Don't ask

It's really best not to ask why things are the way they are on this continent. The response is not likely to be very satisfying. You either get some variation of the Blood Diamond answer ("This. Is. Africa.") or you get a very long, very convoluted series of explanations that are at best peripherally related to your question -- a bit like asking why the sky is blue and being told a creation tale about why the grass is green. It's bewildering and -- if you let it be -- frustrating. I know all this, but it isn't easy for my analytical brain just to let it slide, either. I continually find myself trying, despite my better judgment, to figure out what people are thinking around here.

It's a waste of time. How can you explain why the Congolese police arrested a bunch of goats, threw them in jail, and charged them with being sold illegally at the roadside? (In an observation registering 10 out of a possible 10 on the No Shit meter, the Deputy Justice Minister was quoting as saying that many police had serious gaps in their knowledge and would be sent for retraining.)

How can you explain a crew of men digging a four foot-wide trench in the middle of the road one day, then filling it in the next, only to re-dig and widen the trench later on? (The official explanation is "road repairs." Silly me -- I thought road repairs were meant to improve the road, not facilitate the collection of malaria-breeding mini-lakes that you need a 4x4 to cross, but that's obviously culturally insensitive of me.)

What's even more amazing than the incomprehensible nonsense that goes on is how the average local copes with it, like water off a duck's back. They observe the situation, tilt their heads, and adapt. It's an enviable quality, or at least it would be if it didn't amplify the consequences of the original silliness.

Take what happened yesterday on the road here in Bangui. I was in the car with the Head Honcho of our organization, heading out for coffee. We were bumping along down a one-way street when we came to a 4-way intersection. To our right, the road (one of the main roads in Bangui) was blocked off by a barrier of earth about 4 feet high. To our left, the same road was blocked by a barrier of earth about 4 feet high. Straight ahead, a one-way street going the opposite direction fed into the blocked-off intersection. Behind us, the one-way we just came on.

We stopped. Head Honcho turned his head left, right, and left again. He threw his hands in the air and cried, "WTF?!" his voice cracking with an incredulous laugh.

There was no way of exiting the intersection. At least for a Westerner (and a British-educated Tanzanian). For the locals, however, there was a solution: simply drive up to the one-way going the opposite direction from you, turn the car around, put it in reverse and drive backwards down the one-way street. ("But officer, I'm facing the right direction!")

WTF indeed.

But really, you can't ask that. In Africa, you just shrug, throw your car in reverse, and drive the wrong way down the one-way street.