Traffic Lights

Moving away temporarily from posts related to the Middle East, I am remarkably going to make this post about traffic lights. I say "remarkably" simply because if I was still living in the UK I can't help feeling it would be a real challenge to try and find anything interesting to write about traffic lights beyond the very practical details of everything already contained in the Highway Code, which lets be realistic is a necessary, but far from interesting read!

Living in Nicaragua on the other hand affords all sorts of interesting observations related to what would normally be a mundane traffic control apparatus. Traffic lights are a business opportunity to offer all sorts of services and "drive thru" sales without the need to even pull off the road to drive through. The quantity of things that can be bought in those few seconds that you stop on the red light is almost unbelievable. There are the standard items like newspapers in the early morning hours, chewing gum, fruit, sweets/candies, peanuts or little blue, sealed, plastic bags of purified water. Then there are more specialised vehicle related accessories like seat or steering wheel covers, windscreen wipers especially now we have entered the rainy season, window shades, small flags of the country, political party or Barcelona FC to stick on your dashboard and a variety of bumper stickers. Mobile phone accessories and sunglasses are also common items to be available for sale.

In addition to the more common items there are also some traffic light junctions where there are more specialist items for sale, which you have to know which traffic lights to go to. For example the obvious one which I pass daily on the way to work is the coconut products intersection. A group of people arrive early in the morning with a cart full of coconuts and whilst a few people sit under the tree by the roadside and prepare the coconuts for the different forms of sale chopping off the husks with machetes to leave a ball of clean coconut flesh exposed and draining the coconut water into plastic bags, the others walk around the passing vehicles selling them. By early afternoon they have generally sold all their wares and sweep up all their refuse and push it away in their cart until the process starts all over again the following morning.

Clearly, the street vendors also know how to maximise their opportunities with seasonal products. These include umbrellas on rainy days, Nicaraguan or Sandinista flags in July and September for national holidays, fabric roses for mothers day and Valentine's Day and what to me look like a rather strange cross between an alpaca and a reindeer as Christmas approaches.

However traffic lights are not just limited to sales you also have the opportunity to be entertained mostly by children and young adults juggling some with painted faces or dressed as clowns. I am particularly impressed and concerned by the ones who juggle kerosene fueled torches, the sensible part of me always wonders if it's such a good idea to juggle with fire so close to petrol engines. Recently I noticed in the constant endeavour for people to get their act to stand out from the crowd a couple of young men dressed as clowns were juggling fire torches whilst one stood on the other's shoulders - as far as I am concerned they deserved the Cordoba (approx 3 pence) they were trying to get from the stationary drivers as they finished their brief act, the coordination of the timing alone is impressive. Lights turn red, one jumps on the other's shoulders, the lower guy lights the torches and passes them up to the upper one who then executes his routine before blowing out the torches, jumping down and then running around the nearby cars soliciting a donation all before the lights turn green again. There are mixed opinions, mainly among foreigners, on whether to give anything or not, but I've come to the conclusion it certainly looks like work when they offer this type of entertainment.

Perhaps the most common encounter of all at traffic lights are the windscreen cleaners, anyone with a plastic bottle of water and a squeezy window scraper can embark on this, some are friendly, others are insistent, still others are aggressive - a firm "No!" along with wagging the first finger indicates you don't want the windscreen washed, but you have to be attentive since the insistent to aggressive style means trying to sneak up and wash without allowing you time to refuse and then the obligation is to pay the required cordoba. Whilst it is a potentially useful service it can be exhausting when on the way home you pass at least five different traffic lights where everyone wants to wash your windscreen, and sometimes your windscreen can end up dirtier than before it was cleaned.

Perhaps unsurprisingly amongst all these other activities are also beggars, mostly children, women carrying children or people with disabilities. Sadly it seems most foreigners have a story of how the begging is a scam, that the children are sent out by their parents or women rent other people's babies as they earn more money that way or how the blind man and the child who guides him spilt the money they collect and they earn more than a labourer in a day. I think all of us outsiders find it a constant assault on our emotions and our guilt for a long while. I know for a long time, especially at the end of the day when I was tired, I found myself feeling extremely angry at having to face this barrage of demanding people repeatedly when all I wanted to do was get home and instead I was faced with anger and guilt, after all even if I believed all of the scam type stories there was no doubt I had more than them. It seems everyone in the end has to find their own coping strategy. What is mine? I decided that spending several hours going from car to car asking for change in the hot sun, facing frequent rejection, certainly constituted some form of effort or "work" and that sometimes, to some people I would give the odd coin and other times I wouldn't and whichever it were I'd neither feel good nor guilty but that I'd try and smile at them instead of scowling and feeling angry at the way their presence made me feel guilty about wealth.  

It is strange in some ways I suppose when I think about the few individuals on my work route who I frequently meet when the lights turn red, only in exceptional cases do I learn their names and yet multiple times a week we interact perhaps for 10 seconds and now I can recognise our shared humanity.

So the above is a glimpse into the 10 to 60 seconds transactions at the traffic lights which I do multiple times a day, almost unthinkingly now. In a few locations, especially where the number of vendors is high, there is an added challenge of ensuring that the few rogues in the crowd don't steal your side lights. I've learnt to be especially vigilant when some insists on washing your window even when you've said "No" and then their free hand drops out of site onto the wing of your car. Half the vehicles in Managua go around with one of their side indicators missing.

How to navigate traffic lights in Managua is a skill to learn, can be overwhelming, requires attentiveness but there is plenty to see, they serve a far wider purpose than simply traffic management  and no-one can say they are boring!