Finding out too late that what was marked as a main A route was in fact a dirt road - this can happen only too easily in Zimbabwe, where the roads have decayed along with everything else - I continued grimly across increasingly rough terrain until I heard a stone fly up against the underneath of the car. The power cut off that instant. As I learned much later, the impact had damaged the fuel pump and the electronics within it, shorting out the ignition fuses.

LRB 10 May 2001 | PDF Download