Driving

With 2 weeks under my belt I thought I would share some of the details of life in Luanda.  As some of you may know we are not allowed to drive here at all.  We have a dedicated driver and car assigned to us 7 days a week.  We have a normal driver, his name is Cunha, who drives for us 5-6 days and a relief driver, Martins, who works the other days.  Martins works for other families to round out his time.  The driver is scheduled to work roughly 8a-6p each day with a 2 hour lunch but everyone is at work by about 6:00a-6:30a so most drivers work 5a/6a to 4p/5p schedule - they are paid overtime for any extra hours.  Basically the driver is at your beckon call and will take you anywhere you want to go inside the designated safe zone to travel, which is most of the city proper.

Our driver speaks decent English and he is helping us with Portuguese.  Or I should say he is helping me because according to Cunha "Mr. Jason fala muito Portuguese" which means Jason speaks a lot of Portuguese.  I hear that every day so I have a lot of work toward!  Jason's Spanish helps a lot and he has the added benefit of sitting in the backseat and using Google Translate :)

Having to use a driver for everything is a bit strange and it requires lots of pre-planning.  Although the driver is at your beckon call they need some heads up on plans and once you release them for the night there is no "quick trip" out to the store etc.  It is also strange to be in the car with a driver all the time - thinking about taking the same taxi/Uber driver each day - do you talk to them?  If so, how much?  Just awkward.  The driver and car are deducted from Jason's pay and it is expected that we pay for dinner for the driver if we keep him out late.  The car is a Hyundai Santa Fe and it is pretty nice.  There is a fleet of them at our building since each family has one.  Most of them are white or grey (like ours) so the families with a colored car are lucky!

We are discouraged from walking and women are asked to never really walk alone- even a quick block to the bakery.  And a car must be used at night - they don't go as far to say you are not allowed to be outside at night (like other companies) but I am sure there would be an issue if something happened.  It doesn't feel scary unsafe here but you can see how things can happen.  There are some safe places to walk during the day as a group and we are taking advantage of that as often as possible.  I would liken it to being in a sketchy part of town in any big city in the US - you might lock your car door or choose to not stop for gas.  There are not gangs or loiterers here but the poverty level is extremely high so crime is an issue.   One statistic we have read is that 43% of Angolans live in extreme poverty (living on less than $1.25/day and adjust for local prices) for comparison in India the extreme poverty level is 33% and 0.7% in Mexico.

Beyond the safety issue we don't drive because traffic is crazy and there is no road signs or directions.  The city of Luanda's population exploded during the Civil War.  It went from something like 500,000 to now roughly more than 6 million with no infrastructure improvements.  We are lucky we live in the city as Jason's commute is 10 minutes or less each way.  Families that live in the compound down south (roughly 8 km) deal with 45 minutes or so to work (at 5am) and 90+ minutes home each day.  In the city they have traffic lights and some stop signs but those are basically NEVER obeyed.  Traffic is a slow motion merge in most spots- you enter an intersection very slow and wait for a break in traffic and then cross, other cars do the same and now your flow of traffic is moving and the others are waiting for a break like you did.  Although traffic is kinda nuts it is slow and mostly pretty calm- not a lot of honking or speeding - just lots of disorganization.  In addition there is almost no left hand turns just lots of roundabouts and J-turns (like in Louisiana) so although somewhere might be a block away it take 10 minutes to get there due to the road layout.  It is interesting each day to say the least!