I WILL try to describe the contrast between driving in our parts of Africa and Scotland but forgive me if emotion overcomes the prose. Each morning I drive out of our rented farm cottage, usually escorted by several ducks and breakfasting hens, and attempt to reach the hospital where I work which is 20 miles away on the other side of the town of Manzini. It is a tar road but to others, as well as myself, it represents the Valley of the Shadow of Death. A significant fraction of motorists on it do not have driving licences or accident insurance but do manifest the medical syndrome known as DITS (disorientated in time and space).

Battered bakkies from the rural areas often emerge without warning from dirt tracks and side roads, their owners assuming the Divine Right of Kings, and shout and gesticulate at the legal traffic in their way.

Roundabouts in Swaziland, where the rest of Planet Earth recognise that vehicles already in the circle have precedence, resemble the first moments at the start of a Formula One Grand Prix – ‘he who dares,wins’.

I recently watched a bulky man in a BMW 4x4 park half in and half out of a No-Parking zone. He emerged from the driver’s seat with some difficulty, waddled onto the grass verge and began to pass urine, a common public pastime of males in this Kingdom, simultaneously starting a witty conversation with a pedestrian as traffic piled up behind them.

Then there was the taxi driver who had just dented my rear bumper. When asked if he had a valid licence, he said, "No, but I can get you one cheap, baba.”

I was behind two cars one evening when they braked without warning, one swerving into the opposite lane, both blocking the entire thoroughfare; the drivers sprang out and began arguing about who had summoned the hovering "lady of the night" first...

At the hospital, a robust and cheerful man was asked to explain why his delivery truck was parked in the spaces clearly marked for disabled and handicapped patients; he replied that he had been feeling poorly and thought the area was for people like him.

The contrast between the foregoing and our last visit to the UK is stark. Hiring a car immediately after landing at Gatwick Airport from Africa, we soon found ourselves on the M1 to Birmingham, three lanes of solid vehicles in each direction, all travelling at the same speed, all listening to the same radio traffic updates, not a hooter heard – and not a meandering cow, inebriated cyclist or corn-on-the-cob seller for 5000 miles.

I no longer drive myself to Johannesburg or Kampala. The South African traffic police are notorious for extracting large fines for minor or non-existent offences, then settling for a lesser but unreceipted cash payment; the alternative is to spend the rest of the day at the nearest Magistrate’s court.

Hi-jacking of vehicles with non-South African registration plates is a growth industry and one of that country’s few economic successes, counterbalanced by the number of cargo lorries set alight on motorways because their drivers are from neighbouring countries, not South Africans. Kampala, being gridlocked for much of the day, is not for impatient drivers like myself whose basic road skills and pro-active imagination are questionable to start with.

None of the foregoing applies to our home area near the Nile. There the only concern is unmarked speed humps of wildly variable heights and in unpredictable places. Many are undetectable, hidden by the dense shade of large trees beside the road – and if you were a road repairer, working in 85-90 degrees of unremitting sun, that is why they are built where they are.

Dr David Vost studied medicine at Glasgow University and is currently working at a hospital in Swaziland. He and his family live on a small farm in Northern Uganda near the Albert Nile. davidvostsz@gmail.com