streetlife

Maybe its because I am coming from an AUTOBAHN country, but I am astonished how much traffic and streets are determining my daily life & talk here. besides all the usual , useless traffic jams. So I want to share with you some of the issues:

- the first ever traffic light in Uganda was introduced maybe 5 years ago by reconstructing a round about. Now we have maybe an impressive number of 7 (seven) traffic lights. The recent addition is Jinja roundabout, and I was wondering how traffic lights can work in powercut-striken kampala in general and when drivers seems to totally ignore any rules of red-yellow-green. But after 2 months of total crossroad hara-kiri (maybe because it was sponsored by the Japanese..) it works almost fine

- the construction of 1km highway costs the amazing sum of 500,000 – 1 Mio US$, but almost 60% is lost in corruption. (bribery, selling of construction material to use in other sites, etc….) and that is making me very frustrated, especially given the bad situation of roads in Uganda in general and the low national budget. In Luwero where the new highway construction has been supervised by a Tschech company, there are after 3-4 months already potholes in football size. It’s a damn thing…

- when I cam back on Monday to the office, I was so surprised, cause the mud road leading to the office was suddenly almost tarmac’ed. Wow! How come? 3 weeks ago Mr. Ghaddfhi (yes, the lion of lybia… man with the second worst dictator fashion sense in the world) visited Uganda. and his daughter apparently stay in a place down the road form DED. So: the road had to be nice for a short visit. BUT: they haven’t finished when Gad' arrived. And have not even by today. That is soooo typical African . *g