Meet Hank

On my past trips to Kenya, I have driven some interesting cars. The first year, there was the intrepid, decrepit Suzuki that Corinne and I nicknamed Twiga ("giraffe" in Swahili) due to its resemblance to a giraffe carcass we saw on our first trip in the car. Twiga was very little more than a tin can with wheels, but it ran faithfully and gamely tackled every obstacle it encountered.

Last year there was The Matatu, Dan's white pop-top tourist van. While miles above Twiga in terms of comfort, The Matatu had its own issues: no four-wheel drive, very low clearance, a steadily worsening oil leak that eventually required a refill every two days, and an increasing unwillingness to start in the mornings without a lengthy push-start by five or so Ol Pej security workers. Add to this the ridiculousness of me driving an entire van for just myself and the constant hassle of being mistaken for a tourist van that had found something interesting to watch, and I would prefer to drive Twiga any day. But I take what I can get and regard the problems generally with amusement rather than frustration.

This year, I once again have a new ride, graciously purchased for me by Dan. I cannot overstate how thankful I am for this purchase, as it has saved me from being stuck with the Matatu (whose engine was entirely rebuilt since last summer and apparently runs fine, but still lacks four wheel drive and clearance and is generally an unwieldy field vehicle). I knew this car, a red Suzuki Maruti, from last year as it previously belonged to Stefan, who went to Ol Pej with me last summer and studied Grant's gazelle. While I was recruiting people to help push-start my giant white van in the morning, Stefan was motoring effortlessly away to begin his fieldwork. To say I coveted Stefan's car is an understatement. I first drove the car three weeks ago when I left Mpala for Ol Pej. To my delight, it ran beautifully and got me to Ol Pej with no problem. I spent the hour-long drive contemplating the car's name, and by about halfway it was clear that its name is Hank. Hank is simple, with no frills, but friendly and accessible.

In the past three weeks I have spent probably as much time with Hank as I have asleep and have gotten to know his various quirks quite well. First, Hank is not a morning person. I have to choke him a bit to get him started in the morning, but after that initial coaxing, he runs fine the rest of the day. Hank's tires are balding, which makes for interesting adventures when it gets muddy. I was wary of going out during or directly after rainstorms for fear of the mud, but I was assured that it is nearly impossible to get a Maruti stuck because of its light weight and good four-wheel drive and that if I did manage it somehow, all I had to do was call the Ol Pej Control office and a truck would come pull me out. It turns out that all of the Maruti's mud-proof qualities are negated by tires with too little grip. I got stuck two Fridays ago without even lodging my wheel in a hole. I just did not have the grip to motor through the slick mud and once I lost momentum I was done. Control came to pull me out, scoffed that I wasn't even stuck, but conceded that maybe I had been right to call when they couldn't get me going without using another truck to haul me out. They blamed the tires, but aside from this one stuck incident and some slipping and sliding after it rains, I really can't complain too much.

Last year I was amazed when Stefan told me Hank's tape player worked and that he could play his iPod through a tape hook-up. I brought my tape hook-up this year and after some fiddling, found that the stereo does indeed work, but that the volume for some reason does not get high enough to be of any real use. Perhaps some more fiddling will fix this problem, but looking at the stereo, which is barely attached to the rest of the car and constantly jiggles loose from its casing, I think I should consider myself lucky to have achieved the functionality I have.

Hank's grey hard top is technically removable, although I am not sure quite how. I think it would be amusing to motor around with the top off at some point, but the difficulty of removing it and, I'm sure, replacing it as well as the exposure to the elements probably makes the effort not worthwhile. Removing the top would probably also be the only way to get more dust in the car than there already is.

True to the Suzuki name, Hank has all the shock absorption of a cardboard box and rough roads can be quite jarring. The windows don't quite close all the way anymore, and when it rains, water leaks onto my feet through a mysterious hole by the clutch pedal. The backseat is very high up for some reason, so that passengers cannot even see out their windows, and there are a handful of unexplained noises that periodically issue from various parts of the car. By my American standards, Hank is a heap of junk. But by my field standards, Hank is awesome and perfect. He gets me from A to B with very little hassle and is generally comfortable to sit in hour after hour while watching antelope. What more can I ask for?