Carcasses and hoarders revenge

It's amazing how much stuff we accumulate during our lives. We keep little things like that reception invitation, which means something to us, but is just a scrap of paper to everyone else. I think that as we age we hang on to more and more stuff - whether it be for memories, or because experience is telling us "one day this thing will be useful".

My father was no different. I spent five weeks last summer going through his things. On one hand it was an enlightening experience. I'd never known my father that well, and so I discovered a lot about him. It turns out he was the captain of his university basketball team. Maybe that's where I get the sports team captaining gene from!

On the other hand, it was a long and arduous process. It is difficult to quantify just how much stuff was thrown and burnt, but it is safe to say that if I was ever on the Greenpeace Christmas card list, I'm not any more. And then there were the items which we sold for recycling, including enough car parts to build a new car!

An example of what was dealt with last summer. If only I'd kept the car parts...

One year later, I think my father must be having a chuckle. I can see him putting the car parts in storage saying to himself "this will be useful one day". And one day has finally arrived. But the parts have long gone...

If you remember from a previous post, I was repairing my father's 1980 Peugeot. When we started on the repairs, we thought the engine would be the main thing to change. As it turns out, the car was effectively a car-cass. Over the last two weeks, we have replaced, in no particular order: the battery, clutch, brakes, two tyres, cylinder head, spark plugs, fan belt, alternator, ignition, fuel filter, and all the wiring. Plus we've modified the radiator and fixed the leaking fuel tank. That lot has come to a further 120,000 ksh (1,100 euros) on top of the 90,000 ksh for the engine. And the worst part is we probably threw most of these parts last summer. But hey, the car works now. More or less.

Car-cass

Changing the engine was just the start! Old diesel left, petrol right. And damn those things are heavy! 

But finally it's working...

A selection of just some of the other parts we've had to change

You're probably thinking it would have been cheaper to buy a working car to start with. Well, yes and no. Car prices in Kenya are highly inflated. The reason is taxes; import taxes on cars are 100%. Yes, you read that right. Why so high? It is an easy way of getting tax money. Although the Kenyan government has recently set up an excellent online income taxation system, and has also clamped down on VAT, traditionally tax collection has been an issue - as it is in most developing countries. So the easiest way to be sure tax revenue is collected is to collect it at the point of entry. Cars, being expensive items, can bring high tax revenue, and act as a way of taxing the rich. The system therefore kind of makes sense. But it inflates the price of all cars, old or new.

Back to my banged up Peugeot, 210,000 shillings later we have a car for which we have already received an offer of 220,000. So maybe it wasn't such a disaster after all. Plus I can finally stop spending money on renting