Driving in Guyana - watch out for the dead horse!

Now that I have started driving in Guyana I thought I would try to describe what it is like out there on the roads! 

You have to keep your wits about you at all times and maintain a good sense of humour otherwise you are sunk!  The driving here is at best random and at worst highly dangerous! 

Firstly there are the actual roads.  There are huge potholes in random places so you have to be really careful to avoid them otherwise it could cause great damage to your car.  At night these are even harder to see as there is little lighting and cars come the opposite way with full beam on making it practically impossible to see the road ahead.   Also, there are no white lines painted on the roads so at night it is hard to see the edge or the middle of the road.  When the rain has been heavy some of the roads get flooded really quickly so that can be another hazard especially when the potholes fill up and you can’t see how deep they are!

Then you have watch out for random obstacles crossing your path – it could be dogs, cows, goats, horses, donkeys, horses or donkeys pulling carts, bicycles (often coming the wrong way towards you on your side of the carriageway!), children, dead animals in the road (we have seen dead cats L, dogs, snakes, horses and other unidentified animals in the road – including vultures eating the roadkill!).

After that you have watch out for the other drivers and often have to try to anticipate what any driver might do at any given moment – usually something really haphazard.  Here are some of the things people regularly do:

• Reverse onto the road or towards you on your side of the road.
• Do sudden U turns.
• Stop or turn off without indicating.
• Drive forwards towards you on your side of the road.
• Overtake someone who is already overtaking someone else, sometimes when someone is coming the other way! 
• Blind you with full beam headlights at night.
• Create 3 or sometimes 4 lanes while waiting at traffic lights which actually only have 2 lanes.
• Undertake you on the grass verge.
• Throw bags of rubbish – cans, boxes etc out of their window while driving.
• Indicate that they are turning but turn the opposite way or don’t turn at all.

So as you can see we have to really concentrate when driving and really appreciate all prayers for our protection! 

Tomorrow we have our appointment to try to get our visas/work permits so would value your prayers that this all goes smoothly and we are allowed to stay.  Also, we have to attend the Guyana Methodist District Conference starting tomorrow and running until Friday so we have four long and potentially hard days ahead of us.  We have to go to West Demerara for this so we are staying with our boss in Georgetown to cut the journey time from about 2 hours to about an hour each day.  Please remember us in your prayers for this – we are looking forward to having a relaxing day off on Saturday to recover!  

 

Also, still no landline or internet so don't give up praying on those ones!! Thank you.