(Maybe) why it’s hard to find a good mechanic in Malawi.

After my shock and horror of witnessing a Malawian “mechanic” use a stone and a chisel solution to what was my motorcycle’s 10-spanner problem, I stepped back and thought for a moment: why is it that a good Malawian mechanic is so hard to come by?

Truth is, most of the mechanic work I see here in Malawi reminds me of my own handiwork in junior high. If my bicycle chain was stuck, I took the garden trowel to it. If the bearings squeaked, I smeared grease indiscriminately until they didn’t. After finishing a particularly shoddy patch job on a blown tire, I tossed my dad’s tools into my mom’s flower bed. It seems these are also the methods of local mechanics.

This is my armchair answer for why my teenage ways are the modus operandi in Malawi: over the years Malawians were bestowed plenty of serviceable equipment, with none of the tools with which to service it.

The English were first. With independence in 1964, the colonial administration packed up for England leaving behind the electric transformers, the train tracks, and their one ferry in Lake Malawi, but took with them whatever wasn’t bolted down: the socket sets, spanners, welding torches and the like. This kicked off a generation of half-hearted repair jobs nation-wide. Following hot on English heels, NGOs arrived, put up plenty of infrastructure of their own, though never brought the tools or the parts for said infrastructure’s maintenance, and another round of in-a-pinch fixes were born.

Thus, today, while a boy who’d fathom using a set of vice-grips for pliers in places like Leduc, or Moose Jaw, or Brandon would earn a swift cuff upside the head from his father, this is simply standard practice in Malawi.