Moving from a city of 5,000 people to a city of five million
people (and growing!) can cause all kinds of challenges.
We currently live in a huge apartment complex, probably one
of the largest in this city. In our hometown, there are no apartment buildings.
Here there are markets and grocery stores on nearly every
street block, but in our hometown there were only two places to buy food,
Wal-Mart and Winn Dixie.
At home in Columbia, everyone had a car to drive, if not
more than one car. Maybe a car and a truck, or a car and a motorcycle. Here,
most people can’t afford cars at all; however, there are 6,300 buses operating
in this city on a daily basis. In our hometown – yep, you guessed it… no buses.
Not even ONE!
Before we moved from our hometown there was one taxi that
had just started running. Not one taxi service. Just one taxi. Here there are a
million, gazillion taxis. It does make it pretty easy to get one when you need
it though.
Traffic in our Current City:
After being here for nearly a year, I think we’ve adjusted
pretty well to the challenge and changes of life in a big city.
Still there was one thing that I have not quite become
accustomed to and that’s driving a car in this city.
If you’ve ever gotten one of our newsletters, you’ve likely
heard me mention some aspect of frustration or confusion over the way people
maneuver on the streets in this city. It just doesn’t make sense.
You don’t have to stay in any one particular lane when
driving, that’s even if there are white lines painted on the road. Some roads
have no markings at all.
You drive through a red light, but you stop at a yellow
light. And lots of time, if the electricity’s not working, there are no lights
at all. And we have not seen a single stop sign anywhere in this city.
People will cut in front of you while driving down the road,
but they call it “being smart” and if necessary, they’ll just drive into
oncoming traffic on the other side of the road to get around you.
They also park their cars in the road if they need to.
Doesn’t matter if it’s a busy street and they cause lots of traffic jams. They
just stop right there. And if their car breaks down in the middle of the road,
they fix it right where it dies in the middle of the road. They don’t move it
off to the side.
They honk all the time and the bus drivers are
crrrraaaaazzzzzyyyyyyyy.
Oh and that’s just for starters…
Still we are very thankful to have a car when there are so
many who do not, and we happen to have a little soft spot in our hearts for our
little brown 4-door. It does have air conditioning (on most days) and it even
has a radio that works despite being nearly 20 years old.
The weird thing about this car is that you drive in it on
the right hand side of the car. Well, that would probably be normal for most
Southeast Asian countries, except in our country we also drive on the right
hand side of the road!
CJ is, of course, the master at driving and was doing just
fine within our first week here, but I had yet to tackle even the idea of
getting behind the wheel until today.
We were just chatting with some friends recently about the
fact that we had been on the field for a year, and I began to wonder about
where the time has gone. When we first arrived here there were so many goals
and aspirations we had set for ourselves. Many of which we felt like we would
get to eventually. Driving, for me, was one of those.
That’s why today, when we were about to leave for just a
short trip, most of which would be on back roads on a usually non-busy Sunday,
I told CJ I’d like to take a turn at the wheel.
He had to get us out of the parking garage and down to the
main street (it’s very tight and tricky getting out of our building) but from
there I was able to do just fine. It was a little weird trying to manipulate
the stick shift with my left hand, and despite lots of effort, I never could
get the mirrors to feel like they were in the right place. But I did it!
There were no accidents, no trouble, we made it there safe
and sound.
I guess I should’ve stopped while I was ahead.
I did so good getting us to where we were going, I thought
I’d try to drive home too a little later on that day.
Once we got out on the road we kept smelling smoke and the
air conditioner wouldn’t work. When we stopped at a light, I asked CJ, “is that
us making that smoke and smell?”
“Just keep going! Don’t stop!” he said.
He wanted to get home or as close to home as we could get if
the “Brown Bug” was going to break down.
I know I was driving slow and people kept honking at me!
Sheesh, it was scary.
In the end, we did make it home. We stopped a little before
the apartment complex to switch drivers again so that CJ could get us into our
small parking spot.
When he took the keys out of the ignition, he started
laughing.
“I’ve discovered the problem,” he said.
“What? What was it? Was it because of something I did or the
way I was driving?” I asked.
“You used the wrong key in the ignition,” he giggled as he
explained. “The key you used is the one for the trunk.”
Oh well, at least I attempted it. And we survived.
I know I’m nowhere near ready to go out on my own and
probably not ready to drive on the main thoroughfare yet, but it’s a start,
right?
