I used to think traffic in Malawi was, hmmmm, how do I say? My daughter learned all the bad words from sitting in the back seat while I drove around Lilongwe. Traffic in Malawi, my friends, was nothing compared to Conakry. I laugh now thinking back to it. How did I think Lilongwe was challenging? I have certainly been in locations where there was similarly interesting traffic β Hanoi, Delhi, Mombasa come to mind β but I was not a driver in those locations.
Conakry really tested me. Conakry has more roads in general and wider, two-lane roads than Lilongwe. But Conakry is also more chaotic. There are more vehicles: more large trucks, more taxis there really were not taxis in Lilongwe, but in Conakry, there are a plethora of these distinctive sedans painted in the red, yellow, and green colors of the Guinean flag , and motorcycles.
Any city might struggle with the volume of vehicles in Conakry. But a city with poor infrastructure, where most two-lane roads have no lane markings, no shoulders, no crosswalks, no sidewalks, few traffic lights, and all kinds of obstructions on the road, really struggles with this. Add in drivers that seem to do whatever they want⦠If you want to stop suddenly in the middle of the road to let out or pick up passengers or just wait, go right ahead. Too tired to go up to the next roundabout to turn around?
Just drive down the road against traffic, no problem! Basically, too many vehicles, haphazard traffic conditions, and a lack of road etiquette spell very challenging driving conditions. For instance, when I depart out of my residential compound when there is significant traffic a very regular occurrence there are guards who stop traffic to let us out. Though the guard may stop one lane of traffic, inevitably the car behind that one, or the one behind the second one, immediately decides this is BS waiting and pulls around the stopped vehicle.
This road is about four lanes wide. Well, it would be if there were any lane markings, which there are not. But at times cars will build up to four across in one direction as each person tries to get ahead of everyone else. This then, naturally, causes difficulties for the traffic going in the other direction. On very bad days this can lead to a standstill. On another day my colleague and I were heading to the grand opening of an event, and it took us one hour to move three kilometers.
