THE CAR UPDATE - We have made lots of progress!

Storage cabinets...Patrick's putting up the hinges for the doors...so we can open and shut them!

The winch arrived... (do you know what that is for? Hint: We can use it if we get stuck...)

The painting began...and Corinne definitely ended up with some white hair! Why would you want to paint the wood? Hint: Bugs, dust, cleaning...remember it is our house!

And...the desks we will work from each day are completed! See the sparks fly as Patrick finishes the desks...it is definitely getting very chilly, as winter sets in...and the days are much shorter now...you can see how it is only 5:00 and it very dark outside!

Also, the new license plates are on...remember which country we live in? Hint: GB sticker...

Check out the completed desks, and paint job, in the Photo Galleries...

The Big Project...putting an electronic ignition in!

The iginition is the part of the car that that controls the exact moment sparks are made that will set off the 'explosion' in an engine. If this happens a little too late or early the engine won't run as well. The electronic iginition will make this timing more precise and therefor will make the car run bettersmoother, and quieter (oh the Mog is loud!)....

The old ignition is pulled out...

and the learning begins...neither Patrick or Imran had installed an electronic ignition before....so it was a day full of learning and following instructions. The electronic ignition will help make the car run better,

...And as things sometimes happen, at the end of the day....the parts they had taken out, weren't fitting back together as they should. Oh NO! Time to re-think what they did...and how to fix it...

....So they spent a few hours trying to figure out where they went wrong...The problem was that we couldn't start the car again without the right parts, so they had to figure it out...Do you think their patience and hard work paid off? Do you think they got the car working again? Sometimes it just takes some extra time, research, and thinking to figure out what went wrong...And they........DID IT! ....

Check out the videos to see the moment when it started...The new electronic ignition makes the car run much, much better!

Immunizations

And it was now time to finish up the jabs we needed to prepare for our trip! We decided to go to a specialist travel clinic. Fleet Street Clinic in London is led by a doctor who is an expert in travel medicine and has been to over 80 countries himself! Corinne was able to get some great advice from Dr. Dawood and his nurse specialist, Christine.

The one big worry for us....is Malaria. Do you know what malaria is? Malaria is a disease trasmitted by an infected mosquito. Many parts of Africa are considered high risk areas...this means that the possibility that you get malaria from a mosquito bite (remember that there are LOTS of mosquitos in many countries we will be visiting) is higher than in other areas. This means we MUST take extra precautions to make sure we don't get malaria.

Christine, the nurse, had malaria, as do many travelers and people that live in Africa....it does NOT sound fun, at all! You get really, really sick...if you can imagine the worst flu you have had, and then adding to it not being able to stand up, fainting, naseau...you don't want to get malaria! It also is very dangerous and there is a possibility you can die if you don't get proper treatment.

So, with this in mind, we knew this was NOT something to take a chance with. We are going to take preventive medicine during our trip. We will tell you more about it later.

Do you want to know more about malaria? See what countries you can get malaria? You can read more here.

Bringing the MOG into the shop.......

We aren't going to give you the full scoop yet, but we brought the Mog in for a full check-up. We decided to go to the #1 UNIMOG specialist in the UK...Frank Atkinson. Did you know Frank drove through Africa in a 2WD over 20 years ago!...brave guy!

The mechanics shop was about 250 miles away....a typical car today would take about 4 hours to get there....do you know how long it took us...remember we can only go (MAX, downhill) about 50 mph ( 80km/hour)!....If you guessed right, it took us almost 8 hours! It was a long day but the Mog did a good job....even if it was a bit chilly inside (we didn't have any heat on!)

We left the Mog with Frank and his staff to have a full work-up. We will tell you more about it next time...but for now, we will leave you with a few photos...did you think our MOG was a big one? Check out the other ones in the photo gallery!