The other other Diema

The next stage was not very long and went pretty smoothly. The only problem we had was with the fuel filter. We had to change it along the way. As we were just done with the fuel filter and in the process of repacking all of our stuff (of course the fuel filter was in that least accessible box of stuff at the very bottom of everything), Honky Tonk pulled up besides us. They had stayed at the official camp and Andrew (the organizer of the whole rally) had told them that the village where we were staying that night had gotten us a goat for dinner, but that we should bring some more. So we set out on a goat-quest.

A little further down the road we came across some people with a rather huge goat heard, so we all got off the road. We were immediately surrounded by kids. As the others started negotiating the price of goat I got our compressor and out one of the footballs that we had bought in Agadir. The second it was inflated it was ripped away by some kid who ran away as fast as he could with a small tail of other kids following him. The rest expected more footballs. But none were given.

It is really, really hard to give and not give gifts in Africa. It is rather horrible to feel like a huge broken gift dispenser. I try and refuse to give gifts to the ones that keep asking for them - the plan being to only give to the ones I feel like giving to. It is quite obvious that people need stuff - but giving it away only really adds to their problem.

The price for goat got settled. It got butchered there and then and carried over to our car - where we had pulled out a body bag (the body bag had came with the car). The bag was really made for humans and even if the goat fit - the bag got punctured by the goats horn. We put the bag into the coffin and drove off. Finally the coffin had gotten to be used for something it was not really meant to be used for.

We got to Diema - a small village where an english lady has (amongst other things) a schooling program. A lot of the donations from our rally went there. And all of ours. We gave away a lot of things. We had just brought too much food. And we gave away tools and cocking gear and clothes. It was a _hard_ task to get those things sorted. A bunch of kids gather closely around us. They only ran away as some police men came and chased them away with sticks. It was quite surreal.

The villagers had prepared a nice party for us. With food and music. We got attention and people were impressed that we still were in suits in the hot-hot-sun. A lot of pictures were taken. The suits were quite OK - well that is until Andrew made us dance. It was a quite forced dance - but we got applause as we threw our hats up in the air and other great party tricks. The night ended in a small party in our camp.