A Day in the Life of a RAV4

I’m awakened fairly early, just on dawn, as David the night guard comes as usual on most mornings to help me bathe. The water is cold at this time of day, but I have fairly tough skin so can cope. After bathing I get to just dry naturally under the rising sun.

At about 7:45 am ‘the driver’ comes out and loads my back end with tools before slamming my back door shut. I try to complain by not catching the door properly, but he just keeps at it until I give in and let the thing close fully. Then he puts that sharp pointy thing in my ignition switch for the first time today and twists! Oh the pain. It takes me a couple of minutes for my engine to warm to the task, but then we are away.

The drive is a relatively short one from the village down the road to the new house where thankfully the tools are unloaded and I can stand straight again and rest for a while. Unfortunately its only a short rest as we head back up to the village for more supplies. This time I get pushed and prodded until my back seats are flattened and then the back is loaded with a heap of metal - I hear the word scaffolding” being used. This stuff is so big that they can’t even shut the back door, so I have no opportunity to protest. Out the gate and I get my own back a little as I tip some of this metal out the open back door so ‘the driver’ has to stop and reload. From there its all down hill and he surprisingly takes it very slowly, so I don’t feel all the bumps, not like when he is in a hurry! Again I scrape my bottom on the ground as we enter the new house block. When is ‘the driver’ going to do something about that entry. It hasn’t been nice since the grader came and turned the gutter into a moat. Oh no! Apparently the boss (Robert) likes what the metal can do and tells ‘the driver’ to go back for another load. Seems like he is getting smarter. This time he uses a couple of bags of Lime from the shed in my rear end first to change the angle of the metal, so I can’t tip it out any more. After offloading this second lot of metal, I finally get a rest for an hour or so.

After a nice little snooze in the morning sunshine, I am rudely awakened by ‘the driver’ reefing my door open. NO ... he’s been at it again. Some days he comes out of that house all wet from sweat and then just flops down on my seat and I get covered in it. And with the dust that is always around here, how does he expect me to keep a nice, clean appearance on my lovely cloth seats? Back we go to the village for ‘the driver’s’ lunch break. All very well for him, he kicks all the kids out of his house while he eats. Where do you think they go? Straight to me, thats where. It seemed like a nice idea at the time when my Japanese stylist painted me black, but these kids have trouble differentiating between me and a blackboard, so all they want to do is write all over me. Sometimes this is very hurtful and has left lasting scars! I don’t like it. When ‘the driver’ finishes his lunch its time to become a food transport vehicle and take food to the workers. The posho tin is always a bit hot, but my carpet doesn’t seem to mind. Its when that Mama woman puts the other stuff on my seat that the problems begin. The container is fine, but seems unable to keep all of the stuff inside inside, and it tends to dribble. ‘the driver’ doesn’t seem to mind too much, he just rubs it in and mutters something about “not being his seat, so why worry”.

After the lunch run I finally get a decent bit of exercise as he has to go into town to go to the bank, apparently so that the workers can be paid. I do miss those nice smooth roads back home in Japan though, as some of the places ‘the driver’ takes me here are very rough. More of a “cross country’ event than a “track” event.

We no sooner get back to the house from the bank than that imposter of an engine, the generator, coughs and splutters and uses up its last bit of fuel. How embarrassing! But good old reliable RAV4 to the rescue. A quick trip over those Bugembe bumps to fill up the yellow jerry can and we can get that generator purring again. At least on this trip ‘the driver’ brought one of he little kids along for the ride. I liked giving him my front seat view as he felt that bit special.

Is there anything else that can run out today. Because I provided all of that metal called scaffolding, the workers are making good progress and have run out of nails, so its off I go again to replenish their stocks. Its just the short journey down the hill to Wairaka trading centre, but the journey back is all over the place. No easy way back from there!

Once darkness sets in I usually get to rest - ‘the driver’ doesn’t like being out on the roads here in the dark if he can help it. I think it is something to do with the number of pedestrians and the lack of street lighting that he is used to. But tonight it is a different story. The little boy from next door is really sick and so I become like an ambulance and rush him to hospital The roads around the hospital are filled with potholes and its dark so they are hard for ‘the driver’ to see so I am unable to deliver the “smooth riding experience” that I always aim for. After waiting at the hospital for a while, ‘the driver’ and his friend Luke come out and off we go on a search for supplies that the hospital needs. They don’t really seem to know where they are going, but eventually stumble on a clinic where I get parked and they go inside and then come back after a few minutes with strange looks on their faces and mutterings of “smuggling” and “the nice nurse who helped them” Back to the hospital to deliver the goods and then after another short wait, finally I get to go home and call it a day.