Put it on your head.

A series of rather interesting postcards has been released recently. They're all drawings of scenes in Mayotte. My favourite is the one above, as it's a mixture of two scenes I come across very regularly.

Scooters here aren't just a quick way of getting from point A to point B. They're a fully-fledged means of transport for both people and merchandise. It's not rare to see scooters with not only two people, sometimes three, but also a huge sack of rice, a full bunch of bananas or a cubic metre of leaves and branches for the zebus.

As the ladies in Mayotte almost always have their heads covered by a cotton shawl, you would think they would take it off to put on the scooter helmet. Instead of doing that, they put the helmet on top of the shawl. Just like female employees who are required to wear a hat or a cap: it goes on over the shawl.

As far as carrying things on the head goes, they don't tend to do that on the scooter, because it's difficult to balance stuff on the helmet. However, in supermarkets or in the street, ladies carry things on their heads all the time. When I got back to Mayotte after the holidays, I did a bit of shopping and a lady in the shop wasn't bothering with a basket or trolley. Whenever she picked something up, it went on her head. First milk, then sugar... then she stopped, took them off her head, put them in her shopping bag and carefully balanced the shopping bag on her head. By the time she got to the till, the shopping bag was full.

Wonderful.