Map. Huh? What's a Map?

I grew up with maps. I had jigsaw puzzles of maps, I had stacks of free AAA maps. I had maps on my walls. I love maps.

When the UN moved in after the tsunami, they took GPS points and created this nice little map with where all the donors and aid organizations set up their offices in order to aid coordination. But many of the streets in Banda Aceh do not have names, or if they do, it's not marked.

When I first arrived, I had to go to the office of Public Works for a coordination meeting. I showed my handy dandy UN map to my driver and pointed out the little number which represented Public Works. My driver laughed at me because even though he had been a driver most of his adult life, he did not know how to read a map. Most people here either just know the places they need to go to or they get verbal directions. Don't even think about using Google Map to get turn-by-turn directions!

Banda Aceh's streets are not plotted out on a grid like Manhattan and they are not named in some coordinated fashion like DC, so getting lost while looking for a place is pretty darn easy - especially at night. Last weekend, there was a BBQ at my friends' new house. The directions sounded pretty straightforward, but it took us about 20 minutes to find the place, which included stopping to ask for directions twice from old men hanging out roadside drinking coffee (good thing here, drivers are not afraid to stop to ask for directions!) and calling my friend and giving her the play-by-play of what I was passing.

Here are some typical Banda Aceh instructions:

Go past the big market, turn left after the police hut, if you see the meat shop, you've gone too far. Turn right at the IMC sign, turn left when the road forks, keep going past the ZAF house. There will be an unfinished mosque on your left and our house is the big pink house that looks like a big wedding cake.

Go down the road where the UN compound is, go past WFP until the end of the road. Turn right and go over the bridge. Turn right at the ECHO sign but don't follow it. Instead, turn right and follow the curves of the road until the end. Turn left and then an immediate right. Our house is at the end of the street with the big green truck in front.