.....still turning....

Difficult days..
March 15th 2020
Feeling discouraged and exhausted....
as we were told by cyclists preceding our tour through this continent ...the roads are ok, the landscape beautiful and the people are most challenging.
So far, we have not found much of a break from begging children and adults since we left South Africa.
Africa is poor, yes...it is our choice to be here and our choice to leave - that already makes us rich ....our skin makes us rich. The racism and discrimination are exceptional!
A few flat tires gave us more of a reality check than we have asked for. I took the role of distracting the crowed while James is attending my tire in need.
We are in the jungle - surrounded by plants and the next moment we are surrounded by little humans with big eyes and white teeth. I had fun chasing them, playing hand games in multiple languages and singing songs in German and English. The kid’s giggles fuels my energy and inspires new ideas. They actually forget to beg and harass us.

The old woman shuffled over to me with her cane laughing and high - fiving me while she passed the scene. I felt I had figured it out....James fixed my tire and we were good to go. We left that bunch laughing....all of us!
That tire had a different scenario in mind - it kept losing air and we wound up patching and pumping it every day unsuccessful finding the source  - two more times and by then our mood had changed.
This last bunch of little ones was speckled with a few older kids and they would not stop asking for money - screaming for money! Pointing to this or that on my bike on James’ bike: “my bike, my hat, my.....” what-ever. “Give me my money. Give me my bike” screaming!
Hot, filthy and exhausted I picked up my spiel - spoke German, sang songs ....it usually makes us all feel better, but this time it didn’t work!

This bunch was aggressive, touching the zippers on the panniers and my fanny pack, demanding access to money, money, money....When I felt myself losing the battle...getting angry.... I saw only white teeth closing in on me and eyes burning into my soul. WTF? This physical threat was beyond my capability to deal and both, James and I tried to push the kids away from us - I counted 24 of them!
James and I both reaching for our phones to take pictures in the midst of this mess (I dare took it out of my bag - the danger of the many hands grabbing this device from me was extremely high)
...some kids started to run...they were scared of the camera!

This only lasted a few seconds, but, those were seconds of respite in this crazy situation. And when ever they closed in on us, we pulled out our phones.
We made it out of there and back on the road - feeling the repercussions of this encounter we had a hard time recovering from. This aggressive behavior of the natives younger and older followed us through the next day and a half until we made it to Lake Malawi and even here we are treated as the white, rich people who are selfishly not giving away their money.
I don’t know how to survive this country, this continent. I am feeling discouraged and helpless while the world is going crazy over the corona virus.
Which brings me to another unsettling situation here: White people carry the virus!
If they don’t scream “money” at us, now the adults scream “corona” at us.
...where do we go from here while the world is panicking while battling this virus?