African Adventure: Epilogue

Our own Ginger Greene will soon be home to Charlottesville from the Peace Corps in South Africa. She sends this last sketch for us:

The Donkey Cart

Here’s one last South African scene I want to describe for you:

(Alas, I don’t have a picture. I’ve been lugging my camera around for days but they must be on vacation or something.)

I was walking into town the other day when the local taxi--an open, two-wheeled cart built on top of an automobile axle and pulled by two small donkeys--whisked past me. I have often seen it running around town, carrying people, firewood, all sorts of things. The cart is sort of makeshift and the single axle and pair of wheels clearly came from a car.

Anyway, the “motor” was trotting along briskly, in perfect lockstep as always. (How do they learn that?) I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw it pull into the local petrol station and stop near a pump. Do petrol stations serve hay? Somehow I doubted that. Maybe it was a matter of reverse biofuels, or something of that sort.

Then I saw that they were using the petrol station’s air hose to pump up the car tyres supporting their vehicle.

The old world meets the new world.


I’ll be home on March 12. I hope to see all of you soon.

Goodbye from Swartruggens,
Ginger