THE STRANGEST THINGS

African ingenuity in creating the semblance of a modern life amid physical hardship, scarcity of resources, and extreme poverty; in making do with next to nothing; in building buildings and roads, feeding hungry families, fending off or tending to animals and earning a measly, but difficult to obtain, $600 per year, penny by penny, so that simple necessities, such as medicine or school books, can be bought, proves that necessity is the mother of invention and that the Africans are world-class inventors.

Almost everything here is either made by hand from nature or has been modified from  used or defective items cast-off by the western world. 

Some examples of African resourcefulness and the oddest things I’ve seen so far: 

1. WATER:   Municipal water supply systems are non-existent outside of, and are extremely limited, in large cities.  Those campgrounds or hotels we’ve stayed in must therefore gerryrig their own systems with the use of a generator that huffs and puffs, wheezes and growls when operating (and then just for a few hours, which hours are never announced in advance).  Moreover, faucets do not extend far enough into the sink from their perch on the sink’s ledge.  Perhaps the undersized spout is European, while the sink is American oversized for the hardware chosen.   In any event, half the water from the spout empties into the drain, while the other half splays all over the sink edge onto the floor and feet.  When the toilet is flushed, the shower may inexplicably turn on.   When the shower is turned on, the faucet may leak.  Hot water, if available, only runs in the tiniest of trickles. A cold glass of water is only a dream.

2. CARS:  Just about all cars are old – really old.   Thirty to 40 years old and recycled from the junk piles of America or Japan.  They have been refurbished, rebuilt, and gerry-rigged decade after decade, owner by owner.  Taxi passengers are squeezed into vans stripped bare and modified with wooden bench seats arranged in a rectangle along the interior walls.   There may be no doors on the vehicle, missing floorboards, and/ or holes in the roof.  The vans may slow down along the route, but they never stop, as passengers jump on and off at will.   They are squeezed into these death traps like sardines with no room to even turn one’s head.  Only the most nimble can ride in them.  “Private” taxis, converted cars with no sign that they are meant for pubic transport, (only the cruising driver, asking if we need a ride, is evidence of its public nature) are rusted and dented;   upholstery, when it exists, is ripped to shreds, the radio slot is an empty hole, as is much of the dashboard.  The windshield is often cracked and the manual window handles are either broken or missing.   One night we were 7 plus the driver in a taxi meant for no more than 4, when we were stopped at one of the ubiquitous “traffic controls” along every roadway.  Although we were overcrowded and the vehicle was extremely low to the ground, the policeman was only interested in knowing whether the blinker worked.  Never mind the almost floorless interior and lack of seatbelts..   Although it passed the blinker inspection, a  $2 bribe got us back on the road.

3. BORDER CROSSINGS:  All frontiers crossed thus far are indicated by nothing more than a wooden or mudbrick lean-to, aslant in the middle of nowhere, with a horizontal red & white striped metal rail extending across the road, anchored on either side by two vertical poles extending up from inside large metal oil drums, also painted in red and white stripe.   Once the coveted entry stamp is made by the lone immigration officer, another sleepy African official gets up from his nest below the nearest tree, walks over to the rail and manually lifts it so that the vehicle can pass. When we crossed into The Gambia yesterday, great fanfare was made at the lonesome post.  An obviously well-fed border policeman in full regalia – starched blue uniform, rifle and bullet-proof vest - boarded the truck, inspected the vehicle’s documents and read every passport, before he gave his ok to continue.   We were sure it was his only official act in days.   Our crossing from Mali into Senegal was the definition of bedlam amid anarchy.    A convoy of large trucks carrying goods into Mali was backed up for at least a mile.  The trucks were using both lanes of the 2-lane highway to go east.   Those of us traveling west into Senegal could not get through.  It was the Romans facing Attila the Hun on the battlefield, colliding as the armies charged toward eachother creating utter chaos in the hand-to-hand combat upon meeting.   Some passengers abandoned their cars, leaving their drivers to man the steering wheels and walked the kilometer or more to reach the border patrol for the entry stamp, returning to their vehicles only to find that they had advanced forward imperceptibly.  Each vehicle was battling the next for forward motion.   The Senegal River swirled below as the mass of metal and tires convoluted itself into a twisted, intertwined mishmash of confusion made the worse by the oppressive heat from which there was no escape.  I walked over to the border patrol police and asked him to please direct the traffic so that we could get through.   Quite to my surprise, he made some hand motions and extracted us from the mess.   We were on the other side!

