Embarrassing state of road, speed signs

But I’m also too cross after being stopped at Banket towards Harare and fined US$10 for driving 93km/h in an 80 zone. The admission of guilt took ages to fill in as it required, among other things, information such as when I first entered this country — and that was at Beitbridge in 1949, aged three.
However, when I returned to Chinhoyi the following day I realised I’d been given the speeding ticket past a sign that said 100km/h. Then I made the startling discovery that the speed limit varies depending on which direction you are travelling in and that there is NOT ONE delimitation sign anywhere in either direction between Harare and Chinhoyi.
So, the only way you know you are out of a limited area is to use your discretion and look backwards and see the sign going in the other direction. But this doesn’t work in Banket because the speed limit is not the same on both sides of the road.
“Ah the signs are vandalised,” said one police officer by way of an explanation. But could the Ministry of Transport not institute stiff penalties for interfering with traffic signs and/or paint speed limits in large white letters on the road itself?
The name of the road where I live is now painted on the outside of my garden wall and I haven’t noticed anyone trying to steal it, used paint has no resale value.
I had a terrifying moment when two five-year-olds tried to cross the road to Hallingbury School on an invisible pedestrian crossing that I didn’t know was there.
Outside the African Distillers Factory, the limit is 60 if you are travelling away from Harare, but 80 if you are travelling to Harare. 
If you obeyed the last speed signs you saw you’d travel from the Darwendale turnoff to Banket at 20km/h!
It’s all a bit embarrassing and what on earth do foreigners make of this?
Only Nyabira has intelligently placed 60 signs and their speed limit is the same on both sides of the road. Makorokoto, Nyabira!
The prize for the most inventive reply from the police came from a young officer at a road block just outside Harare. After she’d confirmed that she was from the traffic police I asked her what the speed limit was. She laughed nervously as though she was talking to a lunatic, but when I persisted she said the general limit was sixty.
“But it’s 70 right in town where this road joins Second Street,” I said. “How can it be 60 here?”
“Ah then 70 is OK or even 80,” she mused, as she pondered this interesting question that apparently no one had ever asked her before.
Only one police officer that I spoke to seemed to know exactly what the law is regarding speed limits and he apologised for the lack of signs.
As this column is about food, I would only add that to carry a tiffin tin is the best answer to eating on the road!
– g.jeke@yahoo.com