Out of Control

Traffic in this city is getting ridiculously out of control. You think you finally get the hang of simultaneously honking at the idiot on the motorcycle with a pot rather than a helmet on his head, avoiding crushing the donkey next to you's hoofs, restraining from flipping the microbus driver the bird, and texting for directions when you're knocked right back to the start.

As I drove to work this morning, my mother (who works down the street from me) and I were complaining about how bad the traffic was. I noted that it's particularly bad on Sundays, but there must have been something wrong today. When we came to a complete stop at the bottom of a bridge and noticed drivers on the other side of the street cranking their heads in unimaginable positions, we suspected there had been an accident. Twenty minutes later, we saw the culprit - a broken down, public bus.

Under any other circumstances, this would have been a normal occurrence and yes, traffic would have moved slowly, but it would have moved. What made today oh so special was the fact that six - SIX - policemen were standing next to the bus apparently "directing traffic." We're on a bridge...it's two lanes...it isn't rocket science. The presence of these policemen made matters so much worse, as people expected to see guts poured out on the street, or at least attribute the delay to a checkpoint.

Things didn't end there though. Just as traffic started to clear up and we made our way past the rickety bus, this came RACING, racing I tell you!, at us. Down our side of the street, in my lane, full speed ahead. I have no words for this (at the time, I had some expletives, but that's neither here nor there). I really will never understand this country.