Uganda: Day 3

Jet lag is starting to wear off but it is still very present. Last night we went to bed at 2:30 am after talking to Sarah, and slept until noon! We felt pretty lazy, but we needed the sleep.

Sarah, bought a little car - a '94 Toyota Corsa, and brought it home last night. It has good tires and drives well. She has been here for 5 months or so but has not driven except for during the test drive. I have no doubt that she will learn quickly and be an excellent driver, but in the meantime she is perfectly content to let me do the driving. They drive on the left here, which I've done in Africa before, so I was deemed qualified.

So - here are my thoughts on the driving rules and customs in Uganda.
1. Whoever gets there first wins - no hard feelings. Road rage does not exist until someone hits someone else and then no one gets hurt.
2. There is no right of way unless your car is preventing another car from doing something - then you have the right of way. (i.e. going after stopping at a stopsign involved creeping forward until cross-traffic cannot pass. Only then can you pass.)
3. Motorcycle drivers only survive here because of a developed flock instinct, much like birds. They swarm like flies in and around all moving things on the road (even pedestrians). The only way to move in traffic is to be blind to their presence. You have to trust that they see that pothole you're going to swerve to miss, and that they will swerve with you.
4. Blinkers here are as good as putting your car where you're intending to go. Same with arms out the window - if you signal that you're moving into or out of a traffic circle or from the shoulder, you can feel free to cut everyone else off to get in or out, on or off.
4b. The circles go clockwise. If you are continuing around, you leave your right blinker on the whole time.

Personally, I love it. I mean, I love driving here. I do hate the system - there is no sense of common good on the roads. The drivers don't seem to care about anyone but themselves, or at least they drive like they don't. Don't get me wrong - I don't know a single Ugandan who would not be horribly distraught if they hit a motorcyclist or person (people run right across the road in front of you - like frogger.) But then, they all know the system and don't drive fast enough to cause lethal damage most of the time. Its chaos...

Anyway - we drove to the Diocese from Sarah's apartment, then to lunch at the mall, and then home after a quick stop at the grocery store, then to the apartment. We drove through a small patch of 'bad' traffic on the way out of the area where the grocery store is - I thought I did pretty well :)

Tomorrow I start the preliminary steps to wiring the Diocesan offices, and Carrie gets to visit the fabric district.