Zebras

After many travels it takes a lot to surprise me.  Yet sometimes the simplest of differences make my day.  La Paz is a chaotic city to say the least. Cars and busses do their own thing as long as 90% of them are actually on the road, direction, speed, sense of distant... are all irrelevant. People tend to cross like deer- no offense Bolivians, but they do, they look wide eyed and scamper across not really taking into account that the mini van that they saw was a few feet away.  For this reason the city has started a zebra campaign.  Young people are paid (most likely a less than a dollar an hour) to wear a zebra outfit and stand at... you guessed it zebra crossings to "teach" people where to cross.  They are a huge hit, as in people think they are cute, but don't really seem to get the message.

This weekend I was delighted to see, along with the usual zebra, a person dressed up as a donkey, i.e. burro i.e. idiot.  I believe this was a counter campaign to better visualize the "idiots" crossing in between cars.  So while the zebra crossed at the designated corner crossing, the donkey crossed in between cars.

I mean really, its stuff like this that becomes normal to me and when I go back to the U.S. or any other developed country, I expect this ridiculousness and become disappointed at the lack of entertaining social behavior.