My day...

I've been busy working on the gearbox since Amanda left a few days ago.  If you remember, I re-built it in July.  Well, something happened over the last few weeks where it was getting close to impossible to get the vehicle into first gear.

This is what happened...a small spring broke.  I can't even remember what the spring is called, but it holds these three things in place that help to shift and maintain a gear position.

Here is Lokekwar and Moses with my gearbox.  Lokekewar works for the Mara Conservancy as a mechanic and his son, Moses, works in Aitong as a mechanic.  Moses has worked on our truck before, while we were living in Narok a few years ago.  Thankfully, the Conservancy allowed us to work with their mechanics on our gearbox at their garage.  They've got some great mechanics...and a garage pit, so we could drop the gearbox down instead of having to remove the seats (like I had to do in Narok in July...a huge pain).  

During repairs today, we also found a cracked universal joint.  Luckily, I keep a few spares so we were able to swap it out fairly easily.  

As I type this, it is about 8PM here in Kenya.  I just heard the rumbling of an elephant in camp, probably 20 meters up the hill from my tent.  Geemi and I heard them breaking branches a bit earlier while we were cooking dinner (spaghetti, in case you're interested) but I thought they were just moving through.  I guess they are here to stay the night.  The rumbling of an elephant at night sounds much like a lion growling.  A very low "rrrrrrrrrrrrr" sound.....

We also had a ton of rain in camp tonight.  We were able to collect over 80 liters of water with our rain water harvesting setup in just one hour!  80 liters may not seem much, but we have to carry all of our water into camp so every liter we can collect from the rain is one less liter we have to carry.  

Oh yea, you may have noticed that our Purungat Bridge Water Meter has not reported for the last two days.  My bad...I forgot to feed the meter.  ;)  I have to send it 300 Kenya Shillings every month for it to send the data.  I just sent it the money an hour ago so it should start updating again shortly.

Should be done with truck repairs tomorrow.  Hopefully....