Honking horns and the taming of my inner African.

My Africa face.

I could really feel the change in me last night, at that red light. Like a wild dog that you take home from the SPCA, give it a bath, and teach it to sit. That's how I drive when I'm in America. Like the formerly rabid dog that has been given a bath and taught to sit.

The woman in front of me was the stereotypical woman who can't drive. Too slow, too hesitant, driving around in a rich white neighborhood in a vehicle entirely too large, probably purchased by a husband whose bank account is entirely too big, which paid for an engagement ring with entirely too much bling. Right after I hooked a left onto Auden and began treading in her wake, the woman tried to stop at a stop sign -- a stop sign -- and adjust her make up. I know this because her dash light was on and the mirror was flipped down, and because it took her about two seconds to start moving once I pulled up behind her.

"Stupid," I thought, without getting mad. In Africa, I would have gotten really mad at something like that. If they had stop signs in Africa, that is.

Then, we pulled up to the red light at Bellaire. I was turning right; she was clearly going straight ahead, into the neighborhood. Her blinker was not on. And even The Woman Who Can't Drive knows you can take a right on red. She flipped her mirror down once again, and the light came on. Finally, she could make herself beautiful.

Then the light turned green. And what do you know? The woman didn't move. She was too busy looking at her lips in the mirror. I waited, trying to give her the benefit of the doubt: one Miss-uh-ssippi, two Miss-uh-ssippi, she'll look up any moment now Miss-uh-ssippi... Nothing. I slightly, oh so slightly, tapped my horn. When I'm in America, the land of the civil, I hate people who honk. But this woman deserved to be 18-wheeler honked at, so she got off easy with my tap-tap-taparoo. Just give her a little tappy. It was so light that she didn't even hear it, and continued to paint her lips the color of the light she thought was still on.

Three Miss-uh-ssippi... The next honk was a little longer, but still just a tap. Maybe a quarter of a second long. Certainly nothing like the death honks I would lay on people who crossed me on Tanzanian roads. In Africa, I honk the way I boo at LSU football games. BOOOOOOOO!! HOOOOOOONNNNNKKKKKKKKK!!!!

In short, if this kind of stuff ever happened to me in Africa, I turned into Chris Farley after he found out on hidden camera that he hadn't been drinking regular coffee, but rather, Colombian decaffeinated coffee crystals: "Aaaangryyy."

The woman in the SUV with a fresh coat of lipstick heard the second tap of my horn, and started to move.

She took a right. A right on green.

The most amazing thing about the entire experience was that I didn't get angry. I didn't curse her. I didn't flick her off. I didn't even speed past her and give her a stern glare. When I lived in Tanzania, road rage was simply part of a balanced diet. I was a Mzungu in a world of Waafrika, and my guard was up, full time. Every moment of the day, even when I was relaxing, or laughing, or carrying on with friends in Swahili, there was an alarm in the back of my head that was ready. Kind of that Kung Fu style, relaxed state of alertness.

You have to be, if you're a Mzungu on that continent. Just ready, that's all. Ready to bring your A game to the msoto, a slang word we'd translate as "the hustle," or "the grind," or "the rat race," every day. Don't show weakness. Africans can smell it, like bees smell fear. This mentality -- Don't F with me, Usipime -- naturally carries over to the road, where people who have no business operating heavy machinery speed around on the two-lane highway like it's a video game, where you get more than one life before you die. Tanzanian drivers are animals, to put it quite simply. Barbaric. And what is the law of the jungle? Kill or be killed. Get angry. Make threatening hand motions at those who dare to cross you. Pass people who are going a mere 15 km over the "speed limit" (while the law may technically disagree, in effect, there is no such thing as a speed limit on Tanzanian highways; I use the term to denote what would be considered an acceptable speed on U.S. highways) without hesitation.

And always, always use that horn, for the slightest transgression. Especially when women in big SUV's are too busy fixing their make up in the mirror when the light turns green. If they had lights in Africa, that is.

(Actually, in Arusha, they put in the first one when I was there. Not that anyone paid any attention to it after sunset.)