a roadside mechanic. Even if he wasn’t, perhaps I could persuade him to push the car while I tried to get it started.
He was indeed a mechanic, somewhere between fifty and sixty years old. Better still he was willing to step out in the rain and take a look at the car.

“Raise the bonnet,” he instructed at the scene of the trouble. When the bonnet was raised, he peered at the engine for a long while, and then said: “Try to start it.”
After I had tried again and again without getting anywhere, the mechanic took a step back and gave the rear bumper an experimental kick.
“Now try again,” he instructed, and at the first pressure of my thumb on the starter button, the engine roared into life.

That was the day I understood the meaning of the expression “to kick-start”. On numerous other occasions since then I have, in my frustration, tried - and failed - to get a car started by giving it a good kick. It must be that there is something wrong with my technique.
Incidentally, when I offered that prince among mechanics a ten shilling note for his services, he waved it aside and ambled off to his shelter, while I continued on my journey to Ibadan.

Things were rather different for one of my friends when he had a problem with his car the other day. He was coming from the direction of Apapa, and was negotiating that curve at Mile 2, to link up with traffic heading towards Badagry, when his clutch failed. It was raining at the time, so he coasted to the shoulder, parked, and waited. After what seemed like ages the rain subsided but did not stop, so he got out, unfurled his umbrella, and went looking for a mechanic. A mechanic found him first. You could tell that he was a mechanic by the grease stains on his blue overall.
“Something wrong with the car?” the mechanic asked.
“Yes,” my friend replied. “The clutch suddenly went soft on me.”
“Okay, let’s push the car to a shelter.”

“Which shelter?” my friend said, looking around him
“That one over there, under the flyover.”
The flyover in question was a good two hundred metres away, and the three-dimensional traffic at Mile 2 was at its chaotic worst.
“The two of us can’t push the car that far in this traffic,” my friend said.
“Okay,” the mechanic said. “Lend me your umbrella. I will go and find some people to help us push it. It will cost you two hundred naira.”
That was how my friend began to part with his money.
When the mechanic got the car to the shelter under the flyover, he made a show of looking into the engine compartment, and then said: “You will need a new lower clutch kit.”

“How much will that cost??”

“One thousand four hundred for the kit, plus sixty naira for okada.”
My friend parted with some more money. It took the mechanic about thirty minutes to return with the clutch kit. Meanwhile those other denizens of Mile 2 — the hawkers of “pure water”, “kill-and dry”, “fine bread”, and hand held electronic calculators — had also taken shelter under the flyover, and were now staring at my friend, concentrating their attention (or so he thought) on the pocket from which he had taken the money to pay for the clutch kit.

To cut a long story short, after spending five minutes under the car, the mechanic resurfaced to announce that the problem was more serious than he had thought. “It’s the clutch plate,” he said. “I’ll have to take down the gearbox to be able to reach it.”
“Here?” my friend asked, horrified. It was almost six o’clock, and he had been under the flyover since three o’clock.

“There is nothing else I can do,” the mechanic said with a shrug of his shoulders.
“Yes, there is. You can look for a breakdown van to tow me home.”
“You mean you don’t want to repair the clutch anymore?”
“No!”
“Okay, give me one hundred naira for okada. And lend me your umbrella. I will go and bring a breakdown van.”
He took the money and the umbrella, and my friend never saw him again.
-- Culled from a Vanguard columnist( Aig Imouekhede)

A tale of two mechanics indeed, one a colonial mechanic and the other a post independent mechanic.