On Africa’s roads

Alicia Navarro - Fuerteventura

The journey feels long, we slow down because there is a group of children in the middle and on the side of the road, in truth, there are children everywhere...

They are holding some kind of rope made from plaited roots, of which there are many in the mangroves.

They are blocking the road, in fact, it is more like a dusty track, full of stones and potholes, which are difficult to avoid. In the meantime, other children gather damp earth with fresh grass, which they use to fill the large potholes very skilfullyby hand, giving them a “durable aspect”. The latest rainfalls have left the path in quite a bad state.

First, I thought that they were doing a great job and that those children were very responsible...

But Mr Diallo, our old, grumbling driver, rather than agreeing with my praises, given such great and altruistic work, simply frowned, looking angry, and told me that for the return trip, we would need more sweets, more presents...

The repair work had indeed lasted exactly the length of time required for me to hand out toys, shoes, and sweets and for a little conversation...

I had the habit of getting out of the car when we stopped to fill up with diesel, water, or other... The heat was stifling, between 35 and 40°C. Therefore, all that “socialisation”, greeting the locals, asking if they had anything to be taken to our destination, or somewhere on the way, had become part of my routine... as well as handing them the dead snakes we found on the way, they used to appreciate those “gifts”. They would skin them and then sell the skins to the Moroccans, who would make bags, shoes, belts and all kinds of accessories out of them. I used to buy bags from them, until my friends kindly asked me to stop, as the smell was awful.

Getting back to Mr Diallo, who I have known for more than thirty years, he is a careful and wise man who doesn’t talk a lot and makes a lot of hand gestures.

As a child, he had worked as a trainee in the workshops of the old and controversial President, Sekou Toure. After stoically putting up with his telling off about the time I wasted with my “socialisations”, he started smiling and then burst out laughing; according to him, on the way back, we would find the same children and the same potholes...

Mr Diallo added, grumbling, that from a very young age, they learned to scam people.

Coming back on the same and unique track, we saw how the children started their parody again.

This time, the white Jeeps of the United Nations were in front of us.

The barrier goes up.

Africa...