"...The convoys at times, hurtle through cities, villages and towns at hair-raising speeds. Villagers, especially children, rush to the side of the road to watch, often running alongside the moving cars as long as they can, shouting and waving..."
It is only hair raising after you have been there awhile and realized how slow you have to go getting through crowds and really potholed roads.
The other side of the coin is that most of the drivers are LES (Locally Employed Staff) who know the villages very well and do not care if someone gets killed.
The local culture, you must understand. (sarc)
anything the slimes can do to take a dig at the US, it will do.
“One supposes those speeds are not so hair-raising after all if kids can jog alongside the vehicles.”
I often drive on potholed, rutted dirt roads. Fifteen miles per hour sometimes feels like fifty. On those roads you would risk sliding off at a mere twenty-five mph.
I suspect that if they drove at slower speeds the people would surround the vehicles and the convoy would have to stop. One wonders why they didn’t simply fly her to where she was going in one of the helicopters and skip the dangerous, jarring and slow parade.