the handshake

We were sitting at a restaurant in Wau, waiting for our injira and tibs to arrive, when some people walked into the restaurant. For some reason, one of the guys decides to be extra friendly and starts shaking everyone’s hand. I’m reluctant to shake this guys hand because I had just washed mine in anticipation of eating…and at a place where you eat with your hands, you don’t want to shake hands before you eat, especially with strangers. I shake Mr. Friendly Social Guy and then ask the others I’m with eating with, “why this behavior?” They laugh, as they had a similar thought process and we all stand up to go back to the sink.

You really have no idea where that hand has been or what it’s been touching. Imagine across the room is a table of 4 people, one sneezes into his hand, takes a look at his open palm and then wipes his pants. Some else coughs into his hand, a deep cracking hack, spewing up hoards of TB viruses. The guy across the table is having a field day in his nose, index finger clear up to the second joint, looking like he is tickling his brain – once something is discovered there is the extraction and lengthy examination, rolling the goods around between thumb and index finger before flicking it off into the distance. Meanwhile our forth guy is itching his ear, but it appears he is mixing up pancake batter the way he is going at it, for a second I thought I could see his finger protrude from the other side of the head. The ear guy also likes to examine his treasure, a nice smear of ear wax that is wiped off on the pants.

In many countries you must not eat with your left hand. I think we all know why this is the case, especially in a country were toilets and tp is as common as penguin in the rain forest. What baffles me is that the left and right eventually come in contact with each other. They will touch, there is no denying it.
Who came up with the idea of the handshake?
Where did that hand sanitizer go?