The Street

I have been thinking about the squatter’s settlements/slums lately. These villages within the city are set up on the sidewalk. The other day, Sunday evening, on my way to work, we drove by a group of young men and boys playing an intense match of cricket. They had blocked a section of the road where it divides as their ground. The road is supposed to be a double lane road on each side, but really it’s a single lane. The living, in the pretty sturdy structures built on the sidewalk, spills into the road. You see people cooking, washing up, doing their laundry, making the craft they will vend in the street. These people are not homeless, the street is where they have made their homes. The societies they have created are organized, there is a hierarchy of authority, people pay to buy or rent a space in these dwellings. General knowledge is that these folk come to the city in search of money and a better standard of living. Sometimes I have sick feeling in my stomach when I think about how much worse things might have been in the place they left. But then, maybe they are stuck here now. There is a lot that I do not understand on these streets. Like in the paper the other day a gangster was arrested for killing a man. The way the facts read it seems that the deceased man may have had some unfinished business with these gangsters, but somehow the police decided to make an example of this gangster and brought him in on charges of homicide. The photo of the gangster was a picture of a podgy, unassuming everyday man. I guess my sense of who I am looking at is in a tizzy. I was walking around my neighborhood Sunday afternoon before work, trying to find a particular place, as I kept walking around the fact that only men were on the street, except for a white woman who smiled at me, were on the street dawned on me. Was it dangerous to walk around on a Sunday afternoon? I was not nervous until I had to walk by clumps of men. I felt like I was being paranoid a little, but I think it’s because my warning alarms kicks in at weird times. Like when crossing the street I get an overwhelming sense of “uh, just stay here” I really feel like my life is threatened every time I cross a street unless it’s at night and relatively few cars are on the road. I am also freaking out a bit because this is the first day I take public transport, the train, by myself. I know, I know, I’m being a big baby. I am just having a surge of feeling lost. I should be fine once I walk out the door, out of my safe, comfortable, abode. Seriously, as I continue to explore my surroundings I am sure this sensation of feeling overwhelmed will dim and vanish soon enough. That’s my alarm, telling me to get ready and go to work.