Traffic Light Revolution

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Botswana - 

Published on Tuesday, 29 May 2012

On the way out of Maun I stopped in at Motsana Restaurant for lunch, pulled in with their promise of free WiFi. Ordering a beef, onion, tomato & blue cheese focacia, I went to work on the website update again. A couple of minutes later my sandwich arrived, I took an absentminded bite and was blown away. THE BEST SANDWICH I could remember eating definitely this year! Pushing my laptop away I turned all my attention on this little piece of heaven before me.

Passing the new set of traffic lights I remembered the story a friend of Trevor had told us about Maun's latest additions - when the first set of lights had been installed about a month ago, there had been a general announcement around town that everybody was to report on the day for Traffic Light Training. Pamphlets had been handed out all over town and on the day the lights were first turned on, the citizens all gathered and clapped hands everytime the lights changed colour but otherwise ignored this new technology and treated it like any other 4 way stop. By the time we arrived in town, they had caught on how the colours changing works and were dutifully stopping on the red light and going on the green, still a bit unsure about the orange though...

Pushing hard for Nata, I knew by 4 I would only reach Gweta and started looking for a stopover for the night. The guys had told me about Planet Baobab but not I couldn't remember if it was just before Nata or just after Gweta and didn't want to take the chance that I would have to ride into the night and rather pulled into Gweta Lodge.