Ghost Driver

There's no one driving the car! Or so I thought during my first week back in the US. Someone had cut my dad off while we were driving to visit my grandparents. Out of curiosity, I looked to see who the driver was.

What!? I stared at the empty seat. There's no driver! It freaked me out. I looked again and still didn't see anyone in the driver's seat. Then I started laughing. I was looking at the right seat of the car. I looked over at the left seat and saw the driver.

My parents gave me strange looks. "What?" my mom asked me. Everything had happened in my head except me laughing at myself. I told them and they laughed with me.

In Mozambique, they drive on the opposite side of the road from the US. Not just that, but driving in Nampula stressed me out on a regular basis. It's sheer chaos. During rush hour once I counted four "lanes" going one way on a two-lane road. Two chapa vans tried to maneuver in front of me from my left and right with inches to spare between our vehicles.

As I've been driving around West Michigan I appreciate that everyone here knows how to drive. I'm not as stressed out. Every time I turn left at a busy intersection I admire the beauty of the left turn arrow. It flows like clockwork. One second I'm driving directly at someone, the next we gracefully turn our separate ways without anyone breaking a sweat. 

Oh, the joys of being a missionary. Constantly having to flex between two worlds. At first it can be a shock. Either cross-cultural shock in going to a new place, or re-entry shock in returning to a place after being gone for a while. Eventually the body and mind adapt and one stops seeing driverless vehicles.