Driving mayhem!

My company forbids any employee from driving a vehicle on the roads of South Sudan.  Upon arriving here I could understand why.  Roads are chaos!  So to get around town, we have a car service, two vehicles and three drivers.  Because of my position, I spend the most time with the drivers.  They have a lots of responsibility and make the approximately $100/month.  I don’t pay them, the car service does and I have been trying to convince the owner to give them more money.  This week was a hard week with the drivers.  I lost 2 of 3 of them.  One got a job driving long haul trucks around South Sudan for 4x the money.  He has a wife and children to support.  I told him the reason I am sitting in Juba is to support my family and I totally understood.  The other I could not trust and I basically fired him due to lack of consistency and not showing up to work.

My replacement drivers came today.  One is OK, I guess but I haven’t driven with him yet.  The other (Ohmar) is awful!  He has no clue where the basics in Juba are, and can not drive a vehicle!!  In fact I grabbed the steering wheel twice today to avoid hitting other cars and pedestrians!!  The fastest we went was 25 kph, and I could tell he thought he was breaking the sound barrier!!  If he shifted out of 2nd gear he might hit 35!  Ohmar uses all the road available to him.  This means on a four lane road he utilizes all four lanes wether there is on coming traffic or not.  I do not feel Juba is unsafe.  In fact I think many cities in the USA are more dangerous to walk in, but after my ride with Ohmar today, I felt like I had a near death experience multiple times!!

Many drivers in Juba are awful!  They do not require driving tests and if they can sign their names they can get a license.  Also most vehicles are right hand drive while they drive on the right side of the road.  This creates a situation when ever the merge they are looking across the vehicle and can’t see.  This causes a constant stream of vehicles to cut you off on each trip.  Also, if there are lines painted on the road, they are ignored.   People feel they can drive anywhere wether it is paved, an on coming lane or a side walk.  

Bottom line, I almost broke a company rule today.  I was extremely close to telling the driver to get out and driving the van home myself!