About driving, life, and death

I've talked about how everybody here drives like a madman. I have since reviewed that and have to amend my earlier statement. Half of the people here drive like madmen, and the other half drive in a way that makes even me cry out loud „Really? Do we REALLY have to drive this slow? In the bloody middle of the road?!” And this is quite something, considering that I don't exactly drive fast anywhere, and here I barely shift to fourth gear. And yes, that means I barely drive faster than 30 an hour. You can imagine the type of driver that irritates even me. My other favourite is that by sunset and after, half of my fellow drivers just go on without any headlights whatsoever, may there be a dust cloud or not. Now the other half, they make up for it. With their beamers on full blast, so if I by accident would be able to see the people walking next to (!!) the sidewalk, I can still be blinded by their lights.

For a while I thought it was funny to say that people here are either not afraid of dying, or thy downright want to, but the thing is, their approach to life and death really is different. It is very much of a cliché to say that they have so many children so that some of them can reach adulthood, but when I hear that the woman in the next office has been on maternity leave for the majority of this year, because her first baby (the first this year, otherwise the third) has died at the age of two months, and then another two months later she was expecting the next one, then I start thinking that the cliché is very real. Somebody said that they value death differently, because they've seen so much of it. And that a funeral lasts three days (except if it's for a priest, then it's longer), and that's three days of party, but then it's over. They cut the music, bury the dead and move on with their lives. What else are they supposed to do?