Scandinavian Bus Terminal, Dar-es-Salaam, March 6, 2007

Sometimes we get on a bus or train or plane with a small rolling suitcase and cardboard box labeled Pampers Diapers or Canola Cooking Oil. This means that we had some bulky item (that Discovery toy for Johnny or giant vase from Aunt Marge) that just didn’t fit in a suitcase. We went to Walmart at midnight and got a cardboard box for packing. Here, if someone gets on a bus with a chic black handbag, a wheeling Samsonite and a box labeled Korie Cooking Oil, that box most likely contains just that: 24 bottles of oil. I admire the style—the slim, elegant young lady with her hair and heels and graces just so, slipping off the bus with a sack of rice and a bulky black plastic bag of carrots, the bright orange roots poking out through the thin plastic. It provides a contrast, somehow, to the panting, pink European, glistening with sweat in faded, crumpled cotton, lumbering under the weight of a backpack containing simply one person’s clothes and toiletries.