I've just returned from another, the fourth, trip to the Roadworthy Testing Center here in sunny South Africa and I want to share the exoticism. We have been trying for months now to register the 1974 Volkswagen Beetle in our name and one requirement is a Certificate of Roadworthiness from a testing center staffed by women who remind me of clerks in county courthouses - i.e., you are obviously the stupidest person they've talked to all day...until the next guy, etc., etc. The poor dears are besieged by us morons. The car failed the first inspection due to an oil leak and a "dirty undercarriage." Fair enough. Oil leak repaired, undercarriage cleaned. The car passed the second inspection entirely except for a new issue strangely not mentioned during the first inspection. The friend who sold us the car installed a new engine during his ownership and never changed the engine number on the car's registration papers. They care about engine numbers here and this was grounds for failure since I could not prove that the engine was not stolen. No, that's not accurate. I could not
disprove that the engine was stolen. I said that the mechanic who did the work died shortly thereafter and his garage closed. The testing center harpy intimated that I might have to produce a death certificate from the mechanic's family. For one second, I imagined knocking on a door and making such a request. I waited for her to start laughing at her excellent joke but both our faces remained long and solemn although there was a malicious light in her blue eyes. So, after several weeks, I drummed up a certificate from a police inspector who could tell, just by looking, that the engine was legitimate and in good standing with the republic and worthy of its roads.
Before the third inspection could even begin, I was refused because of an "administration mark" on the car which had to be lifted "by the Licensing Center" before anything could be done. Four days later, the fourth visit was this morning and the cursed Beetle passed. In gratitude, I stole a fishing magazine from their waiting room. They're going to miss it too because it's an excellent issue about catching South African yellowfish by fly and profiles of the king fish species one might catch in the surf of the Indian Ocean.
I think I'll take myself out to lunch to celebrate although I'm so fatalistic now that I expect the wheels to fall off at the moment I put on the new legal tags. M recently highlighted a quote from Jose Arcadio Buendia in
One Hundred Years of Solitude:
"If you don't fear God, fear him through the metals."
