Patching holes

I’ve only ever had a single flat tire on my Subaru years ago when driving from visiting Lisa in upstate New York back to New Jersey. I had managed to jack up my car, remove the flat, and was in the process of putting the spare on when a valiant man stopped at the busy gas station to “help” me tighten the bolts. I have, however, had my fair number of flats on my bike. Although I had mastered tire repair on my bike when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon, it was the seeming inevitability of punctures (and long walks home) in dusty College Station, Texas, that led me to purchase puncture-proof tires and I haven’t needed to fix a flat since.

Needless to say, I got my first flat in years. This isn't a story about that flat, which, by the way was not due to my reckless driving but to random chance and a revengeful tree stump. This is, however, a story about the local trade of tire repair. The repairman lives about 30 minutes from camp in the nearest big town. I got his name, number, and general location, drove the 30 minutes with a spare tire on the back axel and a totally dead tire tightened to the spare tire arm that keeps the back of my car closed. I called him, picked him up where he was working a second job, and drove him to his workshop- a graveyard of tires- where he immediately took over. He didn’t ask any questions, just took my flat off the back, rolled it over to a hut where he keeps an electric pump, pumped it full of air, and rolled it back to where we were sitting. 

Photo 1. Tire removal contraption.

I had noticed a strange metal pole when I was checking out his operation, and when he rolled it over there I learned that it was to give tire owners heart attacks. The hardest job is getting the tire off from the hub, and the tire repairman makes it easy on himself with this contraption (photo 1). After sufficiently beating my tire with the contraption, the tire repairman walked away, leaving the hardest part of the job to his assistant who had the job of removing the tire from the hub- a stubborn, monstrous version of fixing a bike flat (photo 2). After he removed the tire, he scrapped the heck out of the inside of my puncture for about 20 minutes, and was dripping with sweat from the heat of the day and the extremely physical work. He applied glue and by the time the glue was mostly dry, the tire repairman casually strolled back into the workshop with a large, round patch in one hand, and a lit cigarette in the other hand. He cooly leaned down to inspect the glue, bent the patch in half, removed the clear plastic wrapping from one side, and nonchalantly applied the patch.

Photo 2. The second part of tire removal that resembles my experience changing bicycle tires.

I changed my 4^th tire in 24 hours, paid the tire repairman 50 pula (5USD), which he left with his assistant, and I took the tire repairman and another guy who was with us at the tire changing operation back to their second job, which turned out to be the wedding I attended a few days later.