A tin can and a few wires

About an hour and a half into the bus ride back from Livingstone to Lusaka, I was awakened from being half-asleep by the sound of an explosion, not an explosion of fire or liquid, but an explosion of air. It was the sound of a tremendous amount of pressure being released. The bus immediately slowed, but, much to my surprise, kept moving. I thought for a moment that I had imagined the sound, but when we arrived at the next town, the crew immediately opened up the engine (which was right inside the bus, just in front of my seat) and began poking and prodding. I have no idea what was wrong, but it was clear that the problem was serious enough to require some sort of intervention. After about 30 minutes, I got off the bus to get some fresh air and buy a bottle of water from the women on the side of the road. I sat down on a piece of a broken car wheel and read for a while, until I got too uncomfortable and decided to return to my seat in the bus. Not long after I settled into my seat, a man appeared in the door of the bus holding (I do not exaggerate) a rusty tin can, a hacksaw and a handful of twisted wires. The conclusion of whatever conversation followed was apparently that those few things were enough to fix the bus. I chuckled to myself as the crew began to saw the can and twist the wires and somehow piece them together in such a way to try to make the bus run again. Another hour later when it seemed they were finished, the driver tried to start the bus, an effort I thought would be fruitless, but, miraculously, the engine started. It made the loudest sounds I'd ever heard from an engine, but it was running, so we started out again for Lusaka. The bus definitely moved slower than it had before, and the sound was pretty terrible, but so long as the bus moved, I was happy. After a couple more hours, we passed another bus from the same company that stopped to give us the appropriate part for the engine. At the next town we stopped again and the crew replaced the part. The engine was suddenly much quieter and the bus picked up speed. Finally, we made it back to Lusaka. All in all, the five to six hour ride turned into just over ten hours, making for a very long, but fairly amusing, day.