The all-multi-purpose Backpack

If you mentioned the word “backpack” a few years ago, what immediately came to mind were images of weather-beaten tourists in faded jeans, T-shirts and sandals or trainers. Today things have changed, and backpacks are no longer the preserve of tourists alone. Anyone other person involved in travel now considers a backpack a necessity. And it does not have to be travel in the classical sense of the word – travel upcountry or on safari in the national parks; I mean, even travel to and from your workstation calls for a means of carrying your most immediate personal effects. Which is the reason everybody seems to be wielding a backpack these days… TouristsThese are the usual suspects. Actually, we know which mzungu is a tourist as opposed to expatriate by the nature (or size) of bag on their back. For most tourists, a backpack is something of a second, or mobile home. It contains all and sundry: First-aid kit (bandage, plaster, blister kit, antiseptic sprays, cotton wool, tweezers, you name it. I have peeped into a few tourists’ backpacks, and in some, I have seen a First-aid kit in one of the side pouches, clearly, marked “First-Aid”.The typical tourist backpack also contains a map, digital compass, dry food rations like energy biscuits, water, torch, whistle (just in case a situation arose where help needed to be summoned), camera, binoculars, sun cream and insect repellent. StudentsIt is not just in Rwanda but the world over that backpacks are closely associated with students. They are a primary means of transporting educational materials to and from school. [5] In this context they are sometimes known as bookbags or schoolbags. Today, the purchase of a suitably fashionable and attractive backpack is a crucial back-to-school ritual for many students. Where it used t be the conservative schoolbag”, now it is the backpack in vogue. The typical school backpack generally lacks the rigid frame of an outdoor-style backpack and includes only a few pockets in addition to the main storage compartment. While traditionally very simple in design, school backpacks have been evolving; now they come fitted with padded shoulder straps and backs as well as additional reinforcement to hold large numbers of heavy textbooks.‘Deal-chasers’This group is not very defined. They constitute the teeming urban masses who have to somehow “survive” in the city without necessarily holding a particular job. They do this and that-whatever will brink food to the pot. Deprived of the luxury of a regularly paying job, they have to make ends meet by selling everything and anything (well, whatever they can land their hands on.) when they are not selling and buying, they are facilitating the same process as commission agents. These people usually leave home with no clear agenda or destination. All they know, by instinct, is that they have to find their way into town, hook or crook, to “sketch life”. These are the people who run the sprawling black markets of stolen items (mobile phones and their accessories, foot wear, items of clothing, music and other electronic gadgets, books, etc, etc). CorporatesThis lot is the most predictable in their use of backpacks. Principally, what they carry in there is a lap top (one of the coolest items of corporate paraphernalia). Initially, it used to be those black, purpose-made ‘lap top bags’, but the trend has since changed. These days, a big number of lap top owners have taken to the regular backpack to store their laptops. And why is this so, you will ask? Well, apparently, it is the best way to safeguard against a particular breed of robbers who only target laptops. With a backpack, one won’t know what you’re carrying therein; books, groceries, used diapers… The lap top aside, the typical corporate backpack may also contain such items as a small digital camera, phone charger DVDs and novels. CEOsThese are the captains of industry. The men and women who take huge corporate decisions that determine the livelihoods of hundreds of their corporate charges. Typically, you do not expect to bump into a Chief Executive of a large corporation with a rucksack strapped to his back, do you? Yet they, too, do carry them these days. And the ones who do are usually those with an active social life. Those C.E.Os who, after a hard day’s work, will head to the gym, massage lounge, badminton track, swimming pool, go jogging, or any such other activities. Suffice it to say that all these activities require special items of clothing of their own, which only makes a backpack come I handy.

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The all-multi-purpose Backpack