This is why I need valium on the road.

It was raining when we left work yesterday. Matthias (who drives for my boss, Sid) helped me to the car with an umbrella because I was paranoid about my [David's] computer getting wet. It wasn't even raining too hard at that point, but who would say "no, thank you" to a gentleman holding an umbrella over your head?

It was a different car than the one in which we'd arrived at work in the morning, but I've learned not to ask questions about things like that. Maybe the white station wagon was lined up in a queue to get petrol at one of the filling stations, hoping beyond reasonable hope to get fuel. Who knows? But I sat up front by habit, and then felt bad because Uncle Sid had to squash into the backseat with two passengers. (I didn't know we had passengers, honestly!)

We started home, and the rain started pounding pretty hard on the car. There was a sunroof over my head--blessedly shut--and I looked up at it, startled. I don't see sunroofs that often here. Matthias asked if it was leaking, and I said no, I just wanted to look at it. (Call me crazy.) The windscreen had completely fogged up, and Matthias kept wiping it with his hand. Uncle Sid asked me to roll down the window a bit to help ventilate. Silly me. After doing what he asked, I then fiddled with the air controls so that air was coming out the defrost vent. (Apparently, this was a new concept to dear Matthias. Maybe it was just something I learned by necessity living in Chicagoland for five years.) The windscreen finally cleared up, and Uncle Sid leaned back in his seat and relaxed.

We were going too fast. Not speeding fast, but too fast for the storm. I gripped the door handle at every turn and prayed God would keep us safe. Once we turned onto the main road back to Jos, I realised how heavily it was raining. The roads were flooded in many places. To my consternation, Matthias didn't seem to even slow down. The word hydroplane became fixed in my mind, and it was all I could do to not snap at the driver to slow down. One puddle we went through was so deep I honestly thought I'd see water coming in under the door. I thought of how a friend had accidentally flooded her parents' car in the Chicago flood last October. Oh boy.

But somehow we made it out of that puddle and all the others. Matthias said that when the rains were bad, the other side of the dual carriageway was impassible, that both sides of traffic had to drive on the side we were on. (And that was better?) The rain finally petered out once we got into town, and we passed a large van that had its right two wheels stuck in the ditch/gutter on the shoulder of the road. Oops. Oh, and did I mention that something was wrong with the transmission, and Matthias kad to keep slamming on the brakes and gunning the engine to keep us going? Freaky.

And throughout the ride I heard snatches of conversation from the backseat. Our two passengers were from Oyo State and from Calabar, and the woman (from Calabar) had worked at a hospital in Ireland (Republic of) for a few months. She and Uncle Sid (who's from N. Ireland) talked about Port Harcourt traffic, and I laughed on the inside. According to Uncle Sid, a family traveling recently had spent five hours once they reached Port Harcourt to get to their destination within the city, all because of traffic. Now, I don't remember its being that bad, but then I wasn't driving, either. And David's sister-in-law Stella is a pro at driving in the city.

Port Harcourt driving...I was only in Port Harcourt two nights last November/December. And it was a nightmare. For one thing, there's no power most of the time, so whatever traffic lights exist are entirely pointless. For another thing, there are no traffic police (yellow fevers) either. And there aren't very many roundabouts (traffic circles) as there are in Jos. If you approach a given intersection, it is already filled with cars going all directions, and it takes literally 5-10 minutes to maneuver around all the cars without getting plowed into by a bigger vehicle and at the same time without plowing into the motorcycles. It's insane. I've never seen anything like it. I've heard driving in Rome is crazy, but I won't believe it's worse than Port Harcourt until I see it. Good grief.

The woman from Calabar told of a man she knew who had spent all night trying to get home after work and then had to turn right around--without reaching home at all--and go back to work because it was already morning! God forbid I should ever live in a city like that. Give me Jos any day.

Somehow I made it to my parents' gate alive and well, if a little frazzled. The rain had stopped, and the air was fresh. But I will never feel safe driving in the rain with Matthias again!

**On a lighter note, I GOT MY LICENSE! The picture is absolutely dreadful, not even simply "bad," but really and truly wretched. Otherwise I might post a snap of it. But hey, at least now I'm a legal driver! :)