“My driver’s licence hit a pothole”
The potholes in our roads are simply unreal. On the way to work the other day my lift-share colleague chortled and pointed across an intersection at a white car on the other side of the road: “Look, he’s in a pothole!” Sure enough, the white car had one back wheel embedded in a hole, his whole car at an angle as a result. We watched as the driver very carefully accelerated and climbed out before proceeding, completely unaffected but giving us a smile as he passed.
Smart guy! He obviously does what many of us do, and approaches every puddle in the road as a potential lake and goes through them slowly and carefully. Who knows what craters lurk beneath! So, he slowly goes into them, and he can slowly emerge.
Others are not so smart. I drove past a car the other day which had 5 minutes earlier screamed past me dodging potholes into oncoming traffic and terrifying everyone else on the road. I couldn’t help but feel slightly gratified, even giving a cheeky grin and a cheery wave, as I passed him further down the road where he was mournfully surveying a tyre as flat as a pancake from being whacked on the sharp edges of a pothole.
Potholes have been a recurring problem the last few years, but are much much worse this year because of the amount of rain we’ve had. Car tyres are expensive to replace and hard to come by, so people swerve like lunatics, protecting their vehicles before they protect their (and our) lives. It is literally real-life dodgems.
This year we can add the joys of power cuts to the driving experience. Imagine a combination of potholes and no robots (traffic lights) working!
The fools who slam across the roads at all angles avoiding potholes are the same fools who hold their breath and foot-flat through blank robots. (Unlike my work colleague, who inches to the edge of the intersection.) I don’t know where people keep their brains and driving experience. It’s almost as if their driving skills deteriorate proportionately with the roads.
Frankly, I just want to stay alive, but it sometimes feels as if the road forces are conspiring against me.
I had to add another ‘how to survive’ traffic tip to my long mental list yesterday: I happily drove towards a green light and was going through (fortunately slowly because of the potholes) when a fancy car swooped past me, narrowly missing my bumper. He slowed down and stuck his head out the window and yelled at me:. “You %^& fool! Where did you buy your licence!! Then he revved his engine and stormed off.
I was stunned: “What did I do wrong???”
It was only when I realised more cars were hurtling towards me that I decided I’d better reverse out of the intersection and get out of their way. And it was then that I noticed that while my side was showing ‘green for go’, their side was totally blank. All the cars coming towards me at speed were assuming the lights were not working and doing the usual foot-flat through the lights. I had naively driven right into the storm.
So my list now goes as follows:
- Watch the potholes and be vigilant for those dodging the potholes
- Go through non-working traffic lights very very carefully
- Approach WORKING traffic lights with extreme caution, because you never know when it’s just an illusion.
But this morning I felt I had seen it all: Bulawayo has very wide roads; two lanes going in one direction and two in the other. I was carefully manouvering my way into town when I came across two cars stopped dead square in the middle of the road with a full empty lane in between them. They were going in opposite directions so the drivers’ windows were alongside each other, the two guys hanging out their respective window having a lengthy chat, oblivious to the cars navigating their way around the outside to try and get past and carry on into town.
I was doing the same careful crawl past when the car behind me, clearly infuriated by the chat and my tortoise-like driving style, accelerated hard, swerved out from behind me and stormed through the middle of the two parked cars, rudely interrupting their chat. It was a tight squeeze: I half expected to see two noses hanging off the middle car’s side mirrors!
I carried on past but looked back in time to see two men angrily waving their fists with indignation at the car that had the audacity to… erm.. drive down the road. I couldn’t help but laugh my head off and I was still laughing when I got to town. I very very rarely have this particular thought, but this morning the words ‘Only in Africa’ felt amusing, relevant and appropriate.
