Nah, the problem isn't the guy who gave it to me. He's a good guy. It's a little hard to get into it here without getting political, but suffice it to say that vehicles here don't have paperwork to speak of, so when you acquire any car that's been sitting, there's always the chance that somebody will come along who will claim it's his. In this case, the guy who claims it is his is the son of somebody who owned it several owners ago. He literally has no legal right to it, but that won't stop him (and any of his relatives who he can convince to join him) from giving me grief anyway. The usual ploy is to wait until you've got a ton of time and money tied up in something, THEN start making a stink. Don't look for logic in it, there is none to be found. Often all a guy like this wants is money (in this case he wants me to come up with a body for a Nissan Patrol and then he says he'll be happy), but I really don't want to open that door--if I do, then others will show up with more spurious claims. Naturally, since I am a foreigner, I am perceived to have piles of money laying around (I most certainly do not). Missionaries are usually the best people to get cars from, but in this case the guy who gave me this car left the country a few months later and then the trouble started. As long as he was here, things were fine. Yes, I could go to the police. But that would only make things worse in the mind of the guy who claims he owns it, to the point where I'd never be able to drive it anywhere without wondering if my truck was going to be vandalised.
I gaurantee you that as soon as he gets wind of the fact that I have lost interest in this truck, he will lose interest as well. Pieces of it will find their way on to other trucks and eventually there won't be anything left of this one and then the conflict will evaporate.
All I can say is, it's a different country. It takes intestinal fortitude to live here as a foreigner. But as I say, all is not lost. There are still others around. My vintage LC dream is down but not yet out.
