I mentioned in a previous post that I would post a picture of a rickshaw, well here it is, the most convenient (and safe...lol) mode of transportation. What I wish that I could take a picture of our new traffic lights because they are a sight to be seen. They’ve been in the process of being put up since before I arrived. Actually they’ve been put up and then taken down 3 times in the past month but each time, they’re either facing the wrong direction or in the wrong place or something like that. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t, but this morning they were back up and working, so I got a good laugh. Let me preface this…there aren't a whole lot of traffic lights here, I've only seen one other. And people here don’t really know how to follow rules, especially not driving rules, so even though the lights are up, they generally make no difference in the flow of traffic, everyone just keeps on like normal (and by normal I mean mass chaos)
So this morning, there were 8 traffic police at this intersection and they were explaining to people how the lights work. My driver didn’t understand it, almost rear-ended the guy who was stopped at the red light, and then started honking incessantly for him to go. The guy in the car next to us yelled something in Arabic and then pointed to the light…my driver looked at the light very confused and proceeded to ask the guy some questions. Then the policeman showed up at his window and began to explain that when the light is red, we go and when the light is green, we stop behind the crosswalks so that the people have room to walk (yes, we have crosswalks, buttons and all!!) There were also police guys giving directions to pedestrians at the crosswalks. It was like one big drivers ed class on how to use an intersection. It was great!...or at least I got a big kick out of it. For the record, these instructions weren’t lost in my translation, red really does mean go and they really just do things backwards here, go figure!! And for the record, this is just one stoplight in a city of about 8 million people, give or take a few. But hey….I guess this is what progress looks like!
