I had the luxury of gazing out the window across the Rift Valley, high on the escarpment somewhere between Lilongwe and Blantyre. The driver, not so much. His eyes were fixed on the road, watching for potholes.

Our vehicle neared a notoriously entertaining bend in the road. As expected, children scampered all over the tarmac, hauling dirt, filling holes, looking busy. When our vehicle approached, they dropped their shovels and jumped up and down, vigorously waving their arms. “Ghee-vah-mi-manh-nii1! Ghee-vah-mi-manh-nii!”

Give me money.

Irony wafted through the air. Cynicism wasn’t far behind.

The vehicle couldn’t drive at an accelerated speed because there were too many potholes. The children filled the potholes and “fixed” the road, hoping grateful drivers would thank them with a financial token. However, if the road was too smooth, drivers would never slow down to pay the kids. And if the kids were indeed there all day filling potholes (and not at school), why were there still so many potholes? Did they fill them and then dig them out again? (Maybe). Or did they only work when cars approached? (Also maybe). Was this business model sustainable? (Yes). Was there no better way to earn some cash? (No).

I learned early on in my youth, riding bumpity-bump across vast swaths of Africa, that not all roads are created equal. Some graded dirt paths designed for small vehicles fall victim to tractors that wear down the edges into cavernous gullies. Some two-lane thoroughfares simply weren’t built to withstand more than a passenger sedan in the dry season. And some highways find themselves pocked and cracked by overloaded long-haul tractor trailers. Roads are built for a certain maximum weight. Roads fall apart quickly if that weight limit is routinely exceeded.

I don’t ever recall seeing a truck weigh station as a child. Lack of accountability leads to weight gain. Truck loads get heavier and heavier if no one with authority bothers to check.

Truck weigh stations are prolific on U.S. highways, yet even there, normal wear and tear happens. Roads deteriorate. Potholes proliferate.

Where we currently live, I can identify a pothole and alert the city through a website. Within a few days or weeks, a team of professionals comes with all the required equipment to repair the road. It’s amazing. Just like the road crew on the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. They were doing amazing work.

“What is a pothole?” My six-year-old was drawing a picture of the Key Bridge based on the camera footage from 26 March. I had explained that four men who were fixing potholes died when the bridge fell. Our potholes are not the type that merit discourse at the dinner table, like the ones we discussed in my childhood. Back then, an entire meal could be taken up discussing the condition of the roads, recounting stories of stuck vehicles and breakdowns. My daughter is not privy to such conversations because they simply don’t happen. No roads are that bad here, because contracted professionals risk their lives every day to keep the roads close to the standard we expect for our country.

The men who died when The Bridge collapsed weren’t tossing dirt in potholes and waving motorists down to ask for handouts. Indeed, their profession took them to the bridge in the middle of the night, when few people pass by, ensuring their work would be less disruptive to the traffic. They were employed by a construction company and given all the resources and training to do their job well and faithfully.

And they did.

Maintaining roads is admirable work that we should never take for granted. I’m so thankful for those workers and the hundreds of thousands of men and women across the United States who work for large and small road construction businesses, risking their lives to impatient, reckless, entitled drivers and, on the rare occasion, a ship gone astray.