Tana's traffic

A typical, large Tana taxi

Stimulus: "An agent, action, or condition that elicits a physiological or psychological activity or response".

Have you ever met people who respond completely incorrectly to stimuli? I’m one of them socially but now’s not the time or place to open that can of worms. What I’m referring to is the irrational reaction to stimuli on the roads here in Tana – how the locals tend to overreact, panic or just respond totally inappropriately.  

It happened to me when I knocked over a young girl a few months back, as she ran backwards and forwards, tracking my manoeuvres to avoid her. And I see it almost daily. Like the incident this week when a child was pushing a cart loaded with water drums across the road, with a taxi approaching from one direction and a car from the other. They all seemed to see each other at exactly the same time, and all swerved TOWARDS each other, stopping millimetres from tragedy. It’s at times like this, while wincing and with eyes screwed shut, that the thought flashes across one’s mind, “Am I ready and willing to perform CPR on a bunch of complete strangers?” 

Vehicles generally avoid small potholes by veering towards oncoming monstrous trucks, pedestrians dodge fellow pedestrians by stepping INTO the choked road, and cyclists, instead of yawing safely towards the side of road, normally go the opposite way. The roads, as a result, are kind of terrifying on both my bicycle and motorbike, and I’ve had several near misses while staring at the whites of other shocked commuters’ eyes.

Traffic also seems to portray the underlying mood of a day. Some days it flows pretty well - everyone is calm and courteous; pedestrians walk cautiously and look both ways before crossing. And then on other days all hell breaks loose and it’s like a Turkish bazaar out there – blinkered, desperate mothers dash between cars dragging three screaming children; drivers make insane overtaking moves; scooters with multiple passengers swerve drunkenly from lane to lane – the whole mass acting like some alien life force, bent on bringing an end to traffic as we know it, has occupied it... On days like these defensive driving goes out the window, and prayer and adrenaline take over. 

And don’t even get me started on the arrogant military / government motorcades, which can blow past the airport-bound traffic at any time and seemingly from nowhere, with whistles blowing and horns honking (honking actually isn’t a violent enough term to describe it). Vehicles literally dive out of the way to avoid being run off the road. Anri described how she was in a taxi chugging along the digue (dyke) road, which has rice paddies on both sides, when the driver violently veered and wobbled onto the barely-existent verge in fear of the police cavalcade rapidly bearing down upon them.  As they shuddered to a stop she had visions of the vehicle rolling down the embankment into the dark mire, with all the passengers sardined inside. Terror mixes with anger, but cautiously, breathing semi-normally, one makes one’s way back onto the tarmac ... before being forced off some way down the road by the next politician racing somewhere important!

The roads can be irritating, they can be wild and I’m not sure if I’ll ever get used to their madness, but it is real and it is very-much part of life here in Madagascar.