So who's a refugee then?

This is a photo of the 'home-from-home' I used to own back in 2009 when doing a year long trip from Cape Town to Kampala and back. That was a blissful time of living out of a vehicle and mostly sleeping in the roof-top tent each night at whatever destination grabbed our fancy. At least that was my perspective of things, but maybe not necessarily a view shared by all?

You see, on the streets in Kigoma, a bustling little harbour town in north-west Tanzania on Lake Tanganyika, we met a very friendly fellow who found us quite intriguing. Sadly I forget his name now, but do however remember that he spoke English really well.

He made his way across the street to engage us in conversation and wanted to know who we were, where we came from and what brought us to this town. We answered and in return discovered that he was from The Democratic Republic of Congo and had made his way into Tanzania to seek out opportunity in the hope of being able to send much needed money back home to his family - in other words, and within the framework of our Western mind-set, someone whom we would generally regard as a refugee.

When it came to answering his question about where it was we slept each night his intrigue grew. At first he couldn’t quite figure out that the brown slab of canvas on our roof was a tent, but after explaining how it folded out and had a ladder that extended to the ground his face broke into a broad grin. He acknowledged that he had in fact seen one of these before and therefore knew what we were talking about.

And this is how the rest of the conversation played out ….

Mr. DRC, while scratching his head … “so your home is in South Africa, Cape Town?”

Us … “Yep, that’s correct.”

Mr. DRC … “Um, and you’ve been travelling now for how many months?”

Us … “hmmm, think it’s been about four months now.”

Mr. DRC … “and you just drive to where you want, stop and then sleep on top of your car?”

Us … “Yep, that’s about right.”

Mr. DRC, after a bit of an embarrassed pause … “So you mean you’re like refugees then?”

Isn’t that just brilliant?