July 5, 2007
Gare routiers, French for bus station, in developing countries are always the most depressing places. You get the chic travelers who travel on public transport because a car is just beyond their means for long distance travel, or because the car they do have has to stay in town with the rest of the family, but you also get the poorest people. Beggars, both old and very young; transient-looking men with little else to do but drink and hang around, which makes them slightly unstable.
There's a homeless woman here at the Fianar routier with nine children, all boys and all about the same age. The youngest is probably about three and the oldest eleven. She looks like a sort of demented incarnation of a den mother. I think only two of the boys are actually hers, but who knows, maybe as they get older she simply exhibits less maternal feeling.
There's a man too, who's either drunk or somewhat developmentally disabled, who tried really hard to pick a fight with another man hanging around. He seems to have some of the other men who actually work for the companies watching out for him because they let him get somebody's bags out of a taxi and toss them up onto a waiting bus.
There are countless vendors, some selling practical things for travel like small tea cakes, oranges, water, but there are others selling thing that seem incomprehensible given the context. Large sets of pots, mugs, cheap trinkets, flashlights that probably don't turn on more than once. The sunglasses and watches sort of makes sense: you might get people to buy the sunglasses for themselves on a long trip during the day, and possibly you'll get someone to take the watches as a gift for whomever they'll meet at the end of their journey. But it still seems odd.
The child beggars are the saddest. The sweet-looking 10 year old with a coat at least five times too large for him. It covers his fingertips by a good three inches, is a washed out peach, very tattered and flattened quilt weave, so old and worn its as thick as a new t-shirt. His pants hit him mid-calf and he has no shoes on his dirty feet, toughened by constant tramping over filthy cobblestones, cracked asphalt, all littered with urban debris.
The woman with the nine boys sends them out to beg. Or they just know that life is better with some cash, so they go out themselves. But when she finally goes out herself and gets to me, she looks older than I expect.
And then there are the kids begging with even younger kids on their backs. A young girl, probably 8 or 9, just came to the window asking for biscuits or candy. She had a toddler girl tied to her back, for all the world as though she were old enough to do so. And maybe she is.
