Saturday, July 26, 2014

Driving at night in Rwanda

Driving at night in Rwanda is a hair-raising experience.  The highways outside the city do not have street nights.  So they are pitch black.  But people walk on the shoulders at all hours in the dark.  I don’t know how they can see where they are going, but it seems that they manage it somehow. 

So you drive along.  Every minute or so, people suddenly appear out of nowhere, flash by your car some three feet away and disappear into the dark again. You keep praying that they stay on the shoulder, that you don’t hit them.  I don’t want to drive in Rwanda. 

Why are so many people walking on the highway 9 o'clock at night, …, 5 o’clock in the morning?  It does not happen even in China. It does seem like there are more people in Rwanda than in China.  








2 comments:

YTSL said...

Hi Stephen --

If it's anything like Tanzania in the mid 1990s: it's because a lot of people are too poor to have cars of their own, even to pay for buse fares. So they walk... often a great distance from and to work, school, etc.

Puts a lot of our problems, transport and otherwise, into perspective, doesn't it? :S

StephenC said...

They certainly cannot afford cars. Even the bus fare is a burden. Plus the average population density across the country is something like 3 times China's. So there are people walking everywhere.