Police Problems

Today we headed out with Pepe towards town. As I mentioned before Pepe has definitely lost most of his pep, the tiny little Toyota with a zillion miles on it has seen it's day. Once upon a time it was a white car, now it is gray from dust and dirt. The interior doesn’t look much better, a darker gray but pretty dirty and dusty. We just assumed all rental cars in Mombasa looked like Pepe.

As we headed down the road there was a police officer standing on the side of the road. He selected us out of a line of cars and flagged us down. As we stopped he stepped to the window and told me to get out of the car. I had heard about all the graft and corruption so I began to wonder if this was a shake down and how much it was going to cost.

The officer explained to me that the tread on my back left tire was too low and it was a violation of the law. Now I’m wondering how he could have possibly seen the tread on my back tire from the front of the car at about 40 miles per hour. This guy had really good eyes.

I took a look at the tire and I had to agree with him, you could see the cord coming through the tire but I told him that it was a rental car. He looked at me suspiciously and told me it didn’t matter, I was driving the car so any problems with the car were my problem and he would have to write me a citation. I asked if the rental agency would reimburse me for the cost of the citation, he said he thought they would but if I didn’t pay it I would go to jail. Oh boy a Mombasa jail cell that sounds like fun.

After looking at the tire I was concerned about two things, how to deal with Barney Fife and his citation and driving a car on Kenyan roads with a bad tire. So I pulled out the rental agreement and Barney started to believe my story. I asked if I should drive directly to the airport and exchange the car. He thought that was a good idea and after some more dancing, Mr. Fife decided to release the criminal American with no penalty.

He said this time he would let me go but to get the tire taken care of. So Lou and I drove to a little Italian restaurant and decided to have lunch while I called the rental car agency to see how they wanted to handle the bald tire. They told me they would send out a guy with another car. About 30 minutes into lunch, here comes Frankie with a new Toyota. Immediately it is obvious we have been upgraded, the new car is larger and much newer.

As Frankie was checking out Pepe to make sure we hadn’t added any new dents, he asked if we had filled the car up. I responded that we didn’t know we were turning the car in so we had not filled it up but the we had only used a little more then ¼ of a tank of gas.

He decided he would drive it over and fill it up and bring me a receipt but wanted the gas money up front. I felt this was a fair deal so I asked him how much I should give him (gas here is 78 KSH per liter which is about $4 per gallon) and he said if I gave him 2000 KSH he would bring change and the receipt.

About 10 minutes later Frankie comes back with a receipt but no change. He handed me the receipt and told me it took exactly 2000 KSH (about $26) to put a little over a quarter of a tank of gas in a car that is smaller then a Toyota Corolla, almost 26 liters. Wow, I wonder how Frankie knew the exact amount of gas Pepe would need to fill him up? I figured someone was going to get me today, instead of Barney it ended up being Frankie. I called back to Budget and let them know, we’ll see if it makes any difference. As we pulled out of the restaurant the car squeaked loudly (I think the fan belt is loose), at least now we have a lot nicer car, Squeaky.