On Driving

 “The road…it can beat you!” A visitor from Liberia made that statement after being on the roads here in our area. What a great way to put it.

I remember when I was trying to get a good picture of life here in West Africa while talking to Brittany in Texas, I asked her what some of the hardest parts of life here were. She listed traveling the roads in her top three. I so understand that now. This post is not designed as a woe-is-me rant about driving, rather a way you can see how to better pray for us when I say we need prayers while driving.

The roads are bad. This statement doesn’t seem to cover it really. We just finished our tree day trek to the capital, the last day we took a road that resembled a dry creek bed at parts. The thing for me that is so fatiguing about driving here is it is just a never-ending chain of decisions to be made: right, left or through the mud hole? Is four wheel drive through this part necessary? Should I brake for that chicken or depend on its supposed survival instinct to cause it to move? Which is preferable, those rocks or that mucky mud? What do I want to eat out of our travel-snack basket? Should I go into third even though I know I will slow down for a pothole five seconds later? Some questions can be easily answered through experience, regarding snacks for example, peanut butter jars should be opened only on paved roads.

The roads here are worked on, generally grated. The problem is every year at rainy season the semi-trucks carrying gas in wear out the road again. It is kind of just an accepted cycle as I understand it.  Being a passenger is hard in a different way: the driver has the steering wheel to hold onto- the passenger does have a couple of handles, but it is just a rough ride however braced you are.

Poor Betty (our truck), we have aged her sadly. We are trying to be responsible of course, nonetheless the jolts and bumps she goes through are making her look much older than her nine months of being driven.

Quick anecdote from this last trip: one of our African friends asked us if we could haul some tin to his house, and give his ride there too. The village is right on the way between the capital and our destination, so we said we would. We loaded our stuff first and had him tie down his tin how he thought best. It looked awkward, but we trusted his tying skills. About ten minutes after leaving the compound the morning of our departure, I am at an intersection when we hear and feel the metal leave our truck and fall to the street. The edges of the tin were just like a knife working those ropes and bungee cords. What followed with the police was a loud, gesturing, crowded, cultural argument of which I took no part in, staying in the truck while our friend who had loaded and owned the tin did the debating. This was probably the best thing we white people could have done in this situation, let our friend handle it for us. In the end, we didn’t end up paying any fines, the tin was tied better, and we were off, God is good.

I have never been an adrenaline junkie: not big on roller coasters or scary movies, if someone asked me if I wanted to go mudding or off-roading in the states I would not think twice before refusing. God is funny.  Our routine prayer before going through a stream or pool of water, or other rough patch is “ok God, here we are again, please get us through.”  And He always has, and even if He didn’t, I know He would work it out.