The car mechanic who sent us here looked a bit like the character played by Billy Bob Thornton in U-turn.
-look when you get there you are going to want to turn straight around and run away. But Koos is a bit of a genius with radiators, so he may be able to help you.
Koos is an old Afrikaans guy. He has the fingers of a caveman. They are filthy, fat and stubby with years of oil and grime embedded deep under the fingernails. His eyes are watery and the 'whites' are yellow. He shouts something at his friend Rasta in Afrikaans. Rasta says something back in Xhosa or another African language. There are cars and car parts everywhere you turn.
Our car is very poorly, with an overheating engine that we have no idea what to do with and which may spell an abrupt end to our South African road trip. According to the Chrysler central database the tank it needs is discontinued. We can't continue to fill the leaking water tank every 55.5 kms like we have been. Apart from being risky and time consuming Koos says that you can't cheat a car like that. Soon it will simply die. Koos is our only hope. Without him this car is a write-off. What he and Rasta are going to do, we do not know. But it's all down to him now.

He likes to talk does old Koos. So too does his son, who, due to a motorcycle accident, has learning difficulties and problems with the concept of time. For him, the accident happened yesterday, this morning, or this afternoon. Koos says it happened four months ago, but even that seems unlikely due to the maturity of the scars. We are restless and so are the scruffy chickens which peck at our jeans. Numerous mangy looking dogs sniff around our shoes. Rasta fires up a blowtorch half a yard behind Lindsay and she shifts her weight away from it. Koos is going through his routine again about how the car is a patient and the driver is a doctor. When the doctor can't help then you take the car to a specialist. It's difficult to get a word in, and even more difficult to get him onto the specifics of what might happen next.
-just let me strip everything out and I'll see what the next step is. I've seen a problem exactly the same as this with the same issue on the same car.
-when was that? I ask the son.
-yesterday, he says.
We swap numbers as we try to escape the scrapyard.
-when shall we call you? asks Lindsay
-tomorrow, says the son.
I'm starting to get a bad feeling about this.