Zimbabwe Absurdity

The traffic lights on the intersection of my road and Harare drive have not been working for some months now. Actually that’s not quite true. The traffic lights that face the Harare Drive traffic have been working, the ones on my road have not. It even got to the stage where one of the green lights fell off and was dangling by wires to the rest of the unit.

Crossing Harare Drive was an interesting experience requiring one to move forward just far enough to see the Harare Drive lights without obstructing the traffic and when it turned red it meant that the lights on my road were green; if they’d actually been there. If on approaching Harare Drive I couldn’t actually see any lights but could see traffic stopped on Harare Drive then I’d assume it was OK for me to cross. But I always slowed down, just in case.

This morning ALL the lights were working! Oh joy! At last I felt safe. Well, a little more safe than normal. A City of Harare pickup was parked next to one of the lights. I thought about waving and hooting my thanks as I drove past but I could not see a technician nearby. Hold on, I was about to thank someone for doing a job that should have been done months back? I bet in civilized countries he would have been apologizing to me.

At the intersection of College Road and Churchill Road all the lights were working. I still counted four vehicles going through on red when it was green for me.