One for the price of two...well, not really, but close enough...

 Within a month of moving here to Swaziland, we purchased a used 2002 Honda Civic from an American woman who worked for the US Peace Corps, had completed her mission, and was leaving the country.  When we bought the car, the driver's side (right) headlamp was out.  This was in late November of last year.  This past week, on May 15, we finally have two working headlamps.  How does such a thing happen for a measly headlamp?  I'm so glad you asked...

When I bought the car, I figured the light bulb was burned out.  No problem.  [insert uproarious laughter here]  The week after we picked up the car, I went to the local auto parts store to get a new bulb.  Well, it turns out that this car has xenon headlamps, and one bulb costs E340 (about $40 US).  I gulped hard, bought the bulb, took it back to the house, and installed it that morning.  No dice.  Then I was a little mad because I was afraid I might not have been able to get my money back.

[OK, so I'll disgress here to explain an important difference between here and the US.  You can't return merchandise here, as a general rule.  If something doesn't work right and you return it, most stores will not refund your money to you.  Instead, you must either pick out a replacement item of what you returned, or pick out items that add up to the amount you spent.  This takes some getting used to, but it's not a major inconvenience, really.  You just really think twice before you spend major bucks on something.  Anyhow, in this instance it turned out not to be a problem, because I now knew I had a bigger problem on my hands than simply a headlamp and would need some tools to figure it out.  So I returned the headlight and bought a small set of hand tools and a very handy electronic device called a multimeter.  Actually, I was surprised that I was able to buy one of these in Mbabane.  I have since learned that most major specialty tools like this are available in Mbabane if you know which stores carry them.  At any rate, back to work I went.]

That day after lunch, once William had gone down for his afternoon nap, I and those tools totally owned that Honda Civic.  Off came the front bumper molding and both headlamps, and out came the multimeter.  Fuses? Check.  Relays? Check.  Wiring harnesses? Check.  Bulbs? Check.  Ballasts?  And bingo, we have a winner.  The right side ballast was burned out.  Now, here in Swaziland we drive on the left side, so it's better to have the right side headlamp working because closer to the oncoming traffic.  So I switched out the left ballast for the right one -- keeping the bad ballast out to show the guy at the parts place -- and put the car back together.  Less than two hours ... I even had time to clean up before William woke up.  Now to find a replacement ballast.  [insert more uproarious laughter]

The following week I took Allison to an all-day meeting in Manzini, and William and I set out for Matsapha (in siSwati, the "ph" is pronounced like a "p" in English, not an "f") to find a new ballast for the headlamp.  I will make short what could be a very long story by saying that there were no ballasts to be found anywhere in Swaziland.  Furthermore, no one could order me one because it was coming up on the end of the year (this is early December now), so no supply houses were ordering new stock until after the first of the year.  At around this time our car developed another much more major problem (see earlier posts -- sometime I'll post that entire story, too) which required going to Nelspruit anyway, so I discussed the issue with the mechanic there.  The ensuing conversation was extremely enlightening.

Martin (the mechanic) used to manage the service department for the Honda dealership in Nelspruit, a position he held for about 6 years before opening his own shop a couple years back.  When I showed him the ballast and told him I needed a new one, he said, "I'm going to have to order that, and I can guarantee that there isn't one of those in all of South Africa.  We'll have to order it from Japan."  [Many cars here are manufactured in South Africa, but ours was manufactured in Japan.]  As we kept talking, he explained why this is the case.  Most dealerships in southern Africa do not carry any stock, only about R120,000 -- this is South African Rand currency, about $15,000 US -- and most all of that is for routine maintenance, things like oil filters, air filters, belts, and stuff like that.  In all his years working on Hondas, he had never replaced a headlamp ballast.  He explained that the part would have to come from Japan or from the distribution center in Berlin, Germany.  Best case scenario, the ballast would arrive in 4-6 weeks. 

