And I think I
expected to see just that. And
quite honestly, I have. Zambia,
while a very populated and active town, still has its villages with huts and no
power lines. Kids walk around with
no shoes on. The red earth is
visible everywhere you look, and when you look out of the airplane coming in,
all you see is desert land.
But there’s
another part of Africa: the faces of the people that quite frankly are not
captured accurately on camera. The
land that spans as far as the eye can see is not so foreign, it’s simply
dry. There is water; albeit not in
excess like we first-world people take for granted, but it’s there. The people simply have to haul it up
out of a well and carry it on their heads back to their villages. And the villages, oh the villages.
Our white water
rafting guides drove us through a few villages on our way back to our campsite,
and there was quite a variation that we saw: but some of the most beautiful
land was the villages themselves.
The red sand that made for their roads, the golden huts that were
perfectly spaced between each other, a few shaded sitting areas where people
would sit and have a drink or play games, and lots of kids running around,
eager to wave at you as you passed by (some even chased the car!).
There was one
encounter that especially touched my heart. We were headed to a village to drop off some of the crew who helped set up and
break down the rafts, and one of the rafters needed to use a
bathroom. So while we waited for
her, we got to climb out of the truck and visit with the kids. Of course, no words were spoken, as it
was pretty clear they didn’t know English, but we handed them our empty water
bottles and they were so excited to accept them (I’m not sure why). One little girl was holding onto a baby
boy no more than 8 or 9 months, and I saw he didn’t have a water bottle to play
with. So I handed my bottle to
him. He looked at the bottle,
looked at me, and smiled as he reached for the bottle. But he kept hanging onto his sister so
he couldn’t grab the bottle with both hands. And his hand was too small for the bottle so he couldn’t
hold onto it. So instead he tried
to bite the cap with his mouth to hold it, but that didn’t work either since the cap was too big for his mouth, so he
went back to trying to hold it with one hand. This went on for about 3 or 4 minutes, and it was such a
precious moment to watch how he worked through trying to take something I was
trying to give him. His sister was
entertained as well, and finally after a bit she reached out to hold it for
him.
While it
wouldn’t be such a big encounter if I saw some little one playing with a bottle
at say, Target, but something about being in an African village, playing with a
little African baby whose perception of the world is far different from mine
was especially sweet. It made me
realize that no matter where you’re from, the US or Africa or China or France,
we are all still people living in the world, and we all begin with such
innocence like this little guy. And
I don’t think that’s a perspective of Africa we ever see on TV. Or in photos. We only see the negative things, or the exploited things, or
the wildly exotic things that seem too big for us to take in. We don’t see the simplistic beauty of
people living in a place, waving to us as we drive by. We don’t see the simplistic lifestyle
of people walking down the path with a basket on their head; not because they're keeping up with the drawings we've seen for a hundred years, but because it’s just how
they carry things for far distances.
We don’t see the simple innocence of kids and adults living in simple
huts simply because they don’t have or need much. We don’t see that Africa is just another place in this
world, and yes while it is hot, and dusty and has elements of exotic life to
it, it is still just another land that is on this Earth.
We aren’t so
different after all…
