When I first decided to write this blog, I was going to title it Driving Ethiopia, however, after experiencing the exhilaration and thrills of driving in Angola I had to broaden my outlook. One must remember that years ago I lived and therefore drove ini Boston...this at a time when the police gave no moving violation tickets since they had to go to court on their day off and the drivers were aware of this. Boston had a well justified disdain for normal etiquette. I have driven with a U-Haul trailer through Manhattan during rush hour, driven on the Autobahn and Auto Strassa. All of these are tame by my recent experience in Ethiopia, though I was really riding and not driving. Realizing that most roads in Ethiopia do not have lane markers or stop signs/stoplights, etc. and when they do they act as suggestions only. Because of my size I sat in the front passenger seat, the "death seat", so aptly named, while my wife rode in the back seat and was partially protected from the front view sights. I felt as if I were in a Video Game, not playing one but actually in one, a la Tron. The game of course is one of those road races where as a player you must rce and navigate around pedestrians, cars, donkeys, carts, and all sorts of road blocks. (My grandson always laughs when I play with him because I am always crashing into something.) Well, here I'n not playing a video game since I have no control, I'm just along for the ride and thereby seem to be in the game. The game is to go as fast as possible trying to miss the hordes of people walking in the road (no sidewalks), the goats, sheep, pigs, donkey carts, bicycles, all trying to get from one place to another The object seems to be to see how close you can get to the obstacles without actually hitting them. Of course the pedestrians also play the game of refusing t get out of the way, especially the young males as it seems uncool to jump off the road and they try to look nonchalantly as they stroll over to the edge of the road while secretly being terrified of being hit. Two things struck me about this, 1. after a day of riding I was more exhausted then the driver and felt I missed much of the countryside because I was too involved in watching for the impending crash, and 2. Africa walks. Th lives of people walking, in both directions seem endless. Even when no where near a village, the roads are full of people walking in both directions. I keep thinking they need a clearing house, where instead of walking they could just exchange the jobs, tasks, motivations fro going to someplace with someone with the same rationale going the other way. What a massive savings of human energy this would be.
As to driving in Africa, I must confess my delight of driving or in reality again in riding in Angola. The same obstacles but our small group in Angola was facilitated by a motorcycle police escort. Our favorite motorcycle cop with sirens going and lights flashing fled ahead of us, stopped traffic irrespective of any traffic lights so we could speed on. He would ride ahead, pass cars and motion them off the road, stopped cross traffic, etc. Watching through the windshield also became a game. A game to see if he could untangle the next traffic jam with his adroit driving and directing so we could sail through , even if this meant we were often driving on the wrong side of the road, on the shoulder, sidewalk or whatever. It was a very successful game as we never stopped from point of origin to our destination! Exciting and it gave me a little taste of power. This is what it must be so addicting to politicians and how they become so obsessed with power! As we would say at our destination 'what a ride!
