The highway is better than the dirt roads. Sometimes.

Mt. Meru is in our backyard.  Almost 15,000 ft tall.

Driving down the main road (paved) through town is pretty good in the daytime.  Rush HOUR is from 6 to 7 PM.  Now it is just one lane each way, but it is just as much bumper to bumper as LA. Just on a smaller scale.  Right after rush hour, it gets dark and scary.  There are no street lights.  None.  So it is very dark. The center line and side lines are pretty much worn off so it is hard to see your lane well especially since many of the oncoming drivers want to see well so they drive with their high beams on. There are push carts sans lights or reflectors rolling along mostly on the shoulder.  They mix in with the pedestrians who are usually on the shoulder.  Every once in a while you see the lights of  an oncoming car blink which means that a dark-skinned, dark-clothed pedestrian has run across the road in front of that car and is now in your lane somewhere in the darkness. Maybe, hopefully, they are across or maybe they had to stop on the center line to wait for a clearing of the vehicles in your lane. Standing in the darkness in the road.

None of this is as big of a  problem as the pikipiki (motorcycles) that are passing you going both directions down the center line and going both directions on the shoulder. In the dark.They jam into any space that isn't physically occupied by a car.  They usually have headlights, but functioning tail lights are not a priority.  When they pass you at night, they disappear into the darkness.  You know they are out there somewhere.  You just can't see them. They also uniformly run red traffic lights and make turns from the wrong lane.

Pikipiki is an example of a Swahili word based on a sound.  Onomatopoeia for you English majors.  I know who you are out there.The motorcycle sounds like this - pikipikipikipikipikipiki. I was just in a town on the island of Zanzibar named Bububu.  There was a train station in the town so it was named after the sound a train makes going down the tracks.  Bububu, Bububu, Bububu. 

I don't care if they have a fun name.  I still don't like pikipiki. Quite a few of them are motorcycle-taxis.  Most of the drivers wear a helmet.  For the passengers, it is BYOH (Bring Your Own Helmet) so they don't wear helmets.