Wayside mechanics explain fault

It is said proverbially in Ghana that, even the physics lecture from the university cannot replace a broken fuse or change a light bulb. He always has to depend on electrician who has not had privilege of the same level of education. The electrician must have dropped out of school because of bad grades or on the death of a financial sponsor. That’s the reality in Africa. A lot of people have learnt how to fix gadgets and equipments by apprenticeship.

This is our way of calling for more practically-based educational system other than the current one that is based on theory. The latter is producing people who can churn out stuff they have been able to commit to memory by rote yet do not understand.

NewsAfricanGhana has therefore decided to share with you in the video below, how two young men, who have not had any formal education in Mechanical Engineering from any University or Polytechinc are able to understand a car’s fault and then proceed to fix it.

We came across two young men busily working to fix a broken down Pajero 4-wheeler. The vehicle had broken down in the middle of the road and the owner had gone to fetched them from a near by fitting shop. This vehicle, as we later found out, belonged to a Chartered Accountant who is a partner of a fairly known Audit firm in Accra.

The respected accountant had left his car to Michael and Francis to fix the fault and then later report to him, while he found another vehicle to transport him to work; he must have been running late.

Being citizen journalists, we decided to have a two-minute conversation with the fitters, who explained what had happened and what’s necessary to be done to resolve the problem.