beyondBeijing2008.com

MWANZA, Tanzania – None of the shopkeepers had change for a dollar, and I marveled, not for the first time, at how the gap between rich and poor plays out in real life.

I wanted to buy a tiny bag of peanuts while waiting for a ferry to cross a pretty bay on Lake Victoria in Tanzania.

Nagona, the woman selling the peanuts, didn’t have change; so she went from stall to stall, waving the 1,000 Tanzanian shilling note, which is actually worth about 88 cents. But nobody could break it. This vendor had 60 cents worth of money, that one had 80 cents, but nobody had the resources to break the 1,000 shilling note.

And all the while they smiled and laughed and joked with each other. I asked how business was and they said good. They sold peanuts, small cartons of milk, warm, sweet, fizzy drinks, dry biscuits labeled “energy bars” and, of course, cigarettes.

One cigarette at a time, that is.

NBC News

A passenger on the ferry we eventually caught to go across Lake Victoria in Tanzania.

The waiting ferry passengers milled around, joking at the man who had a baby chicken inside a tiny cage made of twigs, which he had tied to his bicycle seat. The cage was so small the chick’s neck was bent. When an old man’s bicycle fell to the ground, scattering his load of pineapples and nuts, everybody laughed as if this was the funniest thing, and he joined in the gaiety, and then everybody helped him pick up his load.

One little boy was carrying boiled eggs in a tin container. You could dip the peeled eggs in some salt he carried. Two boys were checking an egg, tapping it, shaking it and listening, as if they were experts assessing the finest goods.

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