4. FOOD:  Shopping for food was extremely traumatic at first but I have since become accustomed to scouring the markets of small villages teeming with people and the smelly, open stalls of rotting and still breathing fish, slabs of meat awaiting chopping in the hot sun,  wrinkled peppers the size of large cashews, and rotten bananas – and this is a description of the plentiful markets.   Most markets are very limited and may contain only tomatoes and cassava, or tomatoes and bananas (tomatoes, it seems, are quite plentiful).    One day the meat which was destined to become my cook group’s Bolognese, spoiled in the truck’s broken refrigerator.  The search for that night’s dinner was no easy task.  The sole market we passed that day contained only the smallest of  tomatoes and nothing else that was edible.    We opened cans of tuna from the truck’s emergency supply and made a salad using what little we had.  I am at this moment sitting in the restaurant of the Senegalese National Animal Preserve hungry for lunch.   The only thing on the menu is an omelet and French fries.  Bananas are the only desert.   As soon as I order I am told that it is ‘fini, Madame.”  A large group had just passed through and there is no more food.   Whenever we ask "What do you have to drink, or eat?" we get a long list of available items, "Coke, Fanta, Sprite, Beer, Juice," etc., "   "Ok," we say, I'll have a coke."   "Sorry," they inevitably respond.  "No coke."   As we go through the list, we discover that perhaps, only Sprite, or juice is available.   why did they simply not tell us that at the beginning?

5.  HEAT:    At round 11 a.m., the sun suddenly, in a seeming flash, becomes white hot, blinding, relentless, oppressive, and sears the brain.  All thinking and movement comes to a standstill in the 110+ heat.  There is nothing to do but seek shelter.   But there is no air conditioning;  no mall, no restaurant within which to find refuge, not even a single cloud.    The shadow of a lonely tree is often already filled with animals and people.   The never-ending search for shade takes on epic importance and I can only dream of an ice cold drink.   The female custom of carrying items on the head creates shade for the face and makes trips to the well and market only slightly more bearable in the blazing heat.  We do have a cooler on board for drinks which is filled with blocks of ice only on the rare occasion when it is available – usually from the local morgue.   We are reduced to grabbing a chip off the ice block to rub onto our sun bleached, red hot necks and chests – a/c the old-fashioned way – by earning it!

6.   ANIMALS:    We’ve seen a donkey being transported on a motorcycle, some goats on the top of a long-haul truck, apparent dinner, and today, as we crossed the Gambia River, we saw one of the strangest sights yet.  We were making the 3 minute crossing by ferry at a point where the river is not very wide – perhaps only 2,000 feet.  Someone needed to get his cow from one side of the river to the other and didn’t want to pay the ferry fee.   He put a rope around his cow’s neck and had it swim adjacent to his dug-out canoe.    He used the rope to keep the poor cow’s head above water so that it wouldn’t drown, while his friend paddled.  We stood on the far bank rooting for the cow and cheering her on.   Much to our surprise, the cow bounded out of the water as if it had been through no trauma at all, happy to have cooled off a bit.   She had evidently done this crossing before.

7.  ROADS:  African governments’ tradition of doing absolutely nothing for its people renders roads in West Africa less than ideal, barely passable really, more like foot paths of packed dirt and mud.  Like car commercials on television, the driver must slalom to and fro to navigate the large potholes, various road kill, cows, goats and the occasional rolled- over tractor-trailer.  A 150 mile trip took us 8 hours several days ago.  We saw scores of men digging a miles-long trench by hand, with only rudimentary tools, working like a chain gang, when one small bulldozer could have accomplished the same task in 1/10 the time.  One road was so narrow that we had to choose between closing the windows in the oppressive heat, or leaving them open and risk getting whacked in the face by tree branches and their leaves.  The roads are also notable for the arbitrary positioning of the frequent police checkpoints along the main road (and I use the singular here, because there is always just one main road per country).   The police stop vehicles at random and pretend to peruse vehicle and passenger document information.  Any small technicality is sometimes used to extract a “fine” from the driver.   Since the truck we are riding in is from the UK, the steering wheel is on the right.   The passenger reclining in the left front seat is often mistaken for a driver asleep at the wheel and the police board the truck to try and locate the steering wheel!  In The Gambia, the police board simply to welcome us and to chat – to find out where we are all from and to ask for a cold glass of water (which we don’t have).

8. THE SOCCER BALL:  Above our seats on the truck, in netted catch-alls, are storage bins for small items.  One passenger brought two blow-up soccer balls from home, both of which have lost most of their air to small holes.  Whenever we stop for gas or a market, children flock to the truck and talk to those sitting at the windows.  After only a minute or two, they inevitably spot the balls overhead, and beg for it.  One mother pleaded, “Please, give me the ball for my boy.”  They seem to want the ball more than they want food or money.  “The Rule” (see post entitled “Wahib and John”), prohibits us from giving it to them.   Which child among the scores outside the windows would get it?  If we simply tossed a ball outside, would they fight over it, with the strongest getting the prize?  We have yet to decide how to get the balls off the truck and into the hands of the kids, but we are determined to leave the balls in Africa.  

9. Some things we couldn’t help but notice:

1. Pubs with no beer;
2. Dartboards with no darts;
3. Waterholes with no water;
4. Markets with no food;
5. Bakeries with no bread;
6. Morgues with no ice;
7. World maps with no New Zealand;
8. Schools with no students;
9. National Parks with no animals;
10. WiFi with no internet;
11. Restaurants with no food;
12. Showers with no water;
13. Sockets with no light bulbs;
14. 3G with no access;
15. Cars with no seatbelts or doors;
16. ATM’s with no money;
17. Sun with no shade;
18. Sea view restaurants, with no sea view;
19. Sewers with no covers;
20. Police with no morals;
21. Merchants with no change;
22. Life with no hope.