Monday, January 26, 2009

Kleenex boy

Hi folks!

If you haven't traveled to the developing world, you may not get the irony of this story. If you have, it will hopefully give you a chuckle.

You know how, at the intersections of town, people stand around hawking various things.....? In Ghana it was little baggies with sugarcane to chew on, or bandannas, or useless trinkets to entertain the kids on a long drive back from the beach.

I think I have seen everything from live snakes to bush-rats dried and splayed on a tennis-racket looking thing. And fake Pez dispensers, and handheld video games.....all for sale just outside your car window.

And there are the windshield washer kids.....we have them in the States, too. They scare me!

But here in Iraq, things are a bit more civilized. People don't stand on street corners offering to wash your windshield, or trying to sell you a used pair of shoes.....

The Kleenex boy just comes up to the window and offers you a tissue to wipe your runny nose or dry your tears....

Heck, you can carry 30 boxes of Kleenex the same as 10 coconuts.

I guess people buy them or they wouldn't be out there in the cold morning hawking tissues in reckless traffic (not wreck-less, but reckless).

Unfortunately, I can't roll down the window in the vehicle that takes me to and from work....so I just smile and pull out my little pocket-pack of tissues to show him that I already have some.

When he pulls out a box of chewing gum, I have to dig in my pocket to show him that I have that too...smile and drive on.

Love and Peace to all!

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