Toubakouta

Breakfast with bread from the local bakery

The campement turns out to be something like a hostel, and there are other travelers staying there as well. The family is nice enough to lend us a small table so we can have an enjoyable breakfast outside.

The house has electricity and there is a water faucet in the courtyard, enough comfort for us. Just the combination toilet/ shower needs some explanation. The toilet is European syle, but does not have running water. The water comes from a barrel of rain water just outside the toilet. You get some water with a small bucket. You wash your hands in the bucket, and afterwards use this water to flush. That makes sense. What I don´t get is the shower head hanging just above the toilet. I decide to skip the shower for this morning, and just wash my head under the faucet in the court yard.

Butcher is selling beef by the roadside

Watching Africans go about their daily business is like watching slow-motion. People take their time with everything, as if time was eternal and there was no need to preserve it. I am reading Karen Blixen's book Out of Africa, a diary about her time running a coffee planation in Kenya during the 1920. She describes this pace of life very well:

Natives dislike speed, as we dislike noise; it is to them, at the best, hard to bear. They are also on friendly terms with time, and the plan of beguiling or killing it does not come into their head. In fact the more time you can give them, the happier they are, and if you comission a Kikuyu to hold your horse while you make a visit, you can see by his face that he hopes you will be a long, long time about it. He does not try to pass the time then, but sits down and lives.