First Time to See an “Azungo” (white person) tour their village school – our first stop was a rural school we are working with. The kids could hear the motorbike coming so many of them already directed their attention to us as we were pulling up on the property. Then when I took off my helmet and they realized I was a white guy, it drew even more attention. I could hear the buzz of laughter and talking about this strange visitor. We walked around the property with the school principal for a while and it seemed like every class had emptied out (granted, most of them were under a grass thatch roof with no walls) and many kids were following us around laughing and pointing at me. It was all quite funny, but I did apologize to the principal for being such a distraction…
First Time Having a Flat Tire in the Middle of nowhere – between our time in Africa 10 years ago, and the 6 months we’ve been here so far, I’ve been out to rural areas hundreds of times – by motorbike and pick-up truck. This was the first time to get a flat tire. We had to walk the motorbike about 3 km to the nearest place that could actually fix a puncture. Of course this happened at about 11am and it was a bright sunny day, so we actually got to walk the few kilometres in the heat of the day.
First Time to see an Azungo to WALK into their village (and walk out) – as we walked the bikemany of these places see only a handful of foreigners in any given year. So to see an azungo actually walk into their village (and walk out), was I’m sure the first for the village that we walked out bike through. There were a number young kids that followed us as we walked through. Thomas had to eventually tell them to turnaround and go back, otherwise they might have followed us the whole way.
First Time to Really Enjoy Stale Cookies – When we arrived in the village where we could get the flat fixed – I was thirsty and hungry. Of course, this happened to be the day that I decided not to take any snacks nor water out with me. We found a little shop that sold luke warm pops and had a coke. I asked Thomas if there were any shops in town that sold packaged snack food – chips, peanuts, or something. Being in quite a remote area, I didn’t want to risk eating something prepared locally. The only packaged food we could find were some cookies. I opened the package and had a bite of the first one – nice and stale. It didn’t matter though, I was hungry and this was the only thing to eat.
First time to Pay only $1.25 for Automobile Services – We dropped the motorbike off at “shop” at the end of the village. This shop was simply a guy with tools and some tire fixing supplies set up under a grass thatch roof that was maybe 10 x 15 feet. It took about a half hour for him to fix the flat – there ended up being two punctures in the tube to fix. In the end it only costed about $1.25 – well worth it!
We had had enough firsts for the day and had to start the 70km journey back to our field office after the tire was repaired. Besides, when we was the tube being patched we counted a total of 11 patches on the tube already, so who knew when we'd get another flat?
