The Nerd's Eye View

Dec 21 1:17p Khartoum Sudan

Echoing many other developing nations the Sudan has seen a surge in motor vehicle ownership and traffic in the past decade. When I was a youngster (says the old man) a lot of households had access to one car, and many had access to none at all. So public transportation was the mode of travel for many people. In the intervening years more cars have entered the country, and the roads are packed from a little after sundown to about 7:30p. This may seem unremarkable to those who have to brave traffic in the Bay Area every morning and evening, but when you recall that there are no highways here and that the city was built in the late 1890's you get a feeling for the claustrophobia that appears all over the roads.

Driving in the Sudan one is sometimes struck by the overall homogeneity of the cars. On any given road most of the late model cars (say the last 8-10 years worth) are uniformly white in color. The Sudan is the land of white cars and white robes, like a Japanese funeral (or a Sudanese wedding). This color choice is odd since the Sudan is one of the dustiest places known to man and hence it is impossible to keep a white car looking anything but dirty for longer than 10 minutes at the outside. Yet white cars proliferate mainly because of peoples' unreasoning need to believe that they are maximizing the future salability of their car. Yes, that's right, people buy cars immediately thinking of when they are going to sell them, and since everyone is driving white cars, they are the most marketable, and so people buy more white cars, ad infinitum. An ancillary effect is to make white cars more valuable off the lot than cars of other colors. I sometimes wonder what must be going through the minds of the people who aren't buying white cars. After all, when everyone is insane, the only sane person is automatically the only crazy one as well.

The whiteness of the cars at rush hour makes for a white-out effect such as can be seen on an alpine slope in winter. The Sudanese flavor is provided by the khaki tint given to the edges of everything by the omnipresent dust, which somehow fails to soften the glare from windows and trunks. The glare of course is just the type of enhancement to the misery of Khartoum traffic that one can never quite grow accustomed to. The traffic is, of course, bound by natural law only, specifically that "nature abhors a vacuum". Wherever there is space on the road, you can rest assured that it will be filled near instantaneously. Other than cars and pick-up trucks, the roads are choked with "auto-rickshaws" (much less exotic than they may sound, they were imported in the late 90's from southeast Asia and account for a significant part of the increase in pollution in the capital) and micro-buses. These two small vehicles help to fill in the gaps which would otherwise require significant body work or insanity to fill. They swerve and dodge, insinuating themselves between larger vehicles like kids at a wedding, and regard signals and common sense as mythical tools from a bygone age. All of this is combined with adrenaline to create a heart wrenching experience behind the wheel which would - if located under six flags instead of the single one we have here - make for an excellent and very profitable ride. So you are riding, whether you like it or not, by the seat of your pants, on a street where a guy in the far right lane can suddenly try to make a left turn, and that's when you see a pedestrian.

Back to nature: when a new species is introduced or begins to proliferate, other species will adapt to the presence of this new species or they will risk being pushed out. Thus, pedestrians have adapted to the capriciously dangerous traffic patterns in a variety of ways, and just like nature they are all quite obvious yet completely unexpected. For example, people will cross the street without looking up, despite the fact that they are crossing a major thoroughfare. Looking would make you at least partially responsible for the accident that is sure to follow, and also be unseemly. There is also the fact that groups of Sudanese will straggle off the sidewalk and range almost to the middle of the street - ok so that makes no sense, yet no one gets his no matter how leisurely they appear to be strolling. Watching pedestrians ends up being like playing Grand Theft Auto - when an event happens (e.g. a group pushing a stalled car), there is a lot of activity and running around. But after they are done, done they wander off slowly like AI characters, regardless of whether or not they are in the middle of the street. All quite natural.