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Honking horns. The blare of the call to prayer from the Mosque. A bell clanging at the Hindu temple. Offers of “Taxi! Taxi?” and “safari?” from the street. The sound of chiseling, from workers on impossibly dangerous ledges above.
Everywhere women carrying extraordinary loads balanced on their heads — flour, rice, huge baskets of bananas and avocados and a half-dozen mysterious fruits. One balances a full-size Samsonite suitcase as she walks through town.
Outisde the gate to Mwenzi Hospital, a half-dozen vendors hawking fruits and beans. Patients, sleeping two and sometimes three to a bed, aren’t provied food and must be fed by visiting family members. Those without family to provide food are given, quite literally, a bowl of gruel, once a day.
A bookseller with a cart of English language titles. Among them “Common Mistakes in English,” “How To Get a Job You Love” and “Why I Invest in Mututal Funds.” Several dozen tailors with pedal-powered sewing machines along the street, some with large wooden boards propped up in front of them to shield them from the merciless sun. In the road, a legless man propelling himself in a wheelchair/bicycle contraption, with peddles mounted in front of him that he turns with his arms.
A busy intersection without traffic signs or signals — cars slow down and push through in some sort of indecipherable system that seems to work (until it doesn’t). Holes four feet deep in the sidewalk, vendors using them as impromptu chairs. Two martially clad policemen with machine guns at the intersection near Barclays Bank.
An Anglican Church-run coffee shop with a peaceful back terrace, walls covered with green flowering vines, offering quiet respite from the chaos outside.
