Two Sacks and Two Jacks

The Mission Van was out of commission. Instead of instant pick-up, it produced "hiccups" when you asked it to go. A very dangerous illness in Life and Death traffic. Your car has to go in an instant and stop just as fast, or your life is seriously compromised. When the hiccups started, the mission driver was moving missionaries all over the mission on transfer day. As soon as that was done, the van was parked. Too dangerous with hiccups instead of "pick-up". President Dyreng lived in Ibaden (80-90 miles north of here for the first year he was in Nigeria.) He got to know Rassaki (Ross-ah-key) the man on the right in the picture. Rassaki has done all of the Mission's maintenance and repairs possible because he is reliable, fair with his prices and has always kept his commitments. This is the first time President has had him "Transport" down here to Lagos. That's quite a process, and according to Rassaki, takes between one and one half hours to six hours, depending on traffic, "go-slows", and accidents. Most Nigerians do not have their own car and Rassaki is no exception, so they use the Yellow Transport buses (VW Vanagon size), in town, and slightly larger transport vehicles between cities. My assignment was really a big one. I was to wait for him to come and hand him the key to the van. I got it handled! He and his assistant showed up at our compound gate at about noon on Saturday. They had two reinforced "Walmart" sized plastic shopping bags for their "shop" and their "tool box". In the sacks were two, small, screw type jacks and their tools. The upper picture shows the van on the jacks. That's all the further they jacked it up. They are so small and slim, they can fit under the space you see and work. I added one other essential ingredient to the repair. The pink bucket is our car wash bucket. We loaned it to them and that's how they got the van repaired! Yeh, Right?
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With-in one hour, they had drained the fuel into containers, removed the fuel tank, the fuel pump and fuel filter assemblies. The picture to the right shows the fuel tank, empty on the ground. Behind the assistant in the blue shop coat, on the concrete ledge, are the fuel pump and fuel filter assemblies. Rassaki is the man facing the camera. The purple tub is one of the containers they put fuel in. Another tub was their cleaning bucket. They went quickly to work cleaning everything and quickly identified a bad filter and not bad fuel. By 3 PM everything was back together and "road tested". Rossaki drove hard forward and backward in our compound to verify no lag in the pick-up of the engine. He did it again and again to verify no lag on the gas pedal. Then, they checked everything for leaks, picked up their tools, cleaned up everything and handed me the key. I handled that
one alright, as well. We visited for a few minutes and they took off to reverse their transport ride home. He is a Muslim (they say Mooslem, here), has three boys and is a very proud father. One thing I did not get a picture of was his immaculate, white Muslim cap. He wore it to come and he wore it home, but it was placed, carefully in the van before he started work. That's the story of Two Sacks and Two Jacks. That's the way you repair a hiccuping Toyota van in downtown Lagos, Nigeria.