Sunday, September 27, 2015

Travelling Hopefully - Waving at Children From Trucks

Our movement around Kenya and Tanzania was facilitated by our truck.  This was a superb pairing of German vehicle technology and East African driving skill.  The latter being provided by our driver David who managed to manoeuvre seven tonnes of Mercedes truck (plus luggage) into places most people would have difficulty parking a small hatchback.

Our travels from place to place gave us the opportunity to look at the scenery and wave to children.  So many children, so much waving.  If we had done this in Australia we would certainly have attracted the attention of the authorities.  The entire Madonna/Angelina Jolie vibe wasn't helped by the ecstatic cooing of the more female members of our group (no, I was not one of them) who apparently wanted to take them all home.

On a note which is both more serious and completely ridiculous there is actually a travel warning telling us not to wave at children for fear their parents will think we want to kidnap them.  Let's get something straight.  The Tanzanians are poor, they're not freaking idiots.  Besides, quite a few completely grown up Tanzanians waved to us as well.

You can't really get away from children.  With the exception of the national parks pretty much everywhere in Tanzania is somebodies village, farm or grazing area.  This means that if you stop by the side of the road in an apparently desolate region it will be less than five minutes before some kids herding the local livestock turn up to find out what you're doing.  Sometimes they will be accompanied by goats or cows but normally the livestock lurks modestly out of shot waiting for their guardians to return from the show.  If we have contributed absolutely nothing else to Africa (and a strong argument can be made to say we haven't) we have at least provided their children with some free entertainment.

No comments:

Post a Comment