Getting past the Post

Hello Reader.

In this, my first posting, it seems fitting to tell you about the sights and sounds that greeted me every morning for the last couple of months. Place yourself in my position, if you will, and compare this to your morning commute:

As you leave the compound, clanging the gate shut behind you, the street greets you in its usual way. Looking along the road that leads to work you see a rolling, pitching dirt track with clouds of smoke hanging in the air. The day is already hot. The rubbish that families have put out on the road overnight is burning, reducing to nothing on the road. People walk through the haze on their way to the public shower stalls, a corrugated hut whose owner rents out buckets of water. A large group of labourers sit outside a tea shack, huddling down for their morning brew and bread, chatting loudly.

Pick your way over the rubble and piles of earth, jump the occasional puddle, and make your way to work by crossing over the ditch that was filled in two days ago by workers repairing the road with stone, gravel and earth. This ditch has stopped you before, during the rainy season, as the river of run off that created it carved a small valley, cutting you off from the other end of the street. Now that the rains have stopped, they can carry out their repair work without it being washed away.

You have no kitchen at home, so you must stop to pick up breakfast. There is no milk in the shops today, and the man who you buy fried eggs and chapattis from has not set up his charcoal brazier yet. He tells you two of his friends were killed last night, so he is sorry but he is a little late this morning. You will need to pick up some boiled eggs and bread from the kiosk hut just opposite him. Now keep going, you are a little late for the morning meeting.