Another easy day on the streets of Lagos

We attempt to describe and take effective pictures of the traffic we move about in every time we go out in the car. This sequence is shot at an intersection of Opebi Road and Salvation Road. The motorbikes (Okatas) are the only reliable way to move quickly anywhere in Lagos. They are small enough that they move along the edges of the roads and in and through the tied up traffic. They go in front of us, beside us and around us any way they can fit. The yellow VW Taxi went past our front bumper with only a few inches to spare. This is the way things look when it take us one hour to drive 2 Kilometers ( about 1 1\2 miles). The blue truck\van pushing in on the right pushed his nose in and merged just in front of us. The unwritten rule is that if your vehicle's nose is an inch in front of the next vehicle, "you have position" and win. The vehicle whose nose is one inch behind lets the other one in. It's quite a trip moving around in this stuff. There are few traffic lights and there are none at this intersection. The taxi pushed in from the oncoming lane and took advantage of a small break in the traffic on our side. The motorbikes are going by and the noise is horrendous. Linda has a short video of what it sounds like all the time. This is not a quiet, country environment in Eastern Idaho. People walk in between cars and cross the road any where they feel like it . The lady to our right is a passenger on the back of an Okata. We have seen up to four people, plus the driver on an individual Okata. We missed a picture of a live, full grown sheep being moved somewhere on an Okata. The driver was in front, then the sheep, then the person carrying the sheep. The sheep was larger than either one of the Africans.

The day we took these pictures was fairly normal



When the taxi passed in front of us we could see it was really a "pick up truck" hauling carpet and something in cardboard to a construction site. The light silver\green car is typical of what the cars look like from the daily travel in this traffic. Every car has wounds of minor or major nature. Most do not get fixed. We are supposed to have working lights, horns and signal lights, but more vehicles than you can count do not have any of those items that work.