Driving

It takes me about 7-10 minutes to drive to work. It should probably only take 4-5 minutes instead (and yes, by the way, I can finally drive stick -- sort of). There are two major routes that I can choose from to drive to the office. I have a habit of taking one route because I’m an avid right turner. Like Zoolander, I can’t turn left. Let me explain: If I take the left-turn route, which would potentially be a smoother route, the morning traffic would stress me out too much. And I can only imagine my car waiting patiently at the intersection for cars to pass before turning left. Cars behind me would be honking incessantly for me to go. I imagine myself as Seymour Skinner in that one Simpsons episode where he’s driving the school bus waiting for that magic opening to make his left turn. Instead, he sits there -- day turning into night -- and he’s still waiting his turn to make that left. You see, I’m just stressing myself out just thinking about it, as usual. It’s not that I’m a bad driver. It’s that I’m surrounded by bad drivers everywhere in Abidjan.

And so, I take the right-turn route.

The right turn route, in my mind, is the lesser of the stressor. This is where it should only take 4-5 minutes, but instead it takes longer. Here's why: you and 20 other cars of both sides are dodging randomly placed speed bumps of varying heights and from afar, cars seemingly appear to almost have head on collisions -- if you come across the crazy ones. Some speed bumps span across the road; some are only on one side of the road; others are incomplete speed bumps where only one side of the car has go drive over the bump. Some road bumps are inverted, and then there are accidental speed bumps, or rather major potholes filled with rocks and other debris. Don’t get me wrong, Cote d’Ivoire normally has good road infrastructure, but these speed bumps are here for a reason. This ‘side’ road would be almost like a highway if there were no speed bumps. There’s a school, some houses and food stands along the road. People are always walking around, as well as the goats and the chickens. The very pregnant looking goat always seems to wander around one of the bends. So it’s good that the speed bumps slow us down. I just hate them. I do enjoy when there are no cars because then I can dodge almost all the partial speed bumps and look like I’m crazily driving all over the road. During traffic, some will dodge and some will tough it out and drive over the bumps. I take this as good practice to learn to shift gears a lot.

I haven’t driven a lot since I’ve been here -- mainly to and from work, and occasionally to the store. I’ll just need to tough it out and become an Abidjanais driver. I have two years here, so I have time. It’s coming back to the states where I’ll probably have to learn how to drive all over again.