In East Africa, travellers will never starve.
Maybe they will develop some intestinal problems, which especially on buses can have unpleasant consequences, but starvation will not prevail.
Because the big road, with the glow of the equatorial sun, inevitably attracts those who try to turn the day around by selling the products of their field and walk or have themselves carried even for tens of kilometres.
He arrives confident and serenely desperate with his load of fruit and vegetables or improvises charcoal kitchens and fryers at every crossroads that becomes a stop for articulated lorries and other sheet metal elephants.
The world between the roadside and the wilderness comes alive like a ghost market, which will disappear at any moment only to materialise again with its jumble of voices, colours, pieces of cardboard shaken like bellows over embers, jerrycans of water and oil carried on the heads of impassive women, torn sheets of newspaper for wrapping food fluttering with the dust raised by those who brake and those who pass and do not stop.
But you have to stop, because Africa can be observed from the plane flying low and from an off-road vehicle that passes slowly, but you can only understand it by entering into the situations, by participating.
And so, together with the smiles and the invitations of the street merchants, come delicious samosas of dubious meat, gourmet chapatis of undoubtedly reused vegetable fat, bags of peanuts or cashews, fantastic chunks of roasted cassava seasoned with lime and paprika, and crackling corn on the cob.
You can spend no more than 100 shillings (80 euro cents) and more than satisfied continue your journey, having also bought an indispensable banana-tap helmet.
Of the many Africas I love, the travel one is always a favourite.