Vehicles

It's a great view from this windshield, right?

This last Sunday, we took one of the cars from the drilling team that is here, complete with very cracked windshield and American-side steering wheel. I’m back to left-side steering wheels here in South Sudan, so it made me feel all twisted around, like when you sit at the wrong place at the dinner table. It reminded me of the Barbie car one of my friends in Indonesia had that had been sent to her from the US. She ended up pulling off the steering wheel because it was on the ‘wrong’ side (for us), and it was distracting to our play. Still, I always remember that twisty feeling whenever I saw the hole on the ‘wrong’ side of the car where the steering wheel used to be. Since those days, I’ve been in various countries where they drive on the American side (Syria) and others where drive on the other side (the UK), and still others where there is a suggested side to drive on, based on the location of the steering wheel, but mostly people are encouraged to decide for themselves where they want to drive (India).

                                        

He's trying to fix the car...it turns out there was something wrong with the filter (whatever that is)

Almost every time I’ve been in the car with the drilling team, we’ve ended up having to push. Either we’re trying to jump start the car or we are stuck in a gooey pile of mud.  I know about getting stuck in snow from grad school in PA. I once backed into a snowdrift in my driveway because all I knew about snow I’d learned from cartoons.  After trying to make a giant snowball for the bottom of a snowman by rolling a handful of snow down a hill, I realized that cartoons weren’t a reliable source of information. So I figured that whole ‘getting stuck in a snow drift thing’ was also false. I discovered it wasn’t, but the local mailman helped dig me out and then asked me out. It was a nice meet-cute, but he lost me at the beginning of the date when he started talking about aliens and spray painting designs on cars. Anyway, I know a thing or two about getting out of muck, and thankfully, so did the drilling team because they don’t have mailmen here.

I thought it was the battery: that looks bad, right?

Usually, I’m not even in a car. I’m riding side-saddle on the back of Repent’s motorcycle. Mark thinks it may not be the best for our mutual reputations for this type of transportation to continue. He wants to get me my own motorcycle.  I’m OK with this because, while as a general rule, I don’t prefer to be the one in charge of the motorized vehicle, it’s not like there is much traffic here or cows for me to run into. I just have to learn how to slide through mud holes and ride across rivers and dodge craters. Repent is also a fan of this idea because every few minutes we have to stop and let me walk anyway because of the condition of the paths/rivers we are trying to navigate.

If I do get my own motorcycle, Repent and I will form a motorcycle gang and take over the jungle. Also, at some point, it is inevitable that I will fall over in the middle of the river and Spencer and Mark will insist that they knew this would happen, and it’s because I’m a girl, and I don’t know how to drive. 

Author's note: I just read this again, and I realize that I'm wrong about which side of the car is the American side for the steering wheel...I think. The green car with the cracked windshield has a steering wheel on the right side of the car and the white car has the steering wheel on the left side of the car.

I help push sometimes

                             
So far, here in SSudan, I've not noticed a standard side of the car for a steering wheel, so I think I'm just permanently confused. Which side of the car is the steering wheel on in the US? Now do you see why I hate driving? I am never quite sure I'm driving on the correct side of the road. It's better for everyone if I stay off the road--riding a motorcycle through the jungle is OK though.