Urban Africa: driving around the city

I wrote before and asked you to pray for me as I am learning to drive to our schools in the compounds of the city. On Friday I made it to 8 of our schools that are each located in a different compound of Lusaka!!! My friend (who moved here the same day I did) and I only got lost going to a couple of them where we ended up driving back and forth through some markets that were not where we were supposed to be. I'm pretty proud of us though for finding all the schools . . . and thankful for your prayers for guidance and protection! There's no way to truly show or explain what it's like to drive here, but I'll give you a glimpse of how we get to work some days. 

Lusaka is about 140 square miles. Sometimes I work in the Family Legacy office located on one of the main roads and sometimes I go to one or more of the 16 schools scattered throughout the compounds of the city.

In the heart of the city there are major roads connected by roundabouts, but to get to most of our schools the roads are unmarked and there are a variety of turns that you just have to know by landmarks. The unmarked roads remind me of when I was learning to drive in Japan except not all the roads are paved and the drivers here are a bit more aggressive. We drive on the left side of the street here which for those who don't know means you also drive on the other side of the car and your turn signal/windshield wipers are on the opposite sides of the steering wheel.

Here are a couple pictures from the drive to one of our schools. It was a rainy day on Friday which makes driving in the compounds a little trickier because of slick muddy roads and standing water.

These pictures don't do justice to the true conditions of the muddy road we take to this particular school. There are many potholes and ruts to navigate around and drive across.

Then we might have to drive through something like this. How do you know where to drive to get across all the standing water? You can wait for another car to pass through . . . if they make it, then drive where they did. If there aren't any other cars around look for tire tracks and go that way. That worked for us this time. We made it to the other side without getting stuck. Yea!

After a few more sharp turns around buildings and cinder block walls, we made it to this LCA. 

Ready for more adventures in Zambia and lots of good things to come!

How You Can Help

PRAY

• Pray for our students as they are on break and preparing to start a new school year in January.
• We have teacher training this week and for a week in January. Please pray for productive days as we prepare for the upcoming school year.

GO

• If you are an experienced teacher come to Zambia for 2 weeks this summer to partner with one of our Zambian teachers. Find out more information and sign up for Teach ONE at the Family Legacy website: www.familylegacy.com or contact me for more information.

www.familylegacy.com/alicia