This too, is Africa...

The white van that belongs to the middle-of-nowhere mission post in Eastern Tanzania stops just long enough for me to jump in. Eggs are running low and so I join the drive to the nearest town, just like other villagers do. The car is stuffed and on the half seat next to me a man gets in, holding a colorfully wrapped lump the size of a huge pumpkin in his arms. The man looks a bit sad, so I restrain my curiosity, and we finally take of on the trip.

Long ago, the road was tarmacked, but now erosion rendered it a collection of potholes divided by a continuing washboard, and so we rumble through the ocher landscape that defines the last weeks of the dry season. Baobab trees stand bare and scattered in the arid scenery, a still from a bizarre play. The merciless sun beats her rays on sweating plate roofs that dot the surface of the country and daydreams take the better of me, when in the corner of my eye, I see that a gush of wind blows a piece of cloth from the bundle in the mans arms.

It unveils a little boy. Under his black skin, which resembles a damaged fake leather jacket, pinkish flesh covers his almost lifeless body and head. Somewhere, the driver tells me, in a village so remote it has no name, the boy fell in a pot of boiling water at a local brewery and is now in a car, gazing at me without notion. There is nothing in his eyes, only an endless nothing, a deep, deep blackness. The father, who walked a day to get to this car, catches me staring but also his eyes don't speak, don't accuse and don't ask.

We leave him at the hospital, run our errands and return. Softly weeping women get in, follwed by the man who's still holding his boy wrapped in the joyful patterned cloth. A hundrerd kilometers of dust and humps. On my lap a tray full of eggs. A woman speaks, the driver laughs and replies which makes the other passengers laugh. A mother cries, a man eats his chips and behind me, a father holds his dead child. I don't understand, so softly, I laugh too.