The Left Turn

I sure wished it wasn’t real, but it was: the traffic wasn’t moving. I repeat, was NOT moving at all. There I was, sitting in the car, in a one-way street chock-full with cars and motorbikes. It was 4:15 PM, an hour had passed since I left the campus. I was supposed to pick R up at his school at 4-4.30ish, and there was still a mile between the school and where I was.

I got a bit worried because, although traffic jams occurred in every part of Jakarta every hour of the day, this small back road that I took to R's school was usually spared.  I texted him, then called him, telling him that I would be late.

An hour later, I was still in more or less the same spot.

Two hours later: there was an improvement, I had now moved 10 meters forward, and stopped again. I turned off the car engine, and fiddled with my phone trying to get some info on what was happening in the road ahead. It seemed that there was a big bus breaking down some 500 meters ahead, and that was it. That was it. There was thankfully no flood, no landslide - yet I was so puzzled as to why this darn bus could cause a traffic jam so massive.

Three hours later: managed to move 10 meters further. By then it started to rain, and R called asking whether he should come look for me.  He thought he could get a motorbike ride to where I was, so at least I'd have some company in the unsettling traffic. You wouldn't be able to get here, I told him. The traffic jam was so bad not even a motorbike could move, and I wouldn't was us both to get stuck.

It occurred to me that perhaps I would be stuck there until midnight, but somehow for those first three hours I could keep my calm.  I fished out a magazine from the back seat, and started flicking through it.  But then it got dark and I was left completely alone. I couldn’t read, and I couldn’t listen to the radio either, because I had decided that I needed to turn off the car engine completely to save fuel.

By 7:26 PM I could move forward about 30 meters, and stopped again. Driving for 30 meters however made me so happy, I thought soon enough I would go past the darn bus and meet R. Not so soon, though. An hour later, at 8:31, I was still at that same spot I stopped at, and panic started to build up. 

“What is going on?” shouted a guy driving a truck next to me, to a passerby on foot. “Traffic jam in all directions!” the passerby said, “There was no getting out of here, at least until midnight.”  

It was then that I broke down; my exhaustion finally reared its ugly head. There was no way I could afford getting stuck there until midnight. For the life of me, at 5.30 AM the following day I had to go to the campus. There was a research report that was due, and a class to teach  - and I was hungry and simply overwhelmed. 

It was around that time when traffic at my left cleared up, and although I actually had to turn right, I called R right away and told him I would go left.  I simply couldn’t bear the thought sitting in an unmoved car any longer.  Switching to the left lane took some maneuvering; I gritted my teeth and told myself I could do it. A few more maneuvers in the small road with cars blocking my way and finally: home free.

It was so exhilarating to be able to drive at 60km/hour after 4.5 hours of the worst traffic jam I had ever had to endure. R, who had been waiting in a mall about 2 kilometers away from his school, met me at a gas station and took the wheel. Seeing him arriving at the gas station was a relief – I decided not to tell him that I had a breakdown earlier.

The rest of the journey home took less than an hour. The following day, despite my tired brain, I managed to turn in the research report and teach my class. It was the critical turn to the left, I told myself, that made the difference.  Taking  the left turn when you thought you were supposed to turn right, was sometimes the very thing that saved your day.