Civilization ants from Africa

A few days ago I asked a colleague, a driver, how long it takes to go from Goma to Kinshasa, in Congo.

He said "one to two months; there is no road…"

During the trip to Uganda, one sign –the one above– caught my eye. The idea of an impenetrable park never occurred to me, but Bwindi is called like that. Africa is impenetrable, at least in a great extent, just like Hemingway described in his notes, sunrise at wild, immensity of the world. A though that is like an ant when you realize it.

However, to ride along the penetrable side of Africa one will most probably need a vehicle. And while some cities in Africa might contain the variety of a global city, the villages barely have access to water. In one of the stops to refuel I saw a restore point of civilization revealed by the hand-pump at the gas station.

I don’t know if my parents got to do that, but I draw a surprise smile. Did I think it has always been digital? I just forgot about the existence of a past, which in Africa sometimes is the present.