[OK, I have to interject again here.  As you can see, there is definitely a niche market here in Swaziland for spare parts for imported vehicles.   If someone had the determination and a good amount of capital to put toward the project, some entrepreneur would do this country a huge bit of good by starting a imported automotive parts business.  After this conversation, I began to wonder why someone hadn't done it already.  But as I thought about it more, I realized that there are some problems that would need to be addressed, and one major problem in particular.  First, someone would need a large amount of capital to start up an auto parts business, not an easy proposition in a developing country.  But still, it seems that someone would have had the money to do this at some point.  Second, you need to find suppliers.  Again: not an easy proposition in Africa, but not an insurmountable obstacle, either.  And then it hit me.  To keep a large stock of automotive parts requires that you have a method by which to secure that inventory against loss, especially theft.  My guess is that this is the reason why no one has yet tackled this business venture in Swaziland.  To ensure your stock against theft would require both surveillance and security, and trustworthy security.  This is much easier said than done in a developing country, where people are desperate.  There is probably enough demand for an imported auto parts business, but not enough demand required to offset the cost of securing inventory against loss to the point of staying profitable.  What I have just described here is an enlightening window into the complexities of the problems in the developing world.  The technology and civil infrastructure exists to solve a good many problems, except a relatively minor glitch must be worked out first, and there just isn't any practical way to do it.  Like the issue of securing a large building of stock automotive parts, which desperate people would be highly motivated to steal.]

Back to my story.  Now, as soon as he said that he had never replaced a ballast before, alarms should have been going off in my head.  But because we were in the middle of also trying to solve the major problem with the car, that was consuming almost all my thoughts.  R3,500 later (about US$400), I'd ordered the replacement ballast.  Then it was hurry up and wait.  In the meantime, I should have given some thought to the issue of what had burned out the ballast in the first place.  You see, in facilities engineering, ballasts for lights go bad all the time, and sometimes for unexplained reasons.  If you find a bad ballast, you simply replace it and get on with your life.  Not so in automotive engineering, apparently.  This is what I mean that alarms should have gone off in my head when Martin told me that replacing a ballast is a rare problem.  But given everything else that was going on in our lives at the time, I suppose I can't be too hard on myself.

A few weeks later, on a day that it was raining very hard, I took our house helper back to her neighborhood so that she didn't have to spend so long out in the rain trying to catch a kombi.  That evening we went out to dinner with some friends and watched the movie Les Miserables.  We had a fabulous time, but when we got in our car to go back home, I noticed that both headlamps had gone out.  I was dumbfounded.  My friend Matthew and I broke out our flashlights and checked the fuse.  It was blown.  Sigh of relief.  The next day I bought new fuses and put one in.  No dice.  My heart sank.  Later that afternoon, after the front end of the car had once again been disassembled, I got a sick feeling in my stomach as I removed the right side headlamp and a bunch of water poured out of it.  The one working ballast I'd had was now burned out as well.  Suddenly, sadly, the entire story made sense.

Here's what had happened.  Before I bought the car, the vehicle had been in a small fender-bender accident that had damaged the front right headlamp.  That headlamp had been repaired just fine, except that a plastic piece had broken off the top of the casing.  I had noticed this before but hadn't given it any thought.  Being under the hood of the car, it hadn't occurred to me that water could get in through that opening and burn out the ballast below.  But that's exactly what happened, both times.  Because of location of the hole, in the heavy rain the water had run down the groove between the hood and the fender and eventually run down onto the headlamp, dripping through the hole and onto the electronic ballast, frying both it and the fuse.  If I had thought about the question for any length of time -- why did the ballast burn out? -- I might have been able put this together, repair the hole and saved myself an additional US$400 to replace the second ballast.  I don't know that for sure, of course, and I'm not really being hard on myself.  I'm just sayin'.  Naturally, it's much easier to diagnose this kind of a problem when you see water streaming from a place it's not supposed to!

We returned to Nelspruit the following week to pick up the replacement ballast that we had ordered ... and then immediately proceeded to order another ballast.  Another 4 weeks of waiting.  While we were there, I priced a replacement headlamp assembly as well, R2,500 (US$300+).  I decided the repair the hole myself rather than spend the money.  Finally, last weekend we went back to Nelspruit again for Allison's pre-natal appointment, and I picked up that dastardly electronic ballast.  I didn't have time early in the week to complete the repair, but I got to it on Wednesday.

By now, I can disassemble the front end of that Honda Civic in less than ten minutes.  I removed the offending headlamp assembly, put four strips of electrical tape over the hole, and pasted that thing with enough silicone sealant to ward off a typhoon.  And we have two working headlamps ... for now.