Safety First Malawian Style

My fellow health and safety inspectors in Canada will appreciate this story. The vehicle that we purchased (thanks to a loan from my parents) had to be taken in for its annual certificate of fitness which is what we call getting the car “safetied”. I showed up at Road Traffic and Safety and spent about 2 hours to discover that all their examiners go home by noon and that I would have to return tomorrow. I asked when they opened and they told me the gates open at 0730. So the next day I dutifully showed up at 0730. I was first in line and glad that I was going to get this done quickly and that I could then get to work. What I didn’t realize was that open gates doesn’t mean that the safety examiners have shown up. That didn’t happen until almost 0830. The actual safety procedure is a little comical and I kept having the feeling that I was on Candid Camera. While you sit in your vehicle with it turned off the safety examiner tells you to turn your left turn signal on, then your right, then your left, then your right, then your windshield wipers, then your left turn signal again, then your brake light, then your brake light, then your brake light, and then once again your break light. Next came the headlights, the highbeams and then a right turn signal thrown in again for good measure. I lost track of how many times I kept doing the same thing but if I wasn’t observing other vehicles being put through the same steps I would have thought I was being toyed with. Finally I seemed to have convinced them that everything was in fine working order. The last step was for the examiner to get in my vehicle and to accelerate quickly and then to brake, twice in a row. Since our vehicle actually stopped I thought great, I’ve passed, I can get my certificate and go. But that was my overly hasty Canadian thinking. The examiner took a long look at the outside of my car and then went inside to get another examiner. She came outside and the two of them gave my vehicle a long look. Then the examiner looked at me very seriously and stated that my car was a little dirty. I agreed and stated that I still had some road dust on it from my trip to Zambia. Now it was dusty but we aren’t even talking mud splatters here. Both examiners gave me a serious look and then told me that my vehicle could not receive its certificate of fitness as I had brought it in dirty. At first I thought they were joking but by the looks on their faces I realized that they were serious. I asked what they expected me to do, and they told me that I would have to have the car washed and then return to have my car’s safety evaluated. So with no other choice I left and went home and had the car washed. This took almost an hour and then I returned to Road Traffic and Safety. Of course by this time there was a line of cars that I had to wait behind while they went through the process. Finally it was my turn again and I was expecting to have to go through the whole process again, but once they saw that my car was clean they handed me my certificate of fitness. Things like this keep Malawi interesting.