Country Life

Of course not all of east Africa is game parks and wildlife. There are millions of people living regular lives throughout both nations and the parks actually only comprise a small part of the total landmass. We passed through numerous towns and villages on the way and these pictures help give an idea of what non-city life is like. The market below shows much of the hustle and bustle that goes on, trading fruits, vegetables, clothing and meat.
While car ownership is growing, even in the cities donkeys are very common for labor and transportation. And where regular drinking water is hard to come by (and even in the lodges we only had bottled water to drink and brush our teeth) many people had carts to haul drinking water, either for themselves or for sale. Nearly all the roads everywhere are broken down asphault or gravel and we all inhaled more than our share of dust.
Towns would also include hotels, cafes and shops as seen below. Coke advertising was incredibly prominent in both countries, but in Tanzania it was endemic and there was only one poster of a woman drinking it for every shop, cafe or gas station. The strangest thing to me was the number of combination Hotel/Butcher shops that we passed... I would have thought they would not mix well but apparently they are quite common.