Mkokoteni or wheelbarrow or handcart….whatever you call it, it’s a brilliantly simple design that moves anything that needs moving. It’s built much like one of our typical wheelbarrows, but the ‘brakes’ are just old tires attached to the bottom, so that it can be dragged when it’s necessary to slow down or stop. You can only imagine how difficult it might be to slow down hundreds of pounds of cement bags as you are going down a hill. Between the daladalas and the mkokoteni, driving in Arusha is an adventure.
And my favorite two…the first one just because it also captures the guy on his pikipiki (motorcycle) with passenger talking on a phone and the second because how can you beat a mkokoteni transporting a daladala frame.
Thank you for sharing this wonderful collection of images. I can't believe how quickly I've forgotten what it's like driving in Arusha- how easily I've become accustomed to wide smoothly paved roads with bike lanes and sidewalks and functioning street lights; how quickly I've forgotten the site of a pikipiki carrying three people (including a child) who are not wearing any helmets and the driver is texting; and how quickly I've forgotten just how much s*@! people move on a daily basis around the city. It's probably just the day, and the fact that I'm feeling lonely at work, and because I'm at work it means that my child at daycare for the first time and this morning her dad left her in full body spasm, arched-back tantrum, screaming for her daddy to "please, please, please not leave her at daycare"... but whatever the reason, I'm feeling really nostalgic for Tanzania.
ReplyDelete