The Great Flood

Our car, our major purchase for the time we are here in South Africa, shares many of its qualities with those of a used sponge. I mean no disrespect to used sponges, but it's true.

The first two weeks we were here, we were renting a car from a guy who came recommended from someone we vaguely knew before we arrived, and once we got here, she suggested that we just go ahead and buy a car from him as well. So we went to see what he had in stock in our price range, and it turns out that cars in South Africa keep their value a little better than they do in the states. The one we ended up with has a certain charm, I suppose, but it's still a piece of crap.

The car is a VW Golf, a stick shift with the steering wheel on the right side, of course. It has a choke, which you have to pull out to give the engine more gas for the first several minutes that you're driving in the morning. It has power nothing, not windows, not locks, not steering. In keeping with the local custom, it comes with a u-shaped lock that attaches around the stick shift when the car is parked, to deter thieves. It's white, and it appears that white VW Golfs are the most common car on the roads of Cape Town.

It looks like this:



We were quite proud of ourselves when we got this clunker. This purchase means we are a two-car couple, even if the other car is currently sitting in the driveway of Katie's parents' house in Virginia. In our fondness for our new vehicle, we tried to come up with a name for it, a process that Katie insisted required some time. We had to get to know the car first, she said, to learn its name instead of imposing a name upon it.

Nonetheless, after a few minutes behind the wheel, I began lobbying hard for "Ernie." That struck me as appropriate: it's a modest name, and a little quirky. Katie liked her friend Jenny's suggestion of calling it "Golf Cart," which was also appropriate, since our car lacks any power under the hood and is about the size of something you might drive around a country club. Another moniker we kicked around was “Wunder-Baum,” since the previous owner, a German exchange student at UCT, had hung an orange pine-tree-shaped air freshener off the rearview mirror that had the word "Wunder-Baum" printed on both sides.

But Katie was right in saying we needed to wait, because one characteristic that hadn't been immediately apparent soon made itself known: when it rains, the car floods.

And I don't mean that it gets just a little damp. Even Noah would be perturbed by the amount of water that collects on the inside of this car.

This problem is not endemic just to our vehicle. We've recently learned it is a characteristic common to all VW Golfs. Out for drinks last night with a couple from our apartment complex, Marcus and Laura, we were comparing car-trouble stories when Laura said she noticed with sympathy the condensation on the inside of our windows the other day. Oh yes, she assured us, her Golf had the exact same problem.

So, if there are any Golf owners reading this, you'll know what I'm talking about. After a good rainstorm, you get in the car and check around for any signs of a lake. It won't be there right away. But once you start driving, once you make a sharp turn or head up a hill, the water that's collected somewhere in the engine begins to pour out from under the dashboard. It runs into the plastic tray that's at shin level between the front seats, and then overflows from the tray all over the floor.

I've been meaning to buy some sort of plastic cup to keep in the glove compartment for the days after a rainstorm, so I could bail the car out in times of trouble as if it were a sinking ship.

Suffice to say, we haven't taken the Wunder-Baum off the mirror. That little pine tree is fighting a losing battle against the scent of perpetual dampness.

But Katie was right. The car's name is now clear to us. It came to me in a flash of inspiration.

We've taken to calling it... The Swamp Thing.

Click here for a few more pictures of the soppy mess we call a car.