yesterday I said that there were a few differences between Uganda and Tanzania, one being the taxi-bicycles. Here is one below.
the difference with a regular bike is the fat cushion on the back rack, with fringes sometimes, like the red ones here. Design maybe, or to prevent clothes to get stuck in the spokes? Poor guys…here is a normal passenger but some can real big, or carrying kids and supplies.
2 kids on the rack .
colorful mama.
typically strapped kid on the mom’s back. Cheaper than all the prams we have in the West. Bloody bullshitter marketing people…
a mattress…maybe his wife kicked him out.
taxi with cushion and fringes but no picture please!
curious kids and taxi-motorbike
pajamas?
loads and loads again.
bikes or motorbikes made taxi were forbidden for female passengers in some state in Nigeria, Kano maybe, because it was considered too promiscuous by the religious authorities. I try hard to be tolerant but my limits are reached sometimes….
But the surprise of the day was this soldier, we had asked for some watchman for the night, so I expected a poor guy with a machete who would spend the night sleeping anyway. And I get this soldier with a proper clean uniform, shiny boots, a knife in his belt, a submachine gun (M80) and enough ammunitions to hold a siege. Plus a Kalashinok I initially thought but it belonged to a colleague, so there were 2 guards for that little plane! Wow….I know this area used to be a stronghold of the infamous Lord’s Resistance Army, a bunch of bloodthirsty criminals who killed, raped, mutilated, enslaved children, tortured …as much as they could but pretended to act on god’s behalf of course. Nothing new there. They’ve now been pushed to the border to the north but haven’t changed their behaviour. So maybe no wonder the soldiers still take the job seriously.
well up to a point because the colleague, in rubber boots, so much for the uniform, came back, they started to harass this poor guy,
and when he couldn’t pay…
they took him away for further “questioning”.
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