CAIRO - A group of young men and women are trying to organise Egypt's chaotic traffic their own way by dedicating time and effort. The volunteers have started their own effort to organise the traffic in certain crowded areas, enlisting help from other volunteers, and launching awareness campaigns about the importance of keeping the nation's streets in order. "After the revolution, we found it necessary to get involved in making our country look better," said Amer Salah, a self-employed trader and the head of the new Sadiq Al-Tariq "A Friend of the Road" initiative. "It is better for us to invest our time in organising traffic and making life easy for motorists and pedestrians alike," he told the Egyptian Mail in an interview. When Salah and his friends started organising traffic in Cairo's posh neighbourhood of Nasr City for the first time, they used to fight with motorists who hated obeying traffic rules. Later, however, the same motorists became friends with them and became even the first to help them make their mission a success. To many, this might strike a discordant note with the way the same motorists deal with traffic police. Even with this, Salah and his friends are not about the only group of Egyptians who have started to take the responsibility of cleaning their own country and organising its streets into their own hands after the January 25 revolution. Tens of other groups have emerged after the revolution, with some people painting the curbs, and others painting house facades, reflecting the new face of this country, a face that won admiration from the world. Salah and his friends, most of them highly educated people with good jobs, finish their work in the afternoon and hurry up to occupy their positions on the streets. They wear their yellows vests and cabs, and stand on the streets for hours to keep the streets in order. "Everybody is ready to stretch out their hands for help," Salah said. "People only want to find role models to imitate," he added. The idea of launching the Friend of the Road initiative cannot be more well-timed, some people say. When clashes between tens of thousands of anti-Mubarak demonstrators and anti-riot police reached their peak on January 28, the ensuing case made it necessary for ordinary Egyptians to form vigilante groups to guard their own homes and properties as police made themselves scarce everywhere. But it were the nation's streets that suffered the most chaos. In the absence of traffic police and traffic signals, for that matter, the streets turned into an open field for all types of violations. "Traffic police are the most important Interior Ministry Department," Salah said. "An organised traffic means that we spend less time on the road. This is necessary for business."
