Transportation and Travel {Simple Living Challenge}

Want to know something ironic? On the day that I was going to write about this topic, my car wouldn’t start in the parking lot at work.

I know that my habits in terms of transportation and travel are not eco friendly, nor do they follow any of the life standards. I would love to live in a city with good public transit; unfortunately I live in the suburbs and would have to hike several miles to the nearest bus stop.

I have ridden a bike to work exactly once. It’s 12 miles each way, and I felt I was taking my life into my hands and realized that Grand Rapids being named one of the best bicycling cities is the biggest. joke. ever.

Carpooling doesn’t seem to work because there is always a  meeting offsite I need to get to, or an errand to run on my lunch hour.

There are a few people I know who have just one car for a family with both parents working; they are the ones always asking me for rides.

I have come to the conclusion that our lifestyle and geography is just not conducive to being without a vehicle. Unless I can convince my employer to let me work from home, we are always going to be a two-car family.

Yet I still have the guilt. When I visited Malawi a few years ago, my coworkers sent me out into the bush. I didn’t know they had bets going to see how long I would last. I lasted the whole week, so there. No running water, no electricity, and a privy that we locked so the rest of the village wouldn’t use it. No privacy; when I walked to the privy with a flashlight in one hand and a roll of toilet paper in the other, endless children cried out “hello, madame. How are you?”

After a long day of visits in the village with the community development worker, I sat on the outside stoop very tired. I looked at the sea of huts. We had walked all day, and they had sent a motorcycle for me as I grew tired, unaccustomed to walking all day in the hot African sun. I realized how much I took my car for granted. All these huts, and no garages. No cars. Only the very occasional motorbike and bicycles loaded with people, farm animals, and vegetables. On the one hand, a car in the village would make life so much easier. People died because the nearest hospital was 30 miles away, too far to go by foot very easily. But then I thought, where would they put the cars? How would they afford them? They would have to build roads. And, the nearest gas station was far enough away that the workers always fueled up before making the journey out to the bush.

And then I thought, with all those extra cars’ exhausts added to the cooking fire smoke, I can’t imagine how bad the air quality would be.

And I felt privileged. Not only because I had a car, but because in a few days I would be home, taking a shower in my bathroom with running water and fancy soap, far away from this rat-infested guest house where we had pounded yam morning, noon and night. Two eight hour plane flights away from the scorching heat and blazing sun.

With full acknowledgement of my privilege, I now find myself needing to write something about the topic of simple living in terms of travel and transportation.

I got nothin’

Hoping some of YOU have some ideas; please post them below.

This post shared with Simple Lives Thursday and Frugal Friday