of keyboards and traveling salesmen

Greetings from Banfora!

First, I have to say that the French keyboard is TERRIBLE! I am in a cyber cafe and it is driving me nuts! I have used it before, but have never liked it. Sometimes I think it was designed by accident and some times I think they did it on purpose so that people would suffer as they typed. Seriously. One can SMS easier than using this silly layout where common letters like "a" are a pinky-stretch away while the "q" and "z" enjoy positions of prominence. The period which one uses at the end of EVERY sentence requires a shift key, while the excamation mark is readily available! The numbers all rquire a shift-key, but the other symbols ( &, _, <, :, (,),*, etc.) can be typed directly. The @ symbol requires using the right handside ALT key and the zero (try it), meaning both hands have to be on the right hand side of the keyboard at the same time! I'm sure with time you can get good at typing with this configuration, but it is just not layed out for maximum ease. Maybe hand gymnastics is a real sport in France and people type to get good at it. I LOVE the French-Canadian keyboard on my laptop with which I can type both english and french and both at very high speeds, with almost no strange stretches. Too bad I couldn't use that in Cyber-cafés!

OK - enough ranting and on to other things.

I got up at 5am to leave the SIL guesthouse, but had stayed up late the night before so was knackered to begin with. The day started off great with a meal of beans and french bread just outside the bus-station. The sauce that she put on it was very hot (read spicy), but it did taste very good. I was enjoying sitting and people-watching, so when I finished, I bought a notebook and sat down to observe and write about the people I saw.

Of course, I should have known that this wouldn't last long. I was writing about an older gentleman sitting near me. He was wearing an old, slightly stained suit that was not quite as bright as the one the guy wears in Curious George, but maybe it was at one time. He was sporting a white Muslim prayer cap and a wide smile as he interacted with the people around him. After about 2 minutes our eyes crossed and I nodded respect. So much for writing. We started chatting and didn't really stop until I got on the bus! He wasn't traveling, but was seeing off his daughter - a woman of about 40 who had in tow a gigantic amount of cargo that she was taking up North for commerce of some kind. She was expansive as her luggage and I hoped (read prayed fervently) that I wouldn't be in the seat next to her. The old man was full of advice and enormously friendly. Usually I am a little weary of enormously friendly people because after 20 minutes of unsolicited friendship, they consider themselves worthy of being brought to Canada for a taste of the good-life. Not so with "Papa", he just likes to chat - and it is thoroughly enjoyable.

The trip started pretty smoothly. I tried to write some more on the bus, but it was pretty bumpy and cramped. The seats were actually reasonably sized and I felt fortunate that I didn't have to sit next to the daughter of the man in the yellow suit, but there was just a lot of "extras". By extras, I mean the things that get brought onto the bus under the pretext of carry-on hand baggage. The luggage racks in these 2nd hand European coaches are quite small and fill up within moments, meaning that the extras go under your seat, under your feet, on your lap, on your neighbor's lap, in the aisle, and generally anywhere that you can get away with. Any african voyage involves extras, but going into the rebel zone where transport is difficult and all cargo is heavily taxed means that people try to bring as much as possible to help out their family, friends and neighbors.

This day, when I boarded, there was a woman in my seat. I don't THINK that she was an extra. I think she was there just to help the old woman sitting in the seat next to mine to get in all of her extras in place. There were already volumous bags under the seat in front of mine (where my feet should go) and I'm glad to have arrived when I did to stem the spreading factor. The rest of the old-lady's stuff got stowed between the front seat and the handrail. The young man across from me was transporting Palm oil. He had a 10 litre jug at his feet and another 40 litres in the cargo bay underneath. Lucky for me, the bus company stopped him from bringing that on as extras. I didn't see them, but further back in the bus I could hear chickens and goats flopping around on the ground, and was very thankful to be sitting near the front and next to an open window! One lady in front of me had a year old boy as her extra baggage. Her 12 year old and 10 year old shared the seat next to her while the young boy slept on a peice of cloth layed out between her feet. Everyone coming on or off had to step carefully over him, but I never heard one word of complaint. In fact, no one complains about extras at all, because everyone knows that your just trying to survive and make it in a tough world. They would (and maybe will) do the same.

Traveling by public transport is very cheap for me, but not so for people who earn less than a percent of what I do in a given day. So they make the most of it and that means that all travel is also business. Buying, selling and networking are all part of a given trip and here, traveling salesmen have a large part to play. There are 2 kinds of traveling salesmen. Those who stay put and service the people traveling and those who actual travel with the travelers.

As our bus pulled out of the station, one of the first kind hopped on board. He walked down the aisle with a box of perfume bottles in one hand and an open bottle in the other. He dabbed people's unsuspecting hands or arms as he walked, calling out "One dollar a bottle get it quick." When he got to the back, he put the sample bottle away and walked back to the front of the bus filling orders - some for personal use, some for arrival gifts and some for resale in the rebel zone. By the time the bus made it out of the neighborhood, he got down with an empty box!

The real entertainment for the morning, however, was a young, traveling salesman wearing designer jeans and a pinstripe suit-jacket pulled tight over a tired old dress-shirt. He got on just as the perfume guy got off and began adressing the bus (in a very loud voice) like this:

"Excuse me!! I have a problem! Yes! I have a problem and YOU can help! Where I come from, greetings are very important and if you greet someone and they don't respond well, it is a curse for you. Yes! It's true - please listen carefully. Very soon I'm going to greet you all, so I'm pleading with you all to respond loudly and with enthusiasm. I will give a valuable prize to the one who responds the best."

He then went on to explain, while walking up and down the aisle, the benefits of Aloe Vera and the pills, injections, salve, soap and drink-mix that he was selling. Didn't know that aloe-vera can cure the common cold, syphillus and arthritis? It's always worth a listen to hear the kinds of yarns that get spun. He actually sold quite a number of these aloe products over the course of an hour and a half. The funny part was that every time we neared a police checkstop, the bus driver would whistle. The salesman would duck down between the seats, then continue without skipping a beat once we had passed. He hopped off the bus in another city down the track with his box of product still half full. I didn't feel bad for him, he'll catch another bus on it's way back to Abidjan and sell the rest on the way back.

Of course these salesman only increase the number of extras on the bus. (The old woman next to me increased her pile of stuff significantly with a box of aloe vera soap, a bag of grapefruit, and a walking cane before we arrived). But at least they keep your mind off the extras blocking your leg-room and provide a better smelling aroma than is coming from the goats at the back of the bus!