It all depends on your strategy
A short excerpt from the website of our urologist Dr Benjamin Zeier: “…stories about the practical driving test abound. On needs to drive over parkour on a sloping field covered in gravel. The freestyle is described in closest detail beforehand. And to be honest the parkour’s job is not to test your driving abilities, but dirt track is completely arbitrarily designed, since it is sheer impossible not to make driving mistakes. Your examiner decides if he wants to see more or not. Before I attempted the test I knew that missionaries with several years of driving experience in Germany under their belts had attempted the test up to four times.
Something struck me at the theoretical exam. Every so often someone got out of a car in front of the ministry’s building wearing a uniform and he or she was attended to almost immediately. I on the other had was still sitting on the wall waiting. A policeman proudly wearing his outfit came to take his test and could start it almost immediately. At another juncture a staff member of the city hall came, wearing clothing that made clear to everyone who his employer was. And why was it Herbert’s turn so quickly – was it because he was wearing the noticeable Diospi Suyana pullover? Was it really all down to one’s external appearance? I planned to do a social experiment. If my suspicions were correct then I would simply have to appear in my doctor’s dress to take my practical test. Then everyone would see how important I was. If the whole thing was no more than a circus then I also wanted show off my “freestyle on the wire”. The day before my practical test I went to laundry room and took a white t-shirt with an embroidered Diospi Suyana logo, white trousers and white shoes.
I still needed an appropriate name tag. During my lunchbreak I went to the nearby stationery shop and bought the necessary materials. I printed off the following:
Médico Dr. Benjamin Zeier
Unidad de Vigilancia Intensiva
Ventilación mecánica, Comando Covid-19
Translated:
Doctor Dr Benjamin Zeier, Monitoring Station, Mechanical Respiration, Comando Covid-19
… if my strategy were to work the test tomorrow would only be a question of formality.
At 4:30a.m. the next morning I stood in my white attire outside the hospital and then drove 90 minutes through the mountains to Abancay! Bang on 6a.m. I was waiting outside the transport ministry building. I made sure that my self-made name tag was clearly visible and then everything started. Unlike all the others who were waiting I did not join the queue, but started a new queue on the other side of the door. Well, I was important! I had quite a job not to burst out laughing, since everyone else took it incredibly seriously. No one asked me what I was doing. A lady briefly asked me question, saw my name tag and apologised immediately. I was immediately given a coupon for the 11a.m. examination.
Beforehand I had garnered as much information as I could about the parkour. Other missionaries had done top-class preparatory work and had written down all the possible traps. What had to be done now was to practice the whole thing with a driving school on a field that morning. In Peru you take your driving test in your own car, thus one drives without a license to the driving test and then drives back home. Since I did not have my own car for the exam I had to lease one from the “driving school”. The driving examiner, i.e. the owner of the car, explained his car to me: the gear box, the hand-brake, the immobiliser. It was so absurd that I had to bite my tongue the whole time to stop grinning. The 25-year-old sitting next to me continually called me “child”. Really a top-notch circus. The training parkour was tricky, but not because the examination tasks were so difficult, but because the potholes and grooves in the earth made driving on the field sheer impossible. If you paid 10 Soles you could spend one hour on this 1:1 copy of the real examination parkours. Peruvians make money out of everything…!”
“… now the big moment had arrived. It was one of the rare times that I was not nervous just before an exam. My white attire looked spot-on. A total of 4 Diospi Suyana logos graced my outfit. From whatever side one would look at me one would know where I came from. Finally I was called forward. Roughly 40 people were waiting in front of the metal gate and everyone tried to peer through the gap in the door to catch a glimpse of the mysterious game going on behind the red entrance. Slowly I drove through the gate with the driving school’s car. Finally it was my turn. And then I encountered a new problem: the vehicles’ number-plates were registered and were only allowed to be used once for a test. The inspector at the entrance scrutinised the vehicle: “You cannot take the exam in this car; it has been here today already.” My “driving instructor” must have known that his car could only be used for one test, but nevertheless he had brought 8 people with him. Thus it must work somehow. If I had learnt one thing from the theoretical exam it was this: simply stay sitting where you are. So I did. I did not move an inch. The inspector came closer to the car, looked at me from top to toe and stared at my name tag. “I am a doctor and have been here since 6a.m. I must take the test now; I have no time!” That definitely made sense. Obviously, since (s)he who is important must not be unnecessarily delayed. He waved me through to the examiners who had also been informed about who was coming their way. They also scrutinised my name tag and instead of asking me for my number plate he asked: “What is the colour of your car?” “Black”. He wrote down the colour. No problem. I could start the test.
Serenely I drove through the parkour. During the whole test I think I watched the examiner more than he me, since his interest was fixed on a different vehicle. “Lento”, very slowly I drove over the whole parkour, first forwards, then backwards, then parking parallel into a space, then parking between two cars driving forwards. Not forgetting the warning lights and paying attention to the traffic lights. I completed the parkour with flying colours. This was something the examiner could not stomach. He asked: “In which direction must the wheels point, if you park on a slope?” I turned them to the left, then to the right and finally straight. “Yes, exactly!” Then the thumbs of his colleague showed upwards. I had passed! “Where do you come from?” I answered him, from Germany. He must have noticed the large logo adorning my top. Clearly he knew of the blessings that Diospi Suyana had brought both to this State and the whole of Peru. He murmured something quietly and then let me go. Slowly and proudly I walked back to the entrance gate. My experiment had worked fantastically..
After I had taken my test my “driving school teacher” tried to bring further pupils to take their test. But each time when he drove through the gate the inspector immediately made him drive out again. Of course there are no exceptions. I spent some time waiting in front of the door. I could pick up my licence tomorrow with a copy of the car documents. But these would only be handed out when all 8 examinees were through. So I spent two hours in the searing heat in the car watching the goings on and listening to the honking of the horns on the track in front of the gate. Bang, I looked up. A learner had backed his car backwards onto ours.
A heated discussion followed immediately. My “driving instructor” saw his chance of making a few extra Soles. Naturally the pupil had to pay for the damage number plate. The decibel-level increased steadily and within no time 5 others were standing around the car looking at “the damage”. I could only chuckle. The “driving instructor” was only satisfied once the pupil who had caused the damage had paid 10 Soles. Some German highway code rules do have their legitimation.
The whole circus had taken up most of the afternoon. I had to be off. I needed to be back at the hospital at 5p.m. for the start of my night-shift. I just made it in time…!” Benjamin Zeier
