I wanted to provide a few shots of what my ride to work looks like and the normal scenes along the main street. I took these out of the back of a bajaji, which is a kind of motorcycle/rickshaw/mini-taxi.
1 – The women entrepreneurs who sell food along the side of the street. Depending on the time of day, you can purchase chapatti, maandazi donuts, rice flour donuts, cassava, rice, beans, and a whole host of other culinary delights.
2 – Building materials – you can purchase eucalyptus wood (featured here) for framing your house or creating scaffolding. Also available are woven palm fronds, sand, stones, cement blocks, etc. If you need a fix-it person (fundi), you can also find specialists along the road [fundi umeme = electrician, fundi bomba = plumber, fundi bisikeli = bicycle repairman, fundi simu = cell phone repair]
3 – This photo captures another side-of-the-street business – furniture making. Comfy armchairs, wicker furniture, whatever you need. On the left side is the primary waste management method – make a pile of trash and then burn it. Actually that’s the secondary method – the first is to repurpose “trash”. For instance, cement bags from a construction site make wonderful planters for small plants at the street side nursery.
4 – This is one building that has intrigued me in its story of destruction. The first couple of months I was here it was getting set up as a solar power store. Then one day, it’s this pile of rubble. Never got the full story of why (building permit issues?). But there’s a great spray painted message in block letters – DO THE RIGHT THING.
So those are a few of the sights along the road that was my usual route to work.
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