The 'Pothole Index'

I used to think potholing was exploring underground caves until I came to Bulawayo. Here its the art of manoevring your vehicle round large holes in the road in between running sets of traffic lights which don't work.

The size of the potholes in African countries is usually a good barometer of where's it at. A kind of 'Pothole Index' if you like. if you want to know about a country's rate of inflation, level of corruption or economic growth, just take look at the state of the roads.

South Africa and Botswana, both success stories, don't have potholes. The Democratic Republic of Congo has road craters which can swallow a truck. The Central Africa Republic is pothole free and that's only because it doesn't have any roads. There is a joke in Zambia, that if you see two eyes reflected in your headlights at night slow down. Chances are its a giraffe stuck in a pothole

Bulawayo used to have great roads. Famed for some of the widest on the continent, you could at one time, easily have landed the Space Shuttle on Selbourne Avenue, a massive runway of a road stretching straight for some 5km into the city. It still has the most elegant of streets bisecting what's left of its crumbling colonial architecture. Unfortunately, the state of the road surfaces today make driving into town like a 'Top Gear' challenge.

I'll leave you with this one. Question: How do you tell a drunk driving home in Bulawayo? Answer: He's the one driving in a straight line.