Having received back my black trousers from the laundry, I notice a shiny look down the leg - ironed. These pants are 100% nylon.
Taking a walk north of the GH, I find three boys retrieving bottl
es and plastic from an extremely polluted waterway. They want some coins - none given. The giving of coins to those who ask, we call them beggars, is a voluntary act, personal. There is room for some.Jasmine
is strung together and sold for decorating one's hair, an offering at the temple, or any general use.I pass a shop owner "consecrating" his establishment by walking through every part with incense. He opens drawers, pulls aside curtains, and waves it about liberally. At another shop, the owner
lights incense before an altar. His young son looks on. Someday, it will be his good fortune to carry on the tradition and perform this ritual.Kepis, red hats, a carry over from the French colonizers, policemen stand around waiting for someone or something. A traffic cop, dressed in a brown military uniform, stands center intersection performing hand signals.
In front of many houses and businesses, m
andalas are drawn in white chalk leading up steps and into the doorway. Each is different, all represent life.
andalas are drawn in white chalk leading up steps and into the doorway. Each is different, all represent life. Two cows pulling a cart make the corner as motorized vehicles speed past. There are times when I find it necessary to step around pies and further around cows. This isn't one of those, 
however.
however. There is so much to take in, a hundered things buzzing around
my senses - smells of a meat market, passersby standing over a beggar unhappy about something, wind swept chunni of a woman riding past, vendors calling out their location with bells, an open sewer, workmen mixing cement, sand, and gravel and then placing the mixture on large pans carried away on the tops of women's heads, cobblers parked on the sidewalk doing instant duty on torn sandals, juices at a corner cart, colors, whistles, honks, more honks (the unusual catches attention so every type of sound is found for the horn), men arm in arm or arm on shoulder laughing, a rickshaw with too much. By the end of a 2 hour walk, I need a rest.
my senses - smells of a meat market, passersby standing over a beggar unhappy about something, wind swept chunni of a woman riding past, vendors calling out their location with bells, an open sewer, workmen mixing cement, sand, and gravel and then placing the mixture on large pans carried away on the tops of women's heads, cobblers parked on the sidewalk doing instant duty on torn sandals, juices at a corner cart, colors, whistles, honks, more honks (the unusual catches attention so every type of sound is found for the horn), men arm in arm or arm on shoulder laughing, a rickshaw with too much. By the end of a 2 hour walk, I need a rest. 
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