Insane Traffic + Horrible Roads + Massive Rain = Total Mayhem

So when they say rainy season, they’re not kidding. The rain comes down in sheets for hours at a time, sometimes multiple times a day, every day. The paved streets here are lined with open gutters that are about 3 feet deep and one foot wide. Before the rains started, they were about a third full with this festering, green, smelly water and, of course, various forms of trash. These are the city’s storm drains. With the first big rain, they immediately filled with the massive amounts of water pouring off the street, got clogged up by all the trash, overflowed, and flooded the streets. Brandt was with Chris in his Land Rover as he drove down a stretch of road close to two football field lengths that was flooded in at least 3 feet of water. There were teenage boys standing by to get paid to run through the water in front of the car to show you how deep it was. At a semi-dry high point mid-way through people were waiting to jump on the top of the truck to get a lift the rest of the way. So if you have a real SUV, and you know how to drive it, I guess this no problem. But many people are confused or delusional and they go driving their piece o’ crap sedan into the water, where it promptly stalls. And this is where it really gets interesting. The second a car is stopped for any reason, all the cars, trucks, daladalas drive directly up to it’s bumper door as if they are going to drive over/through the stopped vehicle. Unfortunately, the laws of physics still apply in Tanzania and it is not possible to drive through another solid object and so a massive traffic jam results. We have seen this over and over again. One night we were with Cathryn going to meet friends for dinner and we sat in a traffic jam for an hour and half. It was on one of the main roads going downtown. It’s one lane going each way and a third lane under construction. Cars are already driving in the half finished lane. As soon as the traffic stops moving, cars coming from behind start driving in the oncoming traffic lane. This is standard practice. That lane promptly filled up with a line of cars and came to halt so they they just started making more lanes on either side until there was a giant blob of traffic 5-6 cars wide all trying to drive down the one lane that goes in that direction. We inch along in the proper lane. Brandt who is sitting in the truck bed part of the car starts getting cranky starts yelling out the window asking the drivers of the growing blob of cars if they think they’re special. Obviously this is a rhetorical question because clearly they are all special because why else would they be driving on the wrong side of the road/in drainage ditch/through the yard of the business along the road. When we finally get to the intersection that was probably only a hundred yards away when the jam started, we find a six lane blob of cars from the other direction driving directly into the 6 lane blob from our direction, a bunch of overwhelmed, untrained traffic cops discussing the weather or something not very useful over their radios (I think I’m going to devote a separate post entirely to the traffic cop situation), and a couple of random dudes attempting to direct cars through the one car width space between a tree and the road along one side of the intersection. It was truly unbelievable. The dirt roads have become gigantic mud pits. We have to walk about a mile from Chris and Cathryn’s to get to a place where we can get a bus or taxi. It’s essentially an obstacle course. Three steps on that high patch of grass over there, then hop across the flowing stream on the rocks that someone kindly placed there, try to find some semi-solid mud to walk on over to the other edge to get around the foot deep, swimming pool sized puddle. It’s the closest I’ll ever come to being on Double Dare, the Nickolodean game show. The main difference is that the slime is brown instead of green and it smells gross. I’m seriously contemplating investing in some waders. They live behind these huge factories and there is some fluorescent purple stuff coming out of one of them and mixing with all the water on the street. I’m worried I’m going to start growing a sixth toe or something. And of course all the while, every local I walk past feels compelled to remind me that I’m mzungu (definitely not going to be forgetting that any time soon) and about a quarter of them ask me for money. Apparently the fact that I’m walking through the mud pit obstacle course is not enough of an indication that I don’t have a lot of money to spare.