Today we went to pick up Aunt and headed to Baabda to have lunch with Baba's cousin. I'd been to Aunt's house once already this summer, but due to the lack of brakes (they'd gotten too hot on the way down the mountain so thought they could take the rest of the drive off) my mind didn't register what was new in Lebanon.
This trip, however, was going along nicely with no mishaps so I actually noticed the change. There are stoplights in Lebanon! You have to understand...when my principal at my old school, who's married to a Lebanese, said he made it from the airport all the way to Jounieh on his first visit here and saw no stoplights, he was NOT exagerrating! The few stoplights that were in use here were mainly for decoration. During the civil war police hesitated (OK, just plain old didn't want) to pull over people for speeding or running red lights. Let's face it...if you're a Christian police officer and pulling over a Muslim terrorist with a machine gun (or a Muslim police officer pulling over a "Christian" terrorist with a machine gun), you usually didn't live to regret it.
The major intersections in Beirut and its environs typically have police officers "directing" traffic. (I used quotation marks because I think that's what some of them are doing.) But today, at a couple of heavily travelled intersections there were honest-to-goodness stoplights! And the Lebanese drivers actually seemed to know what to do with them. Cool, isn't it?
(BTW, Soldier's Wife...I haven't forgotten the meme. I'm just not feeling well the last few days and have been going all over the place. I'm hoping to put it up tomorrow or Monday. But you might need to nudge me past that. I have a mind like a sieve.)
1 comment:
That is cool Beth! I hope they keep obeying those traffic lights! I would be terrified driving somewhere with little or no road rules.
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