"Honk if you like..."

...insert your own phrase. I actually already mentioned to Jennifer the insanity of the honk here. Actually all driving in general is more than a little scary. I never really understood before why people who lived abroad for a while were terrible drivers when they came back and often got their driver's licenses taken away in the united states. Never again will I ever wonder such a thing. I would never ever ever want to be behind the wheel here. Most roads have no specific lines marked for lanes but even the ones that do it seems to be more of an option. "more what you'd call 'guidelines' than actual rules. No one stops hardly ever and if you do, you must honk every 5 seconds until you move again... even if it is obviously backed up a ways --> that person in front of you sure knows now that you didn't want to stop!

And traffic backs up all the time, cars just stop in the road to pick up passengers, or to drop them off, or the car dies... which I can't believe doesn't happen more often if you could see the inside of these cars. I mean, imagine rescuing a car from the dump throwing it into the lake and then bringing it back up and drying it out in the desert. Many many cars look just like that, especially the taxis. And there are cars everywhere. I haven't ever seen so many cars! Plus the idea of the lines of the road being 'guidelines' means that a road which looks as though it is one lane, may have three cars side by side, about 1/2 inch from scraping eachother, one going slow, 2 speeding around them. The whole thing is just crazy. Then they have these mini buses which are their cheap way of transportation, only 50 piasters (like 10 cents or something) you get into a van with a bunch of other people crowded in, no air conditioning, just the smell of bodies and the windows on one side. I don't know this from personal experience as the last thing I want to do is get inside a small tiny cramped place like that with a bunch of Egyptian men, but they drive past me a lot and you can smell the smell when they slow down by you. And people crowd at the stops to fit in too. Yesterday we were walking down the road at the same time as one was driving up to the stop (the bus was already full of people) and about 15 people start kind of running towards us, each wanting their chance to be inside that bus! only 3 people even got off there. People were trying to hang onto the side of the bus. It was crazy.

So now on to the subject of this blog. Honk if you like... it is as if everyone here has bumper stickers on the cars, faces, shirts, etc. I have never heard so much honking and so many reasons to honk in my life. Actually I am quite convinced that one reason people honk is just to make sure it doesn't stay quiet on the road too long. They honk when they see pedestrians. The taxis honk to tell you both that they are empty if you need a taxi and that they are full so you'd better keep looking. Everyone honks if traffic slows down or stops. They honk if another car pulls out in front of them or behind them and they are suprised. They honk if they think that you are pretty then slow down as they pass (of course so do Americans). They honk if they are coming up to an intersection which really they should stop at. they'll be approaching an intersection where they could no way see who was coming so they honk to let people know that they are racing through without looking. They honk when they get to a round about and there is no room for them to go round. They honk pretty much all the time... This is merely a smidgen of the reasons egyptians honk while driving. And women are known to be exceptionally bad drivers!