I have a favourite
place for coffee these days: Le Bistro at the New Sudan hotel. It’s a favourite
as much for the fact it has real coffee (not Nescafe served in a tin pot) as
for the walk there. Because I cannot show you in photos, I’ll have to try
to describe it, a good skill for any writer!
From my apartment I
turn right, down the familiar dirt path that runs to Logali House, a
three-storey colonial house and garden that is the favourite spot of the expat
and certainly journalist crowd. It’s a Sunday morning, so there are not that many
people on the path. One woman walks past me. She is dressed in a grey skirt and
t-shirt and is balancing a large plastic bucket on her head, but still manages to
turn her head to nod at me. “Good Morning,” she sings. Yes, sings! And I mumble
‘morning’ back, my head still a bit clouded by the beers and tequila shots at
yet another leaving party the night before.
There is a huge crater in the path that I step into and climb
back out of, enjoying the feeling of using my muscles. I try to do a yoga class a
couple of times a week, but it can’t compare to the cardio blasts at the gym
back in London, and the endless walking. I feel my muscles are
starting to atrophy.
The air smells burnt,
and the shaded patches of ash and a small fire burning in the bush testify to
the, as yet, unchanged practice of burning plastic bottles and other rubbish. I hear a child
laugh and through the bamboo slats of a tightly woven fence, I see a girl, pink
t-shirt and underpants, chasing a rooster. Her dad, or a man, sits slouched in
a white plastic chair, under a tree, close to a hand water pump. Their house is
mud and brick, with a thatched roof, and parked on the compacted dirt path in their yard is a
white landcruiser.
I carry along the path
to Logali. It’s Sunday, so it will be packed with the weekend brunch crowd. Not
my type of thing today. I have been social every night since Wednesday, and am
craving a bit of solitude to read a book. The path bends to the left, and I pass
three guys washing cars beneath a tree on a field of scrubby grass and
discarded rubbish. A few hundred feet away sit two earth diggers. I have no
idea if they are ever used. The path now moves through what can only be described,
in my mind at least, as a shanty town. There are dozens of shacks, constructed of
randomly collected bits of corrugated iron, cardboard, blue plastic sheeting
(from UN IDP tents), and woven leaves or bamboo. Some are in better shape, and
one even has a fence of tightly woven thatch around it and a papaya tree in the
yard. The smallest shacks, nothing more than four bits of corrugated iron leaned
together askew, with no roof, are the latrines, one for a dozen of so families.
The ground around them is hardened sand and stones, and littered with rubbish;
empty water and juice bottles, cans, broken CD covers, plastic bags and often, razor
blades. There are few people outside, save a few children, in shorts and
t-shirts, slouched in the shade of a tree. It is very hot, and getting hotter.
By June, the rainy season will have started and the thunderous, torrential
rains will wash many of these homes away.
I often think as I
walk past here that I should be afraid. Poverty breeds crime, does it not? But
no one pays me any attention, except the children who shout “hello”, and the
boda (motorcycle taxi) drivers who really can’t believe I would rather walk, and
sometimes trail me the entire path to make sure I don’t get on another bike. It’s
a small path, but it’s also a heavily used one as it connects two main roads
and is the most direct path to Logali, so NGO-labelled SUVs are constantly
cruising up and down it. Towards the end of the path, it opens up. On one side,
a couple of cargo trucks sit loaded up, their tarpaulins pulled tight. Around
them, a bunch of kids play football, each kick sending stones and dust flying.
A couple of people lean lazily on chest freezers in an open fronted general
store. On the other side, are a jumbled swarm of small food and tea stalls,
made in the same style as the shacks, with corrugated iron and bits of plastic
sheeting, and rasta music pumping out from inside. The boda drivers seem to
gather here, slouched on their bikes, smoking and drinking with their
sunglasses and baseball caps. One woman, tall and gorgeous as they all are, dressed
in a t-shirt, skirt and crocheted cap (yes, this is also quite common) is
peeling cucumbers from a plastic bowl. Next to her, a large metal kettle sits
on a small brazier of coals. One man calls out to me from a shady den, “Hello
Juba, come and have some tea.” I smile, wave and walk on. A woman, again, just
gorgeous, wrapped in a billowing brown sarong walks alongside me, and says: “Hello
sister, how are you?” Then she
disappears into the maze of shacks. A man, in a brown dusty suit, walks past, six
women of various ages trailing behind him. The one immediately behind him,
towering over him, is dressed in a brilliant turquoise top, cinched at the
waist, and a straight A-line skirt in the same colour. She’s also wearing a
white crocheted cap, and carrying a baby, swaddled in a white blanket. Behind
her, the women are dressed in various prime colours, fuchsia pink is a
favourite, while the woman on the very end is dressed in pink batik.
And then I’m there, at
the hotel, ready for a coffee.